10 Free Alternatives to Last.fm’s Radio Service
Now since the Last.fm radio is getting paid for users living outside US, UK and Germany, it becomes quite a pain for the left out users to look for a free equivalent, if not a better alternative to Last.fm’s radio.
Although Last.fm still functions as a recommendation tool, as you can still scrobble your tracks (for free), you won’t be able to listen to the recommended tracks without buying a subscription. To ease out the task for you, we researched a little bit and have put down a list of 10 free alternatives to the Last.fm Radio service.
StumbleAudio
StumbleAudio is like StumbleUpon, but for music. You can randomly listen to music and rate them ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’. You can browse music by channels and save favorites when you sign up.
Spotify
If you live in Europe, you need not look further. Spotify is a radio, a recommendation tool, a music sharing tool and a lot more. It comes with its own desktop app from where you can stream the music you like. Not available in the rest of the world yet.
SHOUTcast
Shoutcast is one of the oldest and most popular radio services on the internet. Browse by artist or genre and make advanced searches. Thousands of radio channels add to its glory.
Musicovery
Musicovery is an interactive and intuitive radio service which adjusts itself according to your mood. You can also choose music from genre, timeframe and browse their hit songs.
Deezer
With Deezer, you can listen to all kinds of music from rock to hip-hop, jazz, electro and world music. You can browse their top charts and listen to the radios.
iLike
Quite much like Last.fm, iLike integrates a sidebar to your iTunes from where it can track your listening habits and then provide music suggestions. You can play their radio by genre or artist. They also have added features like concert listings and free mp3 downloads for some songs. When you play music there, you can also see the youtube video for that song alongside.
Tunerec
Tunerec is a web based service, that ‘records’ songs off internet radio streams and then tags them all for your convenience. You can search songs by artist, album or song name. It has got a very sleek interface, though it takes some time to record songs for you.
Songza
With Songza, you can search, share and create playlists easily. You can listen to playlists others have made and discover new music. When you play a track, you can also glance through its video alongside.
Live365
With Live365, you can search for more than 6000 online radio stations. You can browse as per genre or you can see which radio station is playing a particular song you want to hear. In all, a great package.
RadioBeta
RadioBeta lets you search for radio stations by geography or genres. You can play radio stations from RadioBeta itself and also queue them for playing. With the geo search feature, you can listen online radio in your regional language. Works quite well!
Update: We would also like to add RadioTime to the list. Apart from listening to various online radio channels there, you can also lend an ear for a talk show or news channel.
This finishes the list. Let us know what you think of Last’s decision to cut off free radio, and, of course, these alternatives.
Ricky
Ujjwal Kanth
Amalaki Juice
G Web | Google Talk
kapil.khaneja
La Digue
Sitaram Chamarty
Jerome Sutter
April 25th, 2009 at 11:18 am #
In Latin America there is also SonidoLocal.com (http://www.sonidolocal.com)
Reply to this comment
LottoWinningNumbers
April 30th, 2009 at 7:29 pm #
365 user, it’s just great
Reply to this comment
Property yield Australia
May 4th, 2009 at 2:06 pm #
I’ve bookmarked this page ‘coz I’ll be reading this again and again. Thank you for the useful tip on links!
Reply to this comment
brandon
May 5th, 2009 at 10:49 pm #
ummmmm…how about the two best services out there?
Pandora
Grooveshark
Reply to this comment
Sanjeev
May 6th, 2009 at 4:42 am #
Nice collection, thanks for sharing
Reply to this comment
valentina
May 8th, 2009 at 7:20 am #
do you know is some of this services are are active from italy?
Reply to this comment
zappolo
May 8th, 2009 at 5:27 pm #
I’ll try them!!! Thanks!
Reply to this comment
kookcoo
May 10th, 2009 at 10:47 pm #
Thanks for sharing, It’s Nice collection.
Reply to this comment
Glass Beads
May 11th, 2009 at 10:37 am #
Stumble upon features a lot of good song selections. It’s for those with distinctive song tastes.
Reply to this comment
Anelly
May 12th, 2009 at 2:28 am #
Great. I’m glad there are some good alternatives to LastFM. PS: stumbled because it deserve it
Reply to this comment
valentina
May 12th, 2009 at 4:10 am #
Pandora it’s not accessibile outside USA , maybe one the best service is ILike,you can use it even in facebook
Reply to this comment
ugg boots for less
May 14th, 2009 at 1:16 pm #
Thanks for this nice information.
Reply to this comment
Sandra Langston
May 16th, 2009 at 1:57 pm #
Sorry—I guess Italy is “outside” Europe—SPOTIFY doesn’t work here!
Reply to this comment
Me
May 28th, 2009 at 12:19 pm #
Spotify’s great, but only works in some countries inside Europe. The UK, France and Germany are part of the lucky ones, here in Belgium we’re less fortunate. So I guess thank you proxyservers is in order.. =)
Reply to this comment
Ruchi
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:14 am #
there is one caled imeem aswell, i dont know if you can get it online but i have the app for this on my HTC magic
Reply to this comment
Joseph
July 31st, 2009 at 8:39 am #
I can’t believe you didn’t list Pandora. Pandora all the way, baby!
Reply to this comment
BigDogRMF
August 28th, 2009 at 12:09 am #
best i’ve used is nexus radio… outstanding.
Reply to this comment
Minnesota Attorney
October 8th, 2009 at 10:21 am #
Three great free apps for the iPhone are Pandora, iHeartRadio, and Last.FM. With those, you can listen to music for free. iHeartRadio offers iPod listening to actual radio stations throughout the United States.
Reply to this comment
BigRay
January 4th, 2010 at 1:45 pm #
GrooveShark is by far the best…
Reply to this comment
Williams
January 20th, 2010 at 4:51 am #
Live 365 is the best alternative to last.fm. Really fm rocks.
Thanks for update.
Reply to this comment
Rob
January 21st, 2010 at 4:29 pm #
These are great. I’ve been curious to check out some LastFm alternatives.
Reply to this comment
lobanegra
January 27th, 2010 at 6:46 pm #
at last! we need this list of free internet radio stations-
some of them like pandora isnt available outside the U.S.
Reply to this comment