5/10/2023 0 Comments Itunes lastfm scrobblerJust be aware that what stations are available will heavily depend on where you are in the world. TuneIn Radio is available in the most countries so that puts it on top. From what I could find, there are workarounds for some of them but official availability is pretty limited and varies greatly depending on country. Radio streaming services are a little harder to peg for availability than on-demand streaming services are. Songza slides in for the win just ahead of TuneIn Radio. No matter what genres you listen to or how obscure they are, you'll find playlists in Songza's catalog that suit your tastes. Songza has a library of around 20 million tracks which is on-par with what on-demand streaming services such as Rdio, Spotify, and Beats Music offer. For now, tweaking the playlist slightly seems to solve the problem. It can't be due to a lack of selection and I hope it's something Apple addresses in the near future. My only issue is that after listening to the same playlist a few times I start hearing duplicates rather quickly. And I'm almost positive that data has a home in iTunes Radio. Even though Apple killed Ping a while back, I'm sure they pulled a lot of valuable data about listening habits from it. I'm not sure if all of those are up for grabs on iTunes Radio or not but for the most part, iTunes Radio plays things you want to hear. ITunes Radio pulls from iTunes which has a massive collection of over 25 million tracks. I hear a lot less repeats than I do with Pandora but they're still noticeable after spending a good amount of time with the service. Last.fm comes in next with around 12 million tracks in their catalog. Now if you listen to more obscure music, you'll notice fairly quickly. Most tracks in Pandora are mainstream so if that's your thing, you probably won't notice the small size. Pandora has the smallest catalog size but that doesn't mean it isn't well suited for some people. As long as you stay away from local stations that is, which we all know play the same thing over and over. For people that don't like listening to the same thing consistently, it's like a breath of fresh air all the time. On the plus side, that means the TuneIn database is constantly changing. TuneIn Radio is different from the others since it's based on live radio and not an actual catalog. It really is that damned good at curation. Regardless, the only service I can press play on and walk away from for hours is Songza. In my mind that sounds more like an issue or bug than a lack of music to play. If I tweak the playlist slightly or change setting, it changes up the selection. I think the problem here is less a curation one and more a playlist one. iTunes Radio does a decent job as well but just like Pandora, after a certain amount of time I start hearing the same tracks over and over again. The playlists are hand picked and regardless what you listen to, you'll find something. Songza's main focus is curation and it shows. It does however require the Pro version of the app. It isn't on-demand by any means but it's a nice option to have. One bonus of TuneIn that a lot of others don't have is the ability to record live radio for playback later. ![]() TuneIn Radio does a great job of separating out categories and genres and serves up a great mix but since it's based on live radio for the most part, you're at the mercy of the station. A lot of this could be due to their smaller catalog size. Pandora does a decent job but in my experience, I hear a lot of duplicates in more obscure genres. While it does a decent job, it isn't the best of the bunch. Theoretically Last.fm should be best at this since it literally looks at all the things you already own in your iTunes library, pulls them in, and plays things based on what you already listen to. Last.fm scrobbles music from wide range of devices and music players, not just from official apps such as ((), () and (), but also a wide range of 3rd party Last.fm apps that are available on many platforms, built using the (such as (), (), (), () and the built-in Last.fm scrobbling in Deezer.If you want radio, curation is the most important aspect of getting songs you actually want to hear.
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