i’m the CEO of iLike & GarageBand.

good post and discussion! I just wanted to note that some of the issues noted have since been fixed… the original blog was posted on Oct 26, a day after we first released our “beta.” In particular, there was a bug resulting in some obviously inflated “playcounts” (e.g. the 688 million example!) and we’ve since resolved that.

We’re still barely a week old so there’s a *lot* of problems that need to be fixed. But I hope you’ll try it out. While a lot of people are comparing us to services like Pandora or LastFM, our primary focus is to help you discover music not based on “recommendations” but based on word-of-mouth recommendations and based on seeing what your friends are listening to.

all the best,

ali

As far as recommendations are concerned, that only assumes that most people like music that sounds similar to each other. For scenesters, that may be true. Most people just listen to whatever is on the radio. For people like me who love true eclecticism, it takes effort to seek stuff out. Music recommendation services don’t give me the wide variety I crave.

Then why put Pandora, which is very similar to last.fm in this respect, there? I probably shouldn’t have, although you can listen to other people’s stations on Pandora without having to provide any user information to the computer. As mentioned in the piece, last.fm does have a radio feature that I don’t remember audioscrobbler having, so I’ll check into that and update the post after seeing if this same type functionality is available.

I used Audioscrobbler quite a bit back in late 2004 early 2005, but haven’t spent much time with last.fm. And while talking about last.fm, it looks like all those stats with Audioscrobbler weren’t imported into last.fm? That’s a bummer.

1st of all let me disclaim that i´m the executive chairman of last.fm. congrats for your insightfull post, i´d love to add my 2 cents to your great musical mood comparison

1. music you may not or don’t own but enjoy (through rating songs played) - Pandora, Launchcast
by using the last.fm radio, whether personal radio, artist radio or one of the millions of tag radio stations we offer you will discover tons of great music, comparable to what pandora is doing. last.fm is all about discovery of new music, thats how it all started.
2. music you already own and playlists you’ve created - iLike iTunes, last.fm
3. music you may not or don’t own or may not be familiar with, played randomly - Pandora, terrestrial radio or satellite radio
see above, last.fm radio must be added here.
4. commercial free music you may not or don’t own or may not be familiar with, played randomly - Pandora, satellite radio
see above
5. explore free music to download legally from indie artists that are similar to your tastes - Garageband, iLike iTunes
very soon you will have the opportunity of hundread of thousands free mp3 downloads - like always selected by your very own personal taste
6. share with others what you’re currently listening to on a webpage, Myspace, etc - iLike iTunes, last.fm
7. immediately skip songs playing you don’t like to next track - iLike iTunes, last.fm, Pandora (limited times per hour if you aren’t a paid subscriber)
8. find others with similar music tastes - iLike iTunes, last.fm
9. listen in car without internet - terrestrial radio, satellite radio (with receiver), various portable devices
thats a tricky one, we´re working on it.
some more advertising for us - 8 out of 9 is a pretty good result, and by looking to our current beta-version (currently for subscribers only, but will be public pretty soon) you might even think of expanding your various moods to “mood for live gigs” - check out our new eventsystem, like always based on your personal taste.
its great to see so many new social music platforms, keep on movin