I listen to Pandora every day. I think it’s a really amazing app/website/concept. Occassionally I see other music Apps that sound like they offer pretty much the same thing, but they never fail to disappoint (it’s either $ or ads or crappy music). Most recently, I installed RDIO. Immediately after installing it I discovered it is a paid service ($4.99/mo.) so I just deleted it without even reoad testing it. Pandora offers both free and pay-per-month flavors (you can pay $3.99/mo for ad-free listening). I subscribe to the free version (the ads really are minimal if you pick a station and stick with it).
Anyways, are/were you a Pandora listener that actually found something better? If so, I’d really like to hear about it.
I can’t speak for any other stations, but I really like Pandora. I have it set to play only songs I like; I don’t listen to any other stations. My husband and I liked it so much when it first came out that he wrote them an email telling them so. They sent us a free t-shirt.
I prefer Grooveshark. Pandora doesn’t let you choose or skip much if you go the free route. And Grooveshark has yet to not have the music I’m looking for, whatever genre it might be. You can browse, or look through the most popular stuff; some of it’s quite surprising. I really like it. Pandora just annoys me, since within about 15 minutes I’m wanting out of the groove they’ve chosen for me and I get limited when I want to skip over stuff I’m not interested in.
I do like Pandora for finding new music but I use Spotify every day and have a premium subscription ($9.99/mo) that lets me list ad-free and also stream to any mobile device. I can put together massive playlists or subscribe to others that are put together by strangers.
I listen to Pandora most every morning when I’m getting ready. Typically only one station (Godsmack). I also have the Sirius XM app on my mobile phone and use that (for the most part) in the car. I’m not sure why I don’t listen to Pandora more in the car, but there you go.
I pay for a Pandora subscription, but I haven’t tried the others. I love that I can make my own station and seed it with a diverse selection of music from different genres, and come up with great mix of music, including many artists I haven’t heard before.
I switch between Pandora and Slacker. Slacker is pretty much just like Pandora with an added feature I think is much better - you can ban an artist or a song. However, Pandora sounds better to my ears. I believe they stream at a higher but rate.
www.playlist.com is my favorite way to listen to free music. You can also find other people’s playlists they have made. They have almost every song I’ve ever wanted to hear, ad-free. You can save your own playlists and listen to them years later if you want.
I listen to Pandora every day, all day. I’m an engineer there, so it’s no surprise.
I’ve liked it for a long time, though. When I was hired and learned about the comedy stations, I liked it even more. I think it works well for its purpose: radio-style listening. I’ll turn to iTunes if I want to hear a certain song, of course.
I could swear that those were possible in Pandora by thumbing-down, but I’d have to check. (You should never hear a thumb-downed song again, and it used to be that thumbing-down an artist twice would get them off of your station - but that was a while ago.)
I’m not sure about Slacker, but Pandora One subscribers get a 192kbps option. I notice it.
I use Spotify radio. I don’t know if it’s free or not, I already pay for Spotify itself. I like it better than Pandora, although it isn’t as clean, because if I like a song I can easily put the song on a playlist to listen to however times I want.
Spotify is better, since you can choose what you want to listen to. It’s more like playing CDs than listening to the radio and you can get whatever you want. You can even make custom playlists and their selection is superb.
Right now, I’m working on listening to every album in 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die (I’m up to “F”). You can’t do that with Pandora.
I prefer Spotify to Pandora (I pay for my Spotify subscription), but I don’t know that I consider them to be the same type of service. Pandora was great for the times that I didn’t really want to think about choosing songs to listen to. I used the free version of Pandora, and would generally leave it on all day at work. I would only get annoyed when I’d be involved in something and slowly come to the realization that Pandora had stopped playing because it wanted to know if I was still there. Other than that, I thought it did a very good job of what it was supposed to do.
Rdio has a free version, but you are limited to how much you can listen in a month. It’s worth it just to pay the $60 a year for unlimited web streaming, or $120 for web and mobile devices. They also have a family plan.
I love Pandora. The ads were not that bad on the free version, but the paid version is cheap enough that I subscribed.
I created a Tom Waits station a few weeks ago. Any of Tom’s stuff I “thumbs up”. Anything more mainstream than Tom I “thumbs down”. The station has evolved nicely.
