The Ultimate Music Face Off: Last.fm vs Spotify vs Mflow vs iTunes

The big name in the music business right now is undoubtedly iTunes. But it has a number of contenders. For me, there are now 4 big names that dominate my music world.

1. Last.fm
2. Spotify
3. Mflow
4. iTunes

Now, you may not have heard of Mflow. That is because it is currently not open for full public use. However, I do have invites so if you want one (remember, be quick!) email technokratos@gmail.com. I have been using it and I do think it is a worthy contender with the other big 3. I must quickly say thank you to Simon from stuff.tv who sent me the invite. The first thing that I want to make clear is that these music services do not all try to compete with each other. It is just that what they do can blend and this means that in a sense they are all vying for popularity so therefore I can do a massive post comparing them all and judging which is the best from them. Also, for the last.fm, I am going to look at the desktop app instead of the web page as that is what I use and I recommend you use if you are a last.fm user. Right, so the differences. Well, all 4 contenders are aiming at different sectors of the market, but here's a summary of what they all do and their differences. First of all, I shall look at last.fm and see what it is about. For you last.fm users as well, I am hillrhys so be sure to add me!

What last.fm looks like whilst scrobbling music.

The opening screen to the last.fm desktop app.

The desktop app looks like this when you open it. I say when you open it but it actually opens when you open iTunes as it scrobbles your iTunes plays as well. This is integration which I'll get onto later. Last.fm is a social music service. You have your friends on there and you compare tastes as well as posting on each other's profiles. Of course, this is no facebook contender, but still, it's better than nothing. For me, Last.fm is a great music archiving service. You do something called scrobbling to it which means that every song I've played in the last year and a bit is on there and I can see how my trends in tastes have changed. I love it, and you should definitely get it if you don't already have it. Last.fm is also an internet radio. So you can listen to all the music you'd like over the web for free. The quality isn't great, but it's bearable so if you're looking for a free alternative to Spotify then be sure to consider last.fm for that quality alone. For my special ratings for this post I give last.fm 4* out of a possible 5.

Mflow home screen

mflow inbox

Now let's take a look at mflow. It is a social network come music service as well. But with a twist. Social network is much more of a deeper part in mflow. Allow me to give you an example, say you're listening to a track that's good and you want to tell people about it, well, just flow it! I know, the new vocabulary with "scrobble" and "flow" is hard but you'll have to comprehend with me for now until you are integrated with music computer speak. Flowing music is easy, you just press the flow button. Once you've pressed that button, you're prompted to say a few words. In fact, it's 140 characters - remind you of anything? But that just adds to the social network part of it, because you have followers and you follow people just like on a certain something I just can't put my finger on. Mflow also chucks something else into the bag - it is a way of making money. Of course, you won't make as much as working or blogging, but you might still get lucky enough to make a few quid on there. Basically, if you flow a track and someone downloads it from there, you get a 20% cut of the cost there and then. Of course, you can only use this on mflow's store but it's still potentially music for nothing. This gives you an incentive to flow music and therefore make money. However, if you're looking for free internet radio like last.fm, this isn't for you. You can only listen to full tracks if the people you follow have flowed them, and not even twice! You can have a 30 second preview of everything, but that's not the same. Now, in case you're wondering whether this does what Spotify does with last.fm (you'll find out later on) then Mflow themselves have said that your music will soon be scrobbled to last.fm. 3* for mflow.

Expand your vocabulary with "scrobble" and "flow"

Spotify home screen

Now for Spotify's turn to enter the ring. Possibly one of 2009's greatest innovations, Spotify has taken music streaming to a new level. But let's not jump to conclusions here, because there is still a lot more to Spotify than its headlines in the news. For a start, there is the fact it scrobbles to last.fm unlike mflow. However, it isn't very social but it's not meant to be. Spotify is purely about music, and music is what it's good at. It is free for 128kbps streaming, although you do get ads. However, for 320kbps streaming and usage on your iPhone/Android/Symbian device a £10 a month fee occurs. This is pretty hefty when you consider that last.fm streams music for free and has Android and iPhone apps. Spotify does however have the advantage of playlists - a feature not very well implemented in last.fm and not in mflow. However, for me Spotify is just for a decent listen of a song I don't know; which explains why I have a playlist of unowned music which I stream. 3* for Spotify.

last.fm home screen

Last, but certainly not least, iTunes. It is probably the daddy of music services of last decade. But it is now facing stiff competition from its competitors such as Media Go and Windows Media Player (which are not in this post). However, it is in the face off purely because of its sheer power over the music industry. It's good, but I don't like the greyness or the annoying duplicates you sometimes get; or when a track doesn't have album art, that is severely agitating. Itunes syncs with your iPod, duh. However, the store still needs some working on in my opinion. iTunes gets 3*.

So now for the tough bit, choosing the best out of these 4. The simple answer is that none of them is the best. They are all the best at what they do, but not as one simple package. What you should do is download all 4 if you can. However, one day once I'm a software engineer I'll make a programme which incorporates all 4 of these programmes and it shall be epic. Until then download all 4. As an author note to this exceptionally long post, I shall not be blogging any more from now up until the start of June as I have national exams and I have priorities above you readers. It's not that I don't love blogging, I've got some posts ready which will be coming out at specific times over the next few weeks so be sure to read them once they're up.