Two of the biggest names in the new wave of personalized internet radio, Pandora and Last.fm, have announced new mobile offerings this week that are sure to please subscribers. For those who aren’t familiar with these services, we’ll give you quick rundowns: Pandora is a free ad supported service (with an ad-free subscription option) that delivers custom radio stations based on the tonal qualities of each song. The user starts by entering an artist or song and Pandora continues the stream with songs of similar musical quality as determined by a panel of 50 analysts who have spent years listening to and cataloging songs. Last.fm on the other hand, is a similar free service (with enhanced subscription option) but it has a much bigger focus on social networking. It creates custom stations with similar tracks like Pandora, but relies on socially-applied tags when offering up new songs.
On to the topic at hand, Pandora released an official Windows Mobile client that brings the Music Genome Project straight to the hands of HTC Touch and Motorola Q9c users. The client is completely free and it allows users to create and stream Pandora stations to their Windows mobile handsets via the phone’s data connection. Moving away from Windows mobile, Last.fm announced that it has launched its first official Symbian client via a carrier. Vodafone customers with S60 handsets can now enjoy Last.fm for free on the go. S60 users did already have a free Last.fm streaming option in Mobbler but it’s nice to see Last.fm embrace S60 and offer an official client. All in all, it’s been a good week for smartphone users but we still have a long way to go – how about a couple of BlackBerry clients fellas?
[Via All About Symbian]
