Web 2.0 is the new buzzword.  What is it?  Well check out Tim O’Reilly’s excellent article.  Basically, Web 2.0 is used to describe companies that have or practice:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
        

• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
     

   

• Trusting users as co-developers            
     

   

• Harnessing collective intelligence            
     

   

• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service            
     

   

• Software above the level of a single device            
     

   

• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
     

 

This can be seen in many new services such as Flickr, de.lic.ious, etc.  I have recently discovered two different music services that epitomize the Web 2.0 way of thinking:  last.fm and pandora.  Both are free (for now) services that offer streaming music (good FM quality, approx. 128 kbps) based on the relationships of musician styles, musical similarities and genre.  Each does it differently, however.

Last.fm provides the listener with options to play "tagged" music files.  These music files have been tagged by multitudes of users with descriptive words that, when taken together, provide for a more accurate way of associating similar artists or similar songs that the listener may be interested in.  Last.fm provides a player that also can be set to use your own personal external player (like my favorite Winamp).  It also keeps track of what you listen to and makes recommendations based on your likes and dislikes.  For instance, included below is a list of what I’ve been listening to recently.  This is updated often, so it will change often.

Pandora does things a little differently.  They use the results of the Music Genome Project, as group of professional music critics, musicians and audiophiles to tag their music.  They then link music like a family tree using descriptive tags.  For instance, typing in "Rolling Stones", you might hear music from Dire Straights (for blues influence) or Lenny Kravitz (for electric rock influence) to Van Morrison (for gritty vocals).  All are related by the music tag.  This article at FastCompany.com explains it very well.  Their player is embedded in the website, and allows you to type in an artist or song’s name, and a "station" will be built around that artist.  Pandora seems to have more "new" artists, so it may be better for discovering new music.

So, try them out.  Let me know what you think.  It is exciting to see technology working for us for a change.

Enjoy, 
 
Jonathan