Pandora
Pandora is the most popular music streaming service in the world. It rose to fame by focusing on it's signature Music Genome Project, which takes the different attributes of songs (bluesy melody, up-tempo guitar, heavy drum, etc.) and uses the user's 'likes' and 'dislikes' to determine what are the best songs for them. It is used by millions of people to discover and listen to music, supported primarily by ad revenue and it's Pandora One subscription plan.There are a bevy of features that come with Pandora One, but should you pay for it? I used Pandora One for a year to find out.
Design and User Interface
Unlike many services that drag their collective feet on this subject, Pandora has been rather forward on this subject. Since starting in 2000, Pandora has gone through many overhauls that have both drastically and subtly changed the feel of the site. While some changes have been a little less welcome by the community, all of them were soon accepted and taken in.When designing a service as popular, constant change is not always the best thing for the website. Pandora has recognized this and has focused on overhauls that arrive every year or year and a half. These changes have become more and more subtle over the years to not isolate any parts of the user base that have been around for 2 years plus, but keeping it fresh for the newcomers. This has worked very successfully for Pandora, and the service will definitely keep you with it's clean style.
Mobile
The mobile experience is one of the better available, and receive rather frequent updates to it. The main problem with this service is that there is no such thing as an offline way of listening, as it is must stream all songs and have a constant dialogue with the server. While I never had a problem with going over my 2 GB data cap (I hardly ever got close enough to even worry), this could be a far bigger problem to anyone who spends a great deal of time away from WiFi, or has a shared data cap.
Discovery
Let us be clear on one thing: Out of all the streaming services I have used over the years, Pandora still remains the clear leader in this category. Although the Music Genome Project is getting up there in age, it still maintains its superiority in this category. Every song is dissected by a real person listening to the songs several times, in order to ensure that each one is accurately described.This process, however, has it's drawbacks. As each song is done by hand, it takes significantly longer to put new songs into the library, which can delay new albums and slightly more obscure albums significantly. To put it into context, Pandora has about 1 million songs in it's library; meanwhile, services like Apple Music, Spotify, and Rdio have 30+ million songs. To people with tastes that are less mainstream, this can be a detriment. It also showed itself over my year of use. I personally enjoy 30 To Mars quite a bit, so that was a pretty constant station over the year. After a month or two, the selection of songs that played seemed tired. It was rare that something new played, which is detrimental to the service as it is billed as a discovery service first.
Features
There aren't too many, so lets just address this as a list.- Ad-Free: This is by far the main reason for subscribing, and is largely a personal one. Do the ads bother you enough to subscribe?
While initially I didn't think that I would really notice the loss of ads, I grew to know the lack of ads so well, that it pained me to ever listen to another person's station that did have ads. - More Skips: Under normal Pandora service, there is a total of 12 skips that a person can use on the service per 24 hours. With Pandora One, this limit is increased to 30 skips per 24 hours.
While that still may seem to be a small amount, I never needed to go beyond that many skips, as Pandora's discovery is good enough to avoid those problems. If