Musical Mania

So I've now spent way too much time creating a Playlist on finetune that is almost as mixed a selection of classic rock and oldies as I have on my Pandora station. Finetune is not as easy to program as Pandora, but thanks to some help from Miss Cellania, I got it figured out. First, I discovered I was adding favorite artists, not songs. I needed to pull up music tracks and click those. And you don't see a playlist til you have 45 songs (some legal thing you can read on the FAQs, which seem to come up only as a link in a popup after you select a third song for an artist. Don't click 3 and you might never find the helpful FAQs. You can make a profile and upload an avatar/icon. You can have icons for your playlists and you can have many playlists. I haven't discovered a limit on the number of songs per playlist and I added well over the minimum of 45.

So, now I'll compare finetune and Pandora.

Finetune (F): You choose the songs.
Pandora (P): You can add songs and/or artists. Pandora will use them and also pick based on them.

F: You can embed a player on your site or blog and it won't play automatically unless you add the code for that.
P: You can add a widget to your blog or site that shows your faved songs or artists with a link to your station.

F: You can listen to your playlists through your blog or the site. You can also listen to other playlists.
P: You go to the site to listen to your stations. I haven't seen any other way.

F: You apparently listen to the songs in your playlist.
P: You listen to the songs Pandora thinks fit your criteria for your station, so the number of songs is indeterminate. You get to tell Pandora you don't like a song and you can also tell it to not play something for a few months if you get bored of it.

F: You can share, comment, and engage in other social functions.
P: You can share your stations.

F: You don't need to download a player.
P: You don't need to download a player.

In conclusion, I like both services. I like that finetune lets me put a player on my blogs. Very convenient. I like that Pandora finds things I like and after a few weeks of training, rarely plays things I don't like, anymore. Not being into social networking, I've found more new music via Pandora than I suspect I will with finetune.

I can see using both, especially to back each other up in case of one being down. I really wanted music online for my work PC where I can't download a player and when more and more internet radio stations are requiring downloads or logins and/or other inconveniences, having something that's simply click and listen is great.

~~~o0o~~~