imeem vs. last.fm vs pandora

So I listen to music online most of the time, I want to be able to listen to the my collections at work, at home, in my car, or just anywhere. I'm cheap enough not wanting to buy any mp3 from itunes or amazon, (would cost me a fortune if I did), and lazy enough not wanting to sync music onto my ipod and carry it around all the time. I've been using imeem exclusively for a while now, maybe I'm a little biased, but IMHO I think it has the most comprehensive collection of songs, any kind of songs, you name it. It lets you upload your own mp3s, compile your own playlist by dragging songs from any imeem member.

As for Pandora, seems to be used a lot by new users of online music, it lets you create a station of songs or artists you like, and find "similar" style songs for you. They achieve this auto suggestion using "Music Genome Project", but I really don't know how can they find "similar" songs based upon my preferences, they probably just do this using their tag system, which, by the way, doesn't meet my criteria most of the time. What really sucks about it is that when you're trying to look for a song, it may find it (may well not), but it may not be playing it right away but playing some "similar" songs first. When I want to listen a tune, I want it right away! By the way, it doesn't have "man in motion" by John Parr, I was watching "St. Elmo's Fire" on Hulu the other day, and wanted to listen to that song again, it's on Imeem and Last.fm, but not Pandora. Pandora prompted a message trying to explain "why we don't play the song now", didn't bother to read it. I can see that the "create a station" idea appealing when you just want to listen to some similar songs randomly, or exploring new songs, it doesn't let you skip more than 5 songs. You cannot create your own playlist either.

Imeem doesn't have an iPhone application yet (does have one for Android), so I also looked at last.fm as well,  knew about it for a while, but haven't tried until now. It's a good mix between Imeem and Pandora, you can create a station like the way in Pandora, song collection is good, I found some of my all time favorite, Cui Jian's, songs, along with other Chinese rockers'. You get to listen to the song you searched for, one at a time. And you can created a playlist, but here is the catch: "Subscribers can listen to playlists once they contain at least 45 playable tracks by 15 different artists.", so you have to pay and you have to have time, but at least you are able to if you want to. I don't think I'll have time to do that. Auto suggestion for song is nice, but I still miss the flexibity. By the way, you can only upload songs which you hold copyrights too, yeah right, I guess 99% of users is not on that list, so if they don't have it, you're out of luck then.

If imeem is missing something, it'd be auto suggestion (create radio station) option, it's not on iphone yet, and cannot be accessed without flash support (iphone users, sorry). I'm running it on skyfire on my HTC Fuze just fine. It's not application, so you need to open the browser and find the bookmark. So bottom line, if you can, use imeem, otherwise, use last.fm, maybe even pay for the subscription ($3/month).

so which one is it? I don't know, you can't get everything, that's life, live with it!