Jango Hits 1 Million Listeners; 3 Million Stations

The social music and online radio site known as Jango has proved to be quite the popular newcomer, having announced today that the free service has more than 1 million listeners who have created a total of more than 3 million custom Internet radio stations.

Pretty impressive news for a service which only publicly launched just two short months ago. Even more impressive are the stats available from Compete.com, which show that Jango is already aimed at similar well-established services in terms of traffic, having attracted 423,000 US visitors in December alone, compared to 990,000 unique visitors for Last.fm and 1,596,000 for the current frontrunner, Pandora.

?We?re thrilled at how popular the site has become ? and how quickly,? said Jango CEO Dan Kaufman. ?People love that it?s so easy to get the music they want ? and how natural Jango makes it to socialize through music. Our users tune in to each other all the time and it?s incredible how much social interaction goes on.?

Having used several similar service myself (including iLike and imeem), Jango is my new personal favorite for its simplicity, as others can take interfaces to some complicated extremes. With Jango, the entire experience is browser-based with no extra downloads necessary (as Last.fm requires). Also, Jango offers the ability to create as many radio stations as you desire for free (whereas Last.fm charges to create a personal station), and users can also listen to the stations of others with similar tastes. This process of finding music through others is made easier with Jango's unique ability to inform listeners of what other users are listening to the same track, at the same moment.

The recently launched Jango Jukebox has also surely increased awareness of the new social music service, offering free streaming of listeners' stations through external services (websites, blogs, MySpace profiles) via a customizable widget. ?Until now, music widgets have been surprisingly drab and boring. The Jango Jukebox is the first music widget that?s really cool looking and fun to use ? perfect for anyone who wants to spice up their MySpace page,? stated Kaufman.

Expect this growth to continue as Jango matures and adds new features and options to its site. For instance, expect a Facebook-compatible version of the Jango Jukebox in the near future.