Spotify is obviously majorly different than Pandora. If you’ve used Spotify for any time at all, you know that Spotify doesn’t operate based around stations, but around playlists. Pandora has been around a long time and made a name for itself by mimicking the format of a radio. In recent years Spotify has exploded not only as a popular music listening platform but also as a top-notch service for music discovery, and Pandora has changed a lot. Which one is ultimately better. Pandora also offers a free plan with ads, similar to that of Spotify. However, the free plan restricts users to only radio and streams music only in low-quality. The free users also can’t download Pandora’s desktop app, though you can access it through the web. Pandora has two paid plans: Premium and Plus. Play the songs, albums, playlists and podcasts you love on the all-new Pandora. Sign up for a subscription plan to stream ad-free and on-demand. Listen on your mobile phone, desktop, TV, smart speakers or in the car. Crossover mac 10. 15.
What's Better Pandora Or Spotify
Gone are the days of playing music from CDs, cassettes and MP3 players. In this highly technological era, you can stream music by simply connecting to the Internet. Hundreds of dedicated music applications can be freely downloaded online and most of them require a little to no monthly subscription fee at all. However with tons of options readily available at hand, choosing which music streaming site available on Internet can be totally confusing.
Pandora and Spotify are two of the most popular music sites available right now. Both are easy to use, free and contain a wide variety of music from classical to popular RnBs. So which site provides the best service you need? Check out this Pandora Spotify comparison below.
Pandora and Spotify – A Quick History
Pandora was released in January of 2000 in Oakland California. It has a stable number of followers increasing every year as it continuously offers new features. On the other hand, Spotify came to the market as it was released in October of 2008. But this Swedish owned company is taking the music world by storm. Every day the number of avid Spotify fans grow bigger and better making it a big competitor to Pandora.
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Both Pandora and Spotify offer free as well as paid type of subscription. Free users get to enjoy quality music without spending a dime yet with advertisements while paid uses can experience additional benefits aside from ad-free streaming.
Pandora vs. Spotify
Functions: 8.0:8.0
Pandora offers “pure” radio listening experience. You can browse over 500 stations and further personalize it according to your desires. With it, you’ll get to enjoy several benefits such as ability to purchase songs directly from iTunes or Amazon, directly see full song lyrics, subscribe to music feed, follow your friends with their music, share songs on Facebook or twitter, find the artists as well as songs you love, discover artist biographies and many more.
If Pandora offers the best radio listening experience, Spotify on the other hand lets you enjoy music in a more personalized way. Depending on your current mood, users can explore different kinds of music. Other features of it include: create your own playlist, discover music based from what you’re listening, share music to social networking sites, allow personalization of radio stations and all others. Yet, assuming that you wish to download music from it, the third-party Spotify music downloader is needed.
Music Database: 10.0:8.0
While music streaming is becoming more and more popular, not all of them offers a wide variety of selections. Aside from the cost factor (if there’s any), checking out the app’s music library is also important. Bear in mind that the music library determines the number of songs you are able to search and stream within the site’s interface.
Another Spotify versus Pandora roundup is about music contents. So which one is better? The answer is Spotify because they offer access to over 20 million songs with tracks coming in from big label companies. Compare this with the one million song collection of Pandora, users looking for a more diverse music library should consider checking out Spotify first.
User Base and Price: 10.0:8.5
When it comes to user fan base, Pandora tops the chart with over 250 million registered users worldwide. However, do note than Pandora can only be accessed in 3 countries namely New Zealand, Australia and United States of America. Meanwhile, Spotify is more widely available. It can be streamed by users in over 50 countries and the list of territories supported is regularly updated. Spotify has 40 million users all across the globe.
With regards to subscription fee, there is a big brawl over Pandora vs. Spotify. You can subscribe to Pandora One at $3.99 per month and this gives you an ad-free streaming service, unlimited number of accessible songs, custom skins and fewer interruptions. Spotify on the other hand is a dollar higher at $4.99 subscription fee per month. With this type of service, you’ll get to enjoy a higher sound quality, an ad-free streaming, unlimited listening and ability to access it in countries not yet supported.
Mobile Applications: 9.0:10.0
Pandora is available on Xbox live, Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows mobile operating systems. There is no desktop version but you can access it by logging in to the site via web browser. Note that you need to keep that web browser always open on the background to be able to stream music contents as long as you want.
