Both services are basically the same, but depending on your mood one might be more convenient than the other. 

Musicovery begins with a genre – say, Jazz – and asks you to click one of four options: Dark, Energetic, Positive, or Calm.  From there the service forms a web of music options, beginning with a song that best fits your interest.  Say, for example, you choose “Dark Reggae.”  You’ll get UB40’s “Food for Thought,” followed by Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up,” then Burning Spear’s “Call on You,” and so on.  If you don’t like the list, however, you can select any of the songs ahead, which in turn will form a new web. 

I have to say, though: You can let the list go on its own and it does a damn fine job.  In fact, a strength of both Musicovery and Pandora is that you can let them run and you’ll be perfectly happy.

Pandora, on the other hand, is probably a more impressive service, and one which has that “sticky” effect everyone loves.  It’s a simple concept: You enter an artist or band, and Pandora forms a list of similar music.  You can give any of the choices a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and Pandora presumably remembers to eliminate that song from the list the next time around.  It also saves your starting points, and allows you to create up to 100 of them.  There’s even a mix option, where you can select any number of artists and bands from your list of 100 to create your own radio station.

Also…in case you were wondering, the playlist changes each time around.

So I ask: How does Xirius compete with this?  It’s free on-demand radio. 

Do you have any other suggestions for free A.E. sources?  I’m genuinely interested…it’s a big world out there and we have too many choices.  We shouldn’t be constricted to the few companies with a big enough marketing budget to make us think they’re the only option.  Share the love!