Doesn't matter to me, I play almost always with a pick (except acoustic fretless), but appreciate a lot of finger players. While pick makes you stand out more with better attack (producers tend to like it because of that) and perhaps makes fast notes more audible, I always admire how even root note eights sound more rhytmic when finger-played against the greater accuracy of using a pick to do the same. There is a groovy natural inaccuracy in finger playing (unless you are mark King!) which I like, Gary Thain of Uriah Heep has that and Neil Murray of Whitesnake had it too, both of them great melodic and rhytmically nuanced players. Finger playing can sound more organic and lively, pick playing more precise, to the point and a bit keyboardish at times.
And there are quite a few finger players that sound pickish: Geddy Lee and Steve Harris come to mind. And a funk player like John Gustafson sounds fingerish to me though he always plays with a pick.
Among musicians, pick-playing bass was long ago (late seventies/early eighties) regarded as not really musicianly (in my experience mainly from funk and Jazz Rock/Fusion people), which is nonsense, you can play fusion with a pick:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddEivwzB_-4&feature=relatedI encountered some of that back then, but it is a thing of the past I believe. Drummers tend to like it because they can locate you better in the band sound. Today, most guitarists say "cool, you play with a pick!" when they notice that I do. And then often enough add: "Can you turn the bass a little brighter?" Which I grudgingly do, having outlived my "piano rrring" phase long ago. But when you play pick many people expect/want to hear the percussive snap of the pick on the string.
I used to sound very pickish in my early days, my dream sound was actually the Fender Rhodes riff of the intro of Ike and Tina Turners Nutbush City Limits.
These days, I believe I don't sound as overtly pick player as I used to, do I? You can listen to various tracks of me playing with a pick here, only Unity features a second track acoustic fretless bass that is fingered (hence no fast runs on it!):
Access as usual:
www.zentralstudio.deGo to "Kundenlogin", type "raintunes" for project name, pick one of the four numbers appearing, and insert "raintunes" for user and "plainingjet" for pass word.
Does it cry "pick player!" to you?