Apple

[Jakensama]

I prefer the random song approach, helps you discover new bands you might not hear otherwise.

Spotify has radio too. It is actually better since you can just pick a specific song you like and it will generate a random playlist based off it.

Pandora is similar to Netflix in the sense that its the market leader, but with increasing competition. They have about 10 times the subscribers that Spotify does. I think they will both die off once the big guns jump into the game, though.

http://mashable.com/2013/03/01/spotify-vs-pandora/

They only have a bit over 3x the music base, which is still good for them since Pandora has 1/20th the music that Spotify does, they don't allow rewinding like Spotify does, they don't allow offline playlists for your phone like Spotify does, etc.. But then again they have been around twice as long so I guess Spotify will be closing the gap soon. They have essentially eliminated the need to waste your time buying or pirating music.

Netflix, unlike Pandora, is at least creating original content. And I assume that universal streaming licenses are not super easy to just obtain. If apple (or whoever) decides they want to be the new Netflix they are going to have to have something up their sleeve other than "we're apple, everyone will just flock to us", since Netflix is pretty standard these days.

If anything, Pandora is a lot like apple - a company who had an original idea long ago and are just trying to fuck the cash cow of popularity and name recognition in the hopes that noone will notice the superior alternatives.