Pandora vs. Last FM

Steve Kraus gives a really good breakdown of the differences between these two personalization sites. Like I said, they are both personalized sites, but the algorithms of the two are very different. Kraus explains it here..

Pandora and Last.fm: Nature vs. Nurture in Music Recommenders

Here is some of what he says,

Algorithmically, Pandora versus Last.fm is something like the nature versus nurture debate. Taking the nature side, Pandora’s recommendations are based on the inherent qualities of the music. Give Pandora an artist or song, and it will find similar music in terms of melody, harmony, lyrics, orchestration, vocal character and so on. Pandora likes to call these musical attributes “genes” and its database of songs, classified against hundreds of such attributes, the “Music Genome Project.”

On the nurture side (as in, it’s all about the people around you), Last.fm is a social recommender. It knows little about songs’ inherent qualities. It just assumes that if you and a group of other people enjoy many of the same artists, you will probably enjoy other artists popular with that group.