Blog # 16

I have listened to many free internet radio stations. When I had America Online, back in Jr. High I listened to the radio. My Yahoo also includes free internet radio that I could listen to while browsing the web. There are even some where it included, California stations, or Texas stations. I remember it showed all the stations in the world. You just insert your zip and it would pick up all available songs.

Pandora is an internet radio mostly based in the United States. It has information on songs. There are small clean blue tabs and it list: Genre Stations to look up different types of music and offers you a choice to pick a category. Video Series, you click it and it gives you the option to see and hear videos. There is a Mobile and Home option that makes it convenient for in the car at the gym or on the train. View your profile option shows the songs you have bookmark as well as the artist. It gives you a list of your friends that you have added. Below these clean cut tabs are a few more. Station Gifting is self-explanatory. You can make a station for a friend and send it to them to view. List Concert Listings helps find shows now that are in your area. Pandora has advertisements but after a few seconds, you can close it so you can continue to listen to your music. When the advertisements do show up, it mostly occurs when you skip to the next song. Pandora only allows you to skip so many songs, plays a brief advertisement and continues to play music.

Last.fm looks from my initial visit was all about showing the videos. Last Fm is strange to me. I am used to Pandora Radio. On Last.fm there are little buttons and extra lists of stuff, it is very distracting. Being UK based, it is a multilingual worldwide-based radio station. It focuses on individual dual tracks. CBS owns Last.fm that is why there are so many commercials and advertisements. Last.fm has some history. It was founded again officially in 2002. I view Last.fm to be busy all over. It does not focus on the viewer. In my opinion, the page was chaotic. When I googled free internet radio, Last.fm does not even show up on the first two pages. My husband tried Last.fm app on his iphone and it had trouble loading. It was not as fast as Pandora.

I favor Pandora more than Last.fm. It has better skills selecting which songs relate to my selected artist. Whereas Last.fm, I got lost in all the tabs and video screens when I wanted to sing along with the lyrics I had to keep closing window after window. Thank goodness for this gaming computer I use at home. If I were on a regular computer with low signal, the computer would slow down and possibly freeze my screen. Plus, I do not even want to watch the music videos; I simply want to listen to the music. Pandora gives you the option to watch video feed if selected. Both sites play music that their programs, think you like. If I ever want to see, what the artist has done to represent their song I know where to go to look up their video. I could comment on what I thought the video was going to be and what it end up being and share it with my friends.