I’ve been on the search for the perfect streaming music service for about the past 2 years. So far I’ve tried the following services:
1. Last.FM
2. Pandora
3. Slacker
4. Grooveshark
5. XM Radio
6. Rdio
7. Audiogalaxy
Grooveshark was my go to service before I started to heavily stream music to my smartphone. They have a very nicely designed Android app. But it constantly has buffering issues and just stops playing. It also freezes up my phone from time to time.
I’ve never been a big Pandora user, I used Last FM instead. I’ve always preferred the playlist Last FM creates compared to Pandora. Pandora seems to create the same playlists when I choose similar artist. It also tends to change genres all together after listening for a while. I still use Last FM when I just want to start a radio station. I scrobble to Last FM with other services. I briefly used Slacker, but went back to Last FM. I’m kind of disappointed that Last FM will start to charge for their mobile app, but it’s no big deal since I mainly use the website player.
I used XM Radio in my car and the web subscription for a while. Just couldn’t justify paying that kind of money content I had so little control over. It seemed like the same songs played every time I tuned in. The service became very repetitive.
I subscribed to Rdio for a while. The service is top notch and their Android app is excellent. The 2 gripes I have about Rdio is the gaps in their music collection and of course.. THE PRICE!! 10 bucks a month is steep just to listen to music on your smartphone. I don’t understand the concept of these paid services charging a certain price to stream from their website, but then doubling the price to use the mobile version.
Currently I’m using Audiogalaxy. So far so great!! I have access to all of my personal music from anywhere, for free. The service is in beta and I’m curious to know how long the service will be free. I love not having to worry about syncing my music to a device. The iPod sync routine is sooo old school!!