Music in the Modern Era Well, June 2013, anyhow
07 June 2013
The College of Engineering IT group (CAEN) has a weekly (mostly) lunch gathering called SuperHappyDevLunch (SHDL), which could equally be called MellowNerdsNattering.
I wanted to know what everyone did for their music listening these days, so I asked.
All of the Options
These are the options used by the SHDL members, sorted by me by reasonability and premium cost.
| Option | Reasonability | Cost | Premium Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pandora | high | $0 | $35/year |
| last.fm | high | $0 | $36/year |
| Spotify | high | $0 | $120/year |
| Songza | high | $0 | $0 |
| iTunes Match | high | ||
| Grooveshark | high | ||
| SiriusXM web stream | high | ||
| sky.fm / di.fm | high | ||
| Amazon's streaming thing | medium | ||
| USB drive | medium | ||
| broadcast FM radio | low | ||
| carefully chosen fillings | low | ||
| crappy Xfinity Music channels | low |
Notes on some of the options
Pandora
- 7/11 in the room use it
- phone, Roku, TiVo, computer
- channels, not tracks
- doesn't make you post crap to Facebook
- iPhone app
- audio ads unless you pay the nominal fee, you cheap bastard
Songza
- 2/11 in the room use it
- phone, computer
- curated (by music experts) playlists
- iPhone app
- no audio ads
Spotify
- with some effort you don't have to post everything to Facebook
- computer, phone for premium
- tracks and playlists
- internet available playlists
- free on computer, 30 day premium trial, phone is not free
- banner and audio ads on computer
last.fm
- not actively used by many people here (1ish/11)
- you can SCROBBLE!!!
- Rokus, Spotify, Pandora, and others can send listening habit data to last.fm, which last.fm can then use to suggest concerts, rat you out to the NSA, suggest stations, and make you new BFFs nearby
- has stations similar to Pandora, based on artist, song, etc.
- computer and phone
- tags
- graphics ads, no audio ads