Spotify is more gadget and device friendly than Pandora. Whether you’re using iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and Symbian mobile platforms, rest assured that there’s a Spotify application fully compatible with your device. Furthermore, there’s a desktop version of Spotify available on Windows, Apple and Linux operating systems.Clear enough when it comes to this issue, Spotify takes the lead due to its widely compatible to most OS and gadgets.
Conclusion
Both Pandora and Spotify offer a wonderful music listening experience because you don’t need to download and play songs just like the old times. With these two services, listening music is more accessible as well as convenient.
As stated on the above Pandora Spotify comparison, Spotify houses more music than Pandora, not even half of what the latter can offer. Additionally, Spotify is available on many areas comparing with Pandora. However, Pandora has a cheaper subscription fee and provides versatile functions. Yet depending on your needs as well as wants, the decision to choose between Spotify and Pandora lies within your very hands.
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How Pandora and Spotify Work
When a user visits Pandora and creates a radio station based on, for example, his or her favorite artist, Pandora searches for similar artists and songs using the complex algorithms of the Music Genome Project, a music database that Pandora has patented. The Music Genome Project compiles information on songs, first categorizing each one by genre. A musician then analyzes every song for up to 30 minutes at a time, finding unique characteristics with which to further categorize the music by (e.g., types of instruments used, gender of lead vocalist, rhythm, tonality, etc.). Most songs have hundreds of attributes that help Pandora determine the similarities and differences between one song and another.
Pandora users can further customize their personal radio stations by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to songs that are recommended to them. They can also share their stations with friends; however, linking to specific songs directly is impossible due to licensing restrictions.
Spotify is less about new music discovery than it is about replacing traditional music players, like iTunes or Windows Media Player, with streamable music. Spotify depends on a large catalogue of roughly 20 million songs to accomplish this—a sticking point in some countries when major record labels have not wanted to make deals with the company. In theory, users should be able to create an account on Spotify, search for any song or artist that they like, and begin streaming that music with Spotify's online player.
Playlists
On Pandora, radio stations are really just playlists (and vice versa) and come with the same limitations that all Pandora stations come with. Users can build their own stations/playlists based on their favorite music, use friends' shared playlists, or take advantage of one of many public Pandora stations that are based on genre. However, manually adding individual songs or albums is not supported.
Playlists on Spotify work in the same way that playlists in traditional media players work. Music is manually added or removed by the user. The only difference between Spotify's playlists and traditional media players' playlists is that Spotify's can be easily shared (and even co-edited). This has made Spotify a popular choice among those searching for a free or cheap and legal way to share their favorite artists and songs. It has even led to the creation of full websites (e.g., Playlists.net) dedicated to sharing and rating spotify playlists.
Spotify free google mini speaker. Pandora allows users to create up to 100 unique stations/playlists, while Spotify puts no limit on the number of playlists a user can create.
Phone Apps
Pandora has mobile phone apps for Android and iOS, as well as some limited support among Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries. On the iPhone, the Pandora app can only be installed using a U.S., Australian, or New Zealand iTunes account.
Spotify has apps available on a wide variety of mobile devices around the globe. Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile and Windows Phone are all supported.
Free vs Paid Subscriptions
Relatively few restrictions are placed on non-paying Pandora and Spotify members. The most jarring difference between free and paid memberships on both services is the presence of ads; paying members experience no audio ads on Pandora or Spotify.
Pandora's premium membership is known as Pandora One and costs $4.99 a month. Spotify's subscription is known as Spotify Premium; at $9.99 a month, it is more expensive than Pandora One.
As of 2014, students can subscribe to Spotify Premium for $4.99 a month provided they have a .edu email address from an accredited college or university in the U.S. that they can prove they are enrolled in. This reduced pricing is available to students for three years.
Restrictions on Free Membership
Both Pandora and Spotify put restrictions on non-paying users. The restrictions have changed numerous times over the years as both companies have tried out different pricing models and been affected by changing licensing fees or laws.
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At present, Pandora's restrictions on its free members are as follows:
- Audio advertisements that last for 15 to 30 seconds periodically interrupt music. The number of ads served up in an hour varies depending on the operating device (i.e., whether listening to Pandora via computer, mobile, or car).
