UK based Musicovery is a music discovery service not too different from Pandora. Instead of choosing specific bands, albums, or songs, you simply click on a variety of sliders and buttons, including the ability to hone in on specific genres.

Currently, you’re able to choose a genre, date, mood, or dance tempo for your stream. Musicovery then displays a colorful map of your personalized song playlist. You can skip around the playlist and choose a specific song to play. However, just like Pandora, there isn’t a way to play a specific song, nor is there a way to systematically go back to songs that were played.

Overall, I like how Musicovery lays out all the songs in a virtual playlist map. It allows you to easily see at a glance the energy level and genre of each song being played. However, I still prefer Pandora’s method of choosing genres based on specific artists and songs.

Pandora’s new podcast is a perfect example of how a complementary podcast can boost interest and foster new business developments in a company. Hosted by Kevin Seal, the podcast delves into the world of music theory and analysis with the minds behind the Music Genome Project.

They state on their page

We thought it might be interesting for folks to learn more about what goes into songwriting. These podcasts are our attempt to give you an inside look at the techniques musicians use to put their signature on the music they write and perform.

And indeed, for any music lover out there who wants to become a more active listener, the Pandora Podcast promises to deliver interesting facts about tonality, harmony, melodies, and much more.

The podcast also allows Pandora to show off the wide array of artists that are in their collection and foster interest from listeners to new bands. For example, the first episode features the band 20 Minute Loop demonstrating various principles of harmony. I had never heard of the band before, and, after listening to the show, I am now a fan. In addition, they give many examples of bands that exhibit the musical qualities that they talk about in the show, which they link to in the post.

The podcast serves to educate users about music theory and the principles behind Pandora. But also, it creates buzz about the artists that are featured. Both of these make the podcast a smart move by Pandora.

The below post is written by Lawrence Coburn, CEO of RateItAll. He has a groovy blog called SexyWidget, that focuses on a variety of different widgets. James and I will choose our favorite widget from each week, and syndicate an edited version on the Shoutblog. Let us know what you think, or, if there is a specific widget you’d like Lawrence to check out.

Last.FM is a music recommendation service that draws data from a person’s implicit music listening habits. The metadata of music– which is listened to by Last.FM members on their computers– is uploaded to Last.FM via iScrobbler, which enables Last.FM’s core services: creating custom music stations, facilitating introductions between “musical neighbors,” and recommending bands.

The Last.FM Widget –- called Last.FM Music Charts by the site -– is a visual representation of the music data collected for each user. In other words, Last.FM charts what you’re listening to, and allows you to add these charts to your blog, social network profile, or personal Web site. At its simplest level, the Last.FM music widget allows Last.FM members to show off what they’re listening to during any given week, without actually having to do anything (once they’ve installed the widget).

Applications and Opportunity

With the explosion of digital music through iPod/iTunes and individuals surge of interest in creating customizable profile pages via social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, the Last.FM music widget has a huge potential market to work with. The implicit nature of the data associated with this widget is a significant advantage as well; unlike other music content widgets, the user doesn’t have to make any explicit choices about what bands or tracks to display. All the users have to do is what they were doing anyway-– listen to the music they enjoy.

The Last.FM music widget plays directly to the vanity of music snobs. People who love music tend to wear their music listening habits like a badge of honor. Among connoisseurs, it’s a big deal to discover that next big act, or conversely, to consistently listen to stuff that nobody else has ever heard of. The Last.FM music widget is the perfect vehicle for music snobs to display how good their tastes are.

The biggest challenge that destination social media sites have is getting the word out about their service. Last.FM’s music widget allows its existing members to recruit new members, and perfectly conveys exactly what the site is – a personalized music player. This widget would seem to be a nice strategic tool for Last.FM to attract new users.

Configuration

It’s a little tricky to find the widgets section of Last.FM. I couldn’t find it on my user profile dashboard of controls, and clicking the “Charts” tab does not take you to the widgets section, even though Last.FM calls their widget “Last.FM Charts.” You need to click on the “Tools” tab to get things set up. Once you find the right page, the process is very smooth, customizable, and elegant. You can configure your widget with bands or tracks, and with weekly or all-time data.

