Let's Be Curious...

I have to admit right away that I'm a sucker for services that stream music to my computer, mobile and what else I can get to stream. The other day I was even able to listen to streaming music on my iPhone (connected to my car stereo) while driving for 85km (approx 53 miles) here in Denmark while connected to 3G. Talk about connectivity... and flatrate subscriptions..

Anyway - being online everywhere raises (for me) a demand for good music services. I'm sorry to say but the ones here in Denmark more or less suck - they've got a good selection of music but the user interfaces for using them just plain and simple sucks. But luckily the rest of the world is also my playground in these global times so what do we have out there? I've tried to make a very fast and simple overview of the ones I know of - please feel free to share other services with me in the comments if you know some great ones.
Let me note right away that I prefer to listen to whole albums and not "just" single tracks - that's just how I am...

The classic: Last.fm
To be honest - over the years I never really figured out Last.fm. I can find a lot of tracks there but something as basic as listening to a whole album seems to be quite impossible somehow. I read something in their forum about some albums being able to auto-advance but that isn't good enough for me. I do like the recommendations and the social side of Last.fm but not being able to play an album is a no-go for me.
Last.fm does have an iPhone app - but not for the poor people of Europe (where I live).

A popular one: YouTube
I've never seen YouTube as a music streaming service but when I look at what people younger than me uses I just have to admit that they do. I understand that YouTube is like a one-stop-shop for entertainment: Music videos, amateur videos of almost everything (except XXX I guess), movies etc. Again this doesn't cover my needs as I can't listen to an album from the beginning to the end. I do like YouTube for easily accessible entertainment but not when I just want to listen to some music.

The hyped one: Spotify
Spotify isn't in Denmark (but I pray that they will get the deal done) but using some internet ninja-tricks I've been able to use it anyway. Talk about a big selection of music here - I can find almost everything I wish for (except Danish music of course). The player comes in both Windows and OSX flavors and it just works.. even my girlfriend was able to use it right away and found it very intuitive. The iPhone app is only for Premium members (I'm not able to become Premium as I don't have a UK or Swedish credit card) but judging from the screenshots it's just as great as the desktop app. In Spotify I can listen to whole albums, make my own playlists, share playlists (which I never do) etc. It's like having an iTunes filled with all the musich you can dream of. Great!

New kid on the block: we7
we7 is a UK only service but using another bag of internet ninja-tricks I've also got an account there. we7 doesn't have a desktop app (as far as I've been able to see) but does (like Spotify) have an app for iPhones. From the short test run I gave we7 it doesn't seem like the selection of music is as big as in Spotify - but it's still big. It also seemed like we7 has a lot more commercials between tracks than Spotify has.
I don't really see why I would ever prefer we7 over Spotify - if there's a unique selling point they've failed to pass it on to me.

Thinking out of the box: Simplify Media
Simplify Media has two parts: One you install on your iPhone and a piece of server software. The server software then takes care of streaming the music (and pictures) from your file server to the client (on the iPhone). It's basically the same thing Orb does but for some reason I just like Simplify Media better. This solution has a couple of downsides: I have to have an always-on computer and I need to have an iPhone. Luckily I have both which makes me able to stream my whole music collection to my iphone whenever I want to. It's working very well but of course also limits me to the music I already got.

Why not? Net radio
Another fine solution is net radio. There is literally thousands and thousands of internet radio stations that stream music out 24/7 for all kinds of genres. I won't be able to listen to the whole album of some artist but I don't have to choose any music myself either - DJ's worldwide already has done it for me.. talk about luxury. I can listen to net radios on all kind of mobile devices (also my beloved iPhone) as well as Windows and OSX PC's. When I don't want to listen to a whole album I just use net radio stations myself - perfect when working etc.

The rest: Pandora, Deezer, Grooveshark
Pandora is U.S. only and offers custom made "radio stations" based on what you tell Pandora you like. It's quite cool but only for U.S. users (unless you get your ninja-stuff ready).
Deezer and Grooveshark both offers music for everybody - even Danes but for me they both fail as I can't find whole albums and the quality of the meta tags is just too bad (in my opinion). It's very clear that it's the users that does the tagging (and the sharing of music?) which is too bad as I think that both services offers nice user interfaces.

Conclusion: For me there isn't one solution to beat them all. In everyday life I use a combination of Spotify (whole albums, when I'm at a computer), net radio (selections based on genres, available on all platforms) and Simplify Media (whole albums, when I'm on my iPhone).

What do you use and why? Did I miss some services or some features of the services very briefly outlined above? Let's hear about it in the comments please...