Pandora Or Spotify Premium
- Restrictions on how many songs can be skipped in a day. Six skips are allowed, per hour and per station; only 30 skips are permitted across all stations in a 24-hour period. Clicking the 'next' play button, selecting 'I'm tired of this track,' or downvoting (giving a thumbs down to) a song while it plays all count as a skip.
- Reduced audio quality. Music for free members plays at 64 kilobits per second in an AAC+ format. Built-in apps for televisions and other non-mobile devices, like Roku, may receive a slightly higher quality of 128 kbps.
- Timeouts. To avoid paying royalties on songs that users might not be listening to, Pandora periodically times out if the player has not been used in a while.
Spotify places similar restrictions on its free members:
- 15- to 30-second audio ads.
- Reduced audio quality. However, at 160 kbps in the Ogg format Spotify's free version offers a higher quality sound than Pandora does.
Premium Membership Benefits
Pandora One's benefits include the following:
- No ads.
- Higher audio quality of 192 kbps.
- Downloadable desktop application. Users are no longer limited to using Pandora on their mobile devices or in the browser.
- Custom skins for the web application.
- Fewer timeouts, allowing users to listen for longer periods of time without having to interact with the player.
Spotify Premium benefits include the following:
- No ads.
- Ability to download music for offline listening.
- Higher audio quality of 320 kbps for some songs.
- Use of Spotify Connect, which allows users to hook up other hardware to Spotify's mobile app.
Library Size
In 2011, Tim Westergren, a founder of Pandora, stated that the service had over 900,000 songs in its library catalogue at the time. More recent statistics are difficult to find, but it is likely Pandora has well over a million songs in its database as of 2014. Pandora has a good track record of finding and adding obscure independent artists, which aids users in discovering new music.
Because Spotify depends on having songs available on demand, the company has been more aggressive about making deals with major labels as well as well known independent labels. In 2012, its catalogue was said to hold about 20 million songs; however, the size of the catalogue varies by region due to licensing restrictions.
Social Features
Pandora and Spotify provide users with several ways to share music, but Spotify has more widespread, general sharing capabilities than Pandora does.
On Pandora, users can share links to stations via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Users can also share links to individual tracks, but the web address points to general song information—lyrics, purchase info, and a link to create a station based on the song, not listen to it directly (see an example).
With Spotify, users can share individual songs, full albums, and playlists. This is done via special links that target the Spotify application itself. This flexibility has led many third-party websites to adopt Spotify links as a method to legally share music. And as of 2014, Spotify has teamed up with Last.fm, an online music statistics and recommendation service, to try to compete with Pandora.
Parental Controls
For parents who are concerned about the music their children might listen to, Pandora is the better option, as it offers parental control options that will play censored versions of songs and exclude others entirely. Because every song is analyzed by real people, Pandora's parental controls are very reliable and do not simply rely on 'Parental Advisory' labels.
In contrast to Pandora's rigorous parental control system, Spotify offers no such capabilities. This means that explicit, uncensored music is available to anyone who signs up to Spotify.
Other Features
While Spotify's flexibility may make it more universal on the web in some respects, Pandora is found a lot more frequently beyond computers and mobile devices. Not only do many audio-video receives, media players, and HDTVs carry default support for Pandora, but so too do many modern automobiles that have digital radio systems.
Spotify can be found on or downloaded for many mobile devices and media players, but it is rarer on HDTVs and is not built in to any vehicle's digital radio systems by default. In some cases, Spotify Connect can be used to join Spotify with a device or set of speakers, which are controlled via the Spotify mobile app, but Connect requires a premium membership.
Availability and Popularity
Pandora is much more popular than Spotify in the U.S.
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Pandora has more users than Spotify does, but Spotify's service is available to more users around the world. Whereas Pandora only serves users in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, due to licensing issues, Spotify reaches dozens of countries and territories (click here for a full list). This has made Spotify popular outside of the U.S., but Americans remain loyal to Pandora according to statistics.
In 2014, Pandora reached 200 million users, with nearly 70 million active each month. By comparison, Spotify has about 40 million users as of 2014, 10 million of them premium subscribers.
Both Pandora and Spotify depend on banner advertisements, music-interrupting ads, and premium member subscriptions for funding. Turn off recommended songs spotify on app. However, as of 2014, both companies operate at a net loss.