You can build your own design with a nifty chart builder tool, or you can choose from tens of template designs. Template designs are neatly laid out by popularity, editors’ picks, or recently added. Interestingly, Last.FM widgets are generated as images on the Last.FM servers, and sporadically updated on the widget output pages. My guess is that this is to avoid heavy crunching of the Last.FM servers. I haven’t found the lack of a dynamic feed of data to be annoying however. Weekly updates are enough to allow the Last.FM widgets to portray what music you’re listening during an approximate time period.

One minor annoyance is that it’s a little difficult to tell in most cases which widget designs will fit in a sidebar, and which will only work in a wider area.

Testing

I was able to add the Last.FM music widget to Blogger, Typepad, and MySpace without a problem. Because it’s an image and not a script, this widget should work anywhere that allows html. As mentioned earlier, this widget does not provide dynamic data updates – in my experience the lag for updates has been about a week.

Editorial

I have not found a widget that I appreciate more than the Last.FM music widget. Its key strengths are its ability to portray something unique about the publisher, the fact that it’s fueled by implicit and not explicit data, and the almost universal desire of folks to share the music that they’re listening to.

The only possible knock that I can think of about this widget is that it’s a nice to have, not a need to have. It doesn’t provide any additional functionality to a Web page, like the Meebo Me widget, for example. If you fast forward two years to when every online business is pushing a widget of some kind, I can see adoption decisions being made along the lines of required vs. preferred. In this sort of a world, the content based Last.FM widget may lose out to a functionally based widget such IM or a shopping cart. By then however, I would expect the Last.FM widget to evolve to be an actual music player.

Clearly, the real hurdle for Last.FM is getting people to download its software. Once you do that, the adoption and enjoyment of its music widget is an absolute no-brainer.

I’m a huge Pandora fan. I used to listen to Radio Indie Pop a lot, which features many obscure indie pop bands that are hard to find anywhere else. However, I’ve found that Pandora has 90% of those artists listed and analyzed so that they can serve up suggestions for other indie pop bands.

If you haven’t used Pandora before, you should definitely give it a shot. You’re able to create stations which are based on your favorite artists or songs. The service is free, and, one of the only limitations is that you aren’t able to go back and play a specific song. In fact, you’re never allowed to play a specific song. Their business model requires that you listen and rate as much new music as possible, in hopes of monetizing on a CD sale. It’s really an effective model that let’s users branch out and discover new music in a slick flash interface.

With all that aside, Pandora’s most compelling feature isn’t the interface or the business model–it’s how they allow users to rate songs in the context of a particular station. In other music rating interfaces, you are forced to rate the song objectively. Is this particular Death Cab for Cutie song your favorite? Well, I’m not sure–it really depends on my mood. The beauty of Pandora is that each radio station is based on a particular artist or song, which inherently has some baseline mood. I am much more inclined to rate a song in the context of a mood.

For example, I might not like a particular Death Cab for Cutie song because it’s melancholy, and I’m not feeling melancholy. But, if I were melancholy, then yes, I would like it. In iTunes, I would be less inclined to give it a thumbs up. But, in Pandora, I have no qualms doing this. In essence, I am refining what the particular station should sound like. Later, I can return to the station and recreate a mood.

Now, if only iTunes could extend the stations idea to your library.

Update: It turns out there is something like this for iTunes. It’s called Soundflavor DJ, and provides you with a Pandora-esk interface into iTunes. The software pulls recommendation data from Soundflavor’s servers. Similar to Pandora, Soundflavor has years of experience in analyzing different styles of music. What’s their business model? Alongside the tracks, you’ll occasionally see similar songs that aren’t in your library, but which you can buy through Soundflavor.

Thanks for the awesome tip, Brad.

I tend to email myself a lot of MP3s. Today, I did it for the first time using my Gmail account, and was pleasantly surprised to find an embedded play button directly in the mail item. Clicking on it brings up a Google Video style player that streams your MP3 from Gmail’s server.

I always love finding these small feature nuggets that Google embeds into its applications.