iTunes Radio, Pandora, and Live365 review
05.10.06 - 01:17pm
In this modern age of broadband connection, satellite radio, and WiFi, it seems that no matter where we are, we are surrounded by media. Music is a huge driving force in our world and with the advances made in portable technology it seems that everyone has an iPod, well at least on college campuses. However what about when you are sitting at your desk and you want a fresh blast of new music. You have a few options to choose from, you could turn on that old FM radio and search for a station or you could use the power of the Internet to bring some sweet tunes to your ears.
With the advent of broadband, online radio stations have sprouted all over the globe giving the educated listener a huge selection of music to listen to. For example, right now I am listening to a radio station that is based out of East India. While I can’t understand a word they are saying, the music is great and I am enjoying it. I have found three different networks that all offer a slightly different service and utilize a different interface, but the end result is the same, sweet tunes to my ear.
Pandora
Pandora is to music what a personal chef is to food. Pandora lets you create your own personalized radio stations that are based around either a specific genre or band. For example say you are a great fan of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Soldiers then simply type in Rock ‘N’ Roll Soldiers into the new station creation screen and Pandora will search through its database for songs from both Rock ‘N’ Roll Soldiers and bands that sound similar to them. You can do this for just about any band you can think of, with the only requirement being that they have at least had some music published and sold. With Pandora I have found so many new bands that I would have otherwise not have found.
Pandora benefits from being platform independent and requires no installation at all. All you need is an active Internet connection and you are good to go. I highly suggest creating an account with them, many times when I am in the Library or someone elses computer and my iPod is dead I crank up Pandora and listen to music that I enjoy. One of the great features of Pandora is that you can skip through a song if you don’t like it. While you are limited to 10 skips per hour, this is still a nice feature, sometimes music comes on that I absolutely detest and must skip it.
Live365 Radio
This website is essentially a search engine and listing service of around 10,000 online radio stations. With Live365 you can find a radio station that plays exactly what you are looking for, however the quality is a bit choppy for various websites and it can take sometime to get exactly what you want. However, this isn’t very unlike using your car radio so have some patience and you’ll find the station that is a good fit for you. Unlike Pandora there isn’t a customized feel to using this resource and there are audio advertisements on the radio stations for free users which can become a bit annoying. Live365 does offer a commercial free subscription service but that isn’t the point of this article. Besides the advertisements and lack of customization, Live365 also requires you to use a program that can pick up a digital stream, iTunes, Media Player Classic, and Windows Media Player are all capable of doing this, but that requires an additional program to be open.
If you are familiar with BitTorrent then using Live365 may seem similar to the BitTorrent searching process, you browse through pages of files and when you find a station you like you download the play list file and open it up with your client and let the stream start working. While this resource isn’t as clean and crisp as Pandora, it offers a HUGE selection of radio stations that could end u p pleasing you if you take the time to play with it.
iTunes Radio
Just like the iPod, it seems that everyone uses iTunes to play their music. I used to be a huge WinAmp fan till I was informed that with iTunes there is a built in radio and iTunes can share music so I can sample my neighbors music. Of the three services I have mentioned, iTunes is the easiest and most distributed service. When you open up iTunes, simply click on the Radio bar and a menu will pop up with various genres of music. Once you find a genre you like, find the station that is good for you along with the appropriate bitrate. What I like most about the iTunes radio stations is the various bitrate options, I haven’t tried using Pandora on 56k but I can imagine it being troublesome, however with iTunes there are 32kbps stations meaning it might be possible to listen to these stations on 56k.
The same thing that attracts me to iTunes is also one of my biggest peeves. While iTunes is prevalent on a lot of computers, the fact that it requires software installation AND a bundled QuickTime installation really bugs me. With my computers, if I don’t use a program, I don’t waste the harddrive space to store the program, even with 400GB of space. While I do use QuickTime for some online videos, it just bothers me that there isn’t an option to not install QuickTime. Either way, iTunes offers a great service with 843 streams available to my computer with a simple double click interface, simplicity at its best.
WinAmp Radio
It has been brought to my attention that WinAmp supports radio stations within its library and the WinAmp website has a few radio stations to choose from. When I looked over the list of radio stations that are offered on the website, most of them are also available on the iTunes radio station listing. The website radio stations required a stream compatible client, similar to Live365. Back in the day before iTunes I used WinAmp and I was very satisfied with the quality of the builds and the resource footprint that WinAmp consumes. All in all, WinAmp doesn’t offer much over iTunes besides the lack of the QuickTime installation.
Conclusion
While none of these will be the customization of an iPod, when you want something new and unique, all three of these services will bring that to the table in their own way. I prefer Pandora over the other two simply due to the universal nature of the service and the customization that is possible. When I want new music I generally want it to be in the genre that I listen to and I can get that quickly with Pandora. With live365 and iTunes I have to search for a stream that I might enjoy, spend some time listening, and then I can’t skip a song I don’t like. I suggest that you try each service out and see what they have to offer, it is free and who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself a new band or singer.
I’m not sure if you know this but winamp has always had a radio function. Not sure if the program does but their website has radio.
Interesting, I didn’t know that Winamp had a radio function, I will have to check this out and perhaps add a bit to this review. I looked over the website and it seems that Winamp supports the AOL Radio featuring XM, whatever that means. I will look into this, thanks for the heads up.
You may find this cool hack where you can use pandora from within winamp. Its at http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/05/listen-to-pandora-in-winamp.html
Very interesting hack, Scottfrye. There are a few various ways you can use the Pandora service including downloading the current song you are listening to. While I won’t post a direct link, the program is named 3Tunes, I have heard that the results are decent but nothing compared to a p2p network.
Thanks for the comparison. I love Pandora and Live365!
I’ve been broadcasting at Live365 for around $25 a month for more than 5 years (http://www.live365.com/stations/raym) and I just wanted to note a few things…
Live365
- On Windows/IE, listening does not require any plug-in or other player. A click on the yellow play icon launches Player365 — their player, which uses Windows Media Player as the engine (compatible with 95% or more broadband users and most newbies)
- On Windows/Firefox, DOES require you to select a third party player like iTunes or Winamp
- On Mac, raw mp3 stream is thrown at the operating system and whatever player installed will launch and play
- Also a stand-alone Radio365 application at http://www.live365.com/radio365 for Mac and PC that offers all the Live365 stations without the website.
One other point, with the exception of live streams, all of the Live365 stations are hosted and mp3s are stored at Live365 so it’s not just a search engine of web radio. 99+% of the stations ARE Live365 stations (unless it’s a terrestrial station re-broadasting). They are stations created by listeners paying a small monthly broadcasting fee, uploading their favorite CDs/mp3s, creating a playlist, and then getting listeners through their directory or self promotion.
Thanks,
Raymond
I never knew that the majority of the stations on Live365 were hosted by Live365, I just thought it was a huge collection of online radio stations. Thanks for all the great information, Live365 offers a great service and is a pleasure to browse through.