Many of the major players in streaming personalized radio have developed an iPhone application since the release of the iPhone App Store. After waiting a few months to let them work out some kinks and with the release of Slacker’s app this week, i thought it would be a good time to dive in and compare some of these services.

Last.fm is my choice for best of class. Even though it lacks some of the editorial and genre stations provided by other services, it makes up for it with tag radio, recommendations and artist information. However the main reason I use it over the others is that Last.fm is directly tied to my iTunes listening (my main consumption arena) so the recommendations are the most representative of what I’m listening to day to day. 

Pandora provides some excellent programming as well and their “Quick Mix” station provides a good stream of recommendations based on other stations I have created. The simple UI and basic feature set make it super easy to use.

Slacker, the newest entry, is a slick and rich experience. The combination of editorial, genre and artist/song seeded stations provides lots of choice. the ability to fine tune each station is an excellent differentiator. The addition of artist bios and album reviews provides great non-audio discovery mechanisms. The ability to see the next song is also a very nice feature.

Deezer doesn’t have much going for it in terms of a broad feature set. The main reason I use it is something I assume is due to it’s French origin – the recommendations are similar to other services but somehow different enough – I seem to discover some interesting bands I don’t think i would encounter with the others.

Finetune’s iphone app is pretty similar to their website and desktop application. In addition to some good editorial stations (e.g. Best of 2008 genre charts) and artist radio, you can also access your own playlists. unfortunately you cant add items you hear on stations to those playlists. There isn’t much else here feature wise but again worth checking out to see if you like their recommendations.

Feature	Last.fm	Pandora	Slacker	Deezer	Finetune
Editiorial Stations			•		•
Genre Stations		•	•	•	•
Subgenre Stations		•	•	•
Tag-based Stations	•		•
Artist-based Stations	•	•	•	•	•
Song-based Stations		•	•
Recommendations Station	•	•
User-based Stations	•
Saved Stations	•	•	•		•
Recent Stations	•				•
Bookmarks/Loved Songs	•	•	•
Album Reviews			•
Artist Bio	•	•	•
Related Artists	•
Events	•
Listeners	•
Tags	•
Ads			•
Skips	Unlim	5/hr	6/hr	Unlim	5/hr
See Next Song			•
Bookmark Song	•	•	•
Rate Song	•	•	•
Share Song	•	•
Tag Song	•
Add to Playlist	•
Buy on iTunes	•	•	•
Finetune Station			•