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Direct Competition

Competitors

Last.fm - Last.fm offers personalized music recommendations using playcounts to generate similar music networks and similar listener networks. The site also features personalized streaming internet radio, tagging, and blogging.

Pandora - Pandora offers personalized streaming internet radio using human-generated audio analysis. The service is working with Friendster to incorporate social elements.

LAUNCHcast - LAUNCHcast offers personalized streaming internet radio using users' direct ratings of music to generate similar music networks. The site also features unpersonalized internet radio, genre and mood tags, and an "influencers" social feature.

RateYourMusic - RateYourMusic offers personalized music recommendations based on users' direct ratings of albums. The site also offers a discussion forum.

MusicStrands - MusicStrands uses a mini-player to offer personalized music recommendations by tracking a user's listening habits to generate similar music networks. The site also features playlist sharing, tagging, and social networking features.

Audiobaba - Audiobaba uses a mini-player to offer personalized music recommendations based on audio analysis and listener habits.

The Echo Nest - The Echo Nest is currently in development, and will feature personalized music recommendations based on audio analysis and meta-cultural analysis.

Analysis

Each of the major players in the personalized music recommendation market offers a different set of valuable features to music listeners, but thus far none have managed to integrate and streamline these features into a simple and easy-to-use, yet powerful product. Furthermore, these products have only targeted one of the four music device markets, so the market is open for a service to successfully target all four markets with a integrated and unified product and redefine the music listening experience. The proposed service will learn from the successes and failures of the currently available services, integrate their most successful features, and innovate new features to optimize and simplify recommendations for the listener.

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