Remember June 9 as the day the debate officially ended over whether Pandora was a competitor for radio or merely the latest device, following the cassette deck, CD player, and iPod, on which people listened to music of their own choosing. That was the day CBS Radio began allowing listeners to utilize its Radio.com player to create artist-driven stations similar to those available at its Last.fm.

On Pandora, you can create an artist- or song-driven channel or listen to one of their recently introduced genre streams. On Radio.com, you can search CBS, AOL Radio and Yahoo Radio’s formatted stations and genre channels, or create an artist-driven station (no song-driven yet). With the Internet pureplay moving closer to radio and the group broadcaster offering more personalization, the “your radio/my music collection” distinction blurs further. And the surprise is only that one of the group owners didn’t make this foray sooner.

I took a First Listen to Radio.com’s personalized stations and their Pandora counterparts on June 10—about a day and a half after its launch; I also circled back on June 15 for reasons I’ll explain momentarily. One of the stations I created was driven by Lady Gaga, probably Top 40's leading image artist of the moment; the other by a considerably more obscure Oldies act.

(Disclosure: my other employer, Edison Research, has done projects for both Pandora, with which I have no involvement, and CBS Radio, although none involving Radio.com.)

Here’s the Last.fm channel that I got from selecting Lady Gaga. The only ad that ran during this time was the pre-roll on the Radio.com player, although at one point, I had to relaunch the channel and saw the ad again.

Lady Gaga, “Money Honey”
Semi-Precious Weapons, “Statues Of Ourselves”
Ke$ha, “Take It Off”
Nicole Scherzinger, “Whatever You Like”
Natalia Kills, “Mirrors”
Jessie J, “Casualty Of Love”
Katy Perry, “Teenage Dream”
Christina Aguilera, “Hurt”
Nicki Minaj, “Massive Attack”
Simon Curtis, “Bones”
Semi Precious Weapons, “Semi Precious Weapons”
Gwen Stefani f/Akon, “The Great Escape”
Madonna f/Justin Timberlake, “Four Minutes”
Jeffree Starr, “Bad Girls”

And here’s the stretch of music I got from entering Lady Gaga at Pandora. During this stretch, there was one :15 spot as well as a brief Pandora promo:

Lady Gaga, “Just Dance”
Britney Spears, “3”
Katy Perry, “Teenage Dream”
Lady Gaga, “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich”
Ke$ha, “Blow”
Rihanna, “Only Girl (In The World)”
Beyoncé, “Sweet Dreams”
Enrique Iglesias, “I Like It”
Britney Spears, “If You Seek Amy”
Britney Spears, “Womanizer”
Kevin Rudolph, “Let It Rock”
Katy Perry, “California Gurls”
Rihanna, “Pon De Replay”
Usher f/Pitbull, “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love”
No Doubt, “It’s My Life”
Taio Cruz, “Break Your Heart”

I’ve commented before on how mainstream Pandora (and other pureplays) have become. Pandora’s take on Lady Gaga hews pretty much to artists and songs you’d hear on a large-market CHR these days; the only song that doesn’t fit that description is a depth cut from Gaga herself. For music discovery, the Radio.com channel was deeper with other acts related to Gaga or with a similar downtown/outrageous feel.

FROM A LITTLE BIT O'DNA

For the other set of stations, I went deeper, starting with the Music Explosion. That band that had their one hit with 1967’s “Little Bit O’ Soul,” an interesting record for anybody trying to code the DNA of a song because it can classified in a number of different ways. “Little Bit O’ Soul” is the moment that ’60s garage rock splits into two camps—some bands (like Music Explosion) went more bubblegummy, others (with more indulgent A&R people or label bosses) evolved to harder psychedelia. And even without that historical significance, it's also one of the greatest singles of all time.

In other words, you could have gone in varying directions with a station built on The Music Explosion and the two channels did. The Pandora version was slightly broader and more hit-driven; the Radio.com offering was ultra-garage-rock focused. As indicated, I ended up trying the Radio.com version twice. On my first try, I had problems trying to get the player to advance to the next song that ended up in me leaving the channel and coming back; when I did, it gave me a lot of the same songs I’d already heard. It seemed fair to give them a few days to work the bugs out and I didn’t encounter them on my second visit.

Here was the Last.fm station, which this time had pre-roll and two :30 spots.

Music Explosion, “96 Tears” (yes, they recorded it also)
Barbarians, “Take It Or Leave It”
Woolies, “Who Do You Love”
Leaves, “The Fructal Song”
Shadows Of Knight, “Bad Little Woman”
Mojo Men, “She’s My Baby”
Strangeloves, “I Want Candy”
Knickerbockers, “One Track Mind”
Clefs Of Lavender Hill, “One More Time”
Balloon Farm, “A Question Of Temperature”
Mouse & the Traps, “Hit The Bricks 2”

And here’s Pandora’s version, punctuated by three :15s:

Music Explosion, “Everybody”
Barracudas, “Gloria”
Rolling Stones, “I’m Free”
Rare Breed/Ohio Express, “Beg, Borrow & Steal”
Tommy James & Shondells, “Mirage”
Rascals, “People Got To Be Free”
Wayne Fontana & Mindbenders, “The Game Of Love”
Exceptions, “As Far As I Can See”
Honeycombs, “Have I The Right”
Walter Egan, “Motel Broken Hearts” (an interesting late-’70s outlier here, but the retro-influenced artist would certainly find its inclusion flattering)
Yardbirds, “A Certain Girl”

Have you listened to Radio.com’s personalized channels? Be sure to post a comment.