If you did in fact just crawl out from a cave… They are customizable internet radio stations that allow you to listen to almost anything you want.  You sign up and you can begin creating your own station built from one of your favorite bands, songs, or genres.  Here is a closer look at each of the sites.

The tag line above mentions the social aspect of this site, which basically allows you to add people as your friend and then in turn listen to their radio stations.  Once you’ve signed up for an account and added some of your musical tastes you can then choose to listen to your own station which is populated by anything you choose to add or play through searching for a certain artist or genre.  Do keep in mind that if you add a bunch of bands, and then decide to listen to a sampling from a genre or “tag station” then anything you hear will be added to your profile unless you ban it.  You have two options when it comes to songs, you can “ban it” which will prevent it from playing on any of your stations or you can “love it” which the site also keeps track of for future reference.  Personally I prefer not to use the “love it” option as it will then play those songs a little too much for my liking.  The site also gives you the option of listening to your own “love it” station which is a nice feature.  In addition to your “love it” station, your own library station, and those of your friends you can choose to listen to the recommendation station which is built by the site based on what music you’ve added, listened to, or tagged “love it”.  The recommendations usually are fairly solid but basic.  You won’t find too many suprises here but the selections make sense being made up of bands that have common sounds, have some sort of relation or share some other distinction.  One of my favorite features is the ability to use an addon with most popular PC/Mac media players that will “scrobble” the music that you listen to.   “Audioscrobbling” is just a term for uploading what you are listening to to your profile so you don’t have to manually add your tastes.  This feature also allows you to publish what you are listening to currently, list your loved, or list your top tracks on your own website or social networking site.

I noticed after listening at work that the stations will populate themselves with certain artists each time you load them.  For instance if you have added 40 artists you like it will pick out around 8 to continually cycle through.  I found this extremely limiting and repetitive.  I noticed some other things as well…  Firstly, you will run into songs that are considerably louder than most of the music, this can be very annoying if you are playing this in an office with a bunch of people on the phone.  I basically had no other choice but to ban each of those songs as there were no volume leveling options.  Another slightly annoying occurrence is what seems to be the sites inability to play certain artists.  Now if I manually put in The Beatles it may play a few songs, but I added them to my library I never once heard them pop up.  This may be a glitch, if so its an extremely annoying one.  On the flip side you will end up hearing a huge amount of other artists, like when I added The Stray Cats – I eventually had to get rid of them because I was hearing them so much for whatever reason.  My last annoyance is a small one and it is that you will end up hearing a bunch of live versions of songs which isn’t always bad but usually the sound quality isn’t up to par.  I have a suspicion that both the live music and the fact you don’t hear certain artists is because of licensing fees, but I not completely sure of it.

This site also has some interesting features to offer, the biggest being that it is based on the Music Genome Project.  Which is basically a database that links songs by common musical elements (Read more about it here).  An example of one of those elements would be “vocal harmonies”, so you might hear a song by The Byrds followed by a Crosby, Stills, Nash song – not because they share members but because they both rely heavily on that musical element.  Although this is a really interesting idea I don’t find it to be all that helpful personally but I could see someone a little less seasoned discovering a ton of new stuff.

I have used Pandora.com at my office as well and I did find the stations to be controlled well and featured a little more variety.  The service did have a couple really disappointing elements.  My main issue with the site is after awhile it the service will begin to time out every hour.  Now, this may not be an issue if you are just listening personally, but it can be extremely irritating if you are streaming the site from another computer hooked up to an office stereo system.  The whole purpose of the hourly timeout is to get people to actually subcribe and pay for the service.  I understand where they are coming from… you have to make money to continue streaming and pay license fees.  But on top of that they also feature visual ads (thankfully no audio ads at this point).  The time out and the ads lead me to pursue other options.

Compared to the choppy flow of last.fm’s insistence on picking a limited number of artists to play random samplings from, I found Pandora to be a little more pleasant.  Basically as far as I could tell, it would pick one of your preferred artists or genres – play 4 related songs and then move on to the next random item and repeat.  Which turns out to be a pleasant listen with a much wider variety.  As far as the depth of the selections go, both site rely a little too heavily on the hits.  If I had to choose which site had a better depth it would be Last.fm but both sites have the ability to surprise with an offbeat track.

My verdict:  Out of the two sites/services I personally prefer Last.fm for it social connection and the ability to connect it to your own music library.  I also find the recommendations to make more sense for the most part and find last.fm has more depth as a service and in the music available.  For listening in a professional work setting I would say Pandora if somebody was willing to pay so you didn’t have to constantly babysit it, because of this I usually lobby for Last.fm at my place of work.

Instead of writing up my own explanation of what Metacritic.com has to offer and why I like it I will let it speak for itself.  Here is the description straight from the site.

“Metacritic compiles reviews from respected critics and publications for film, video/dvd, books, music, television and games.

Our unique Metascores show the critical consensus at a glance by taking a weighted average of critic grades.”

Much like Rottentomatoes.com metacritic has the critics score as well as an average rating from visitors.  Unfortunately the sites back catalog of reviews is a little light, as they only started compiling info on new releases as of 2000.

The well respected Pitchforkmedia.com and now Pitchfork.tv are now dual heads of a burgeoning internet giant and tastemaker.  Established in 1995 by fellow Minnesotan Ryan Schreiber.  The headquarters was moved to Chicago in 1999 and in recent years has expanded to an additional office in New York City.

Pitchfork is a daily visit for the music focused, myself included.  Personally I enjoy the news portion of the site as it is one of the sole places you can get news about serious/indie music on the internet.  The album review portion of the website is also extremely vital although it can be a little labored/pretentious for my taste.  I prefer to just read the short sinopsys and note the albums rating.  One of my largest disagreements with the site is the fact they only do 5 reviews every weekday and they end up missing some very vital releases.  Then again my tastes have always been caught between the obscure and rightfully accessible.  Another notable section on the website are the features that they periodically post.  Including interviews, best of lists, and live show reviews.  Speaking of live shows Pitchfork started hosting live music festivals a few years back featuring 3 days of bands.  I myself have made it for the last two years and would suggest it to anyone that is into independant music.

Pitchfork.tv is a newer edition to this media empire.  It is what it sounds like… an visual media extension of the original website where they host a bunch of original content, music videos and a one week only feature.  My favorites from this site are the sketch comedy show produced by the lead singer of the band Les Savy Fav – Tim Harrington and one week only feature where you can tune into a new music documentary each week.

The end all be all of music reference sites.  This site is my go to for any specifics that I need when it comes to any genre of music.

Using Allmusic.com you have the option to search for information on albums, artists or songs; as well as deep resources on specific genres and styles.  This site is a great resource if you want album recommendations, song recommendations, or even if you want to find similar artists. Within the info they provide on specific artists you will find long lists of similar artists, bands that share members, the bands they were influenced by, and the bands that they influenced.  The artists bios and album reviews can be a little off at times but I think you would be challenged to find a more definitive guide to popular music.

Among some of the newer features to be brought to the site in recent years are the Allmusic blog and the album of the day.

Although I find many positive and useful things about this site, there are a few negative aspects as well.  Among those is that the site is missing quite a bit of info on some of your more obscure artists and I find the site extremely slow at times.  Then again look at what they are working with here… a shit ton of information and probably a fairly small staff.  One thing I do quite enjoy is that you have the option if you find there is some inaccurate or incomplete information you can fill out a quick web form alerting them to it.