Pandora vs Slacker vs Last.fm vs Rdio vs iTunes Radio vs Jango

The original, and despite the big names entering the market, still the best known streaming audio service there is. Built around a music discovery concept, other than the initial station set up, you cannot search for specific sings to play them. Pandora's stations build upon your initial song choice, with the user able to accept and reject further suggestions, and those responses in turn contribute to the criteria for further music recommendations. The amount of negative responses is limited per station per day. Pandora claim to use over 400 separate musical attributes for each recommendation, with the service becoming more accurate to a user’s taste the longer they use it.

Pandora is available through browsers, and via and app for both iOS and Android, and is even integrated into several manufacturers standard fit car audio systems.

Slacker Radio has recently undergone something of a revolution, bringing a more streamlined look to the interface. Depending on how much you pay, there are different ways to consume your music. For free users, it is streaming only, ad supported (with a lot of ads), you cannot pick songs directly, just stations, and are restricted to 6 song skips per hour.

The next tier up includes an ad free service, unlimited song skips, and inbuilt downloading of your favorite stations for offline listening. The premium level carries an increased fee, but with it comes on-demand, you simply choose a song and stream it, no need to find a station that may play it and wait.

Last.fm can be accessed through a browser, or via Last.fm apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux. Last.fm has several ways of providing music, you can simply select one of Last.fm's own stations to listen to, and these are usually based around a genre or artist. You can also find playlists from other services such as Rdio which allows you to listen to those. If you have a Spotify account, you can listen to Spotify on demand music through the last.fm website. Finally, you can listen to music direct from an artist or label, these are often added to last.fm for promotional purposes.

Last.fm's social and personalization functions are based around "scrobbling", which is the act of uploading a record of the song you are listening to directly to last.fm, this is recorded on your last.fm music profile and can influence what music is recommended in the future for you, this data is also available to your friends and connections in last.fm itself.

Apple's offering is an extension of iTunes, and so has the benefit of the familiar, easy to use and very clear iTunes interface. It also means it is available on a wide variety of platforms, if you can install iTunes on your device, you can get iTunes Radio.

Like others, iTunes radio uses the concept of stations to provide music for you to enjoy, with iTunes recommendations becoming more accurate the more you listen.

Stations can be built around artists, songs and genres, all of which you can set up yourself. On Apple devices, voice control via Siri is fully integrated into the system.

As you expect with Apple, their offering is slick, attractive and functions very well.

Rdio can be used directly within a browser, or through Android, iOS and Windows desktop apps, although the mobile versions require a paid subscription beyond a 14 day trial. Whatever you use to access it, the interface is as simple as they come, but none the worse for it.

Rdio offers station listening for free, with on demand and downloading requiring a paid subscription, although it does stand out by offering a 6 month trial of all the services, including on demand, before you have to start paying, plenty of time to see if this is the service for you.

The most unwieldy interface on display here, Jango does however offer the benefit of only a single ad per day, it is available through a browser and via both Android and iOS apps.

Jango uses a similar vote up and down system to Pandora to improve recommendations, and in addition you can select songs directly if you wish, and Jango also incorporates optional music videos into the interface where they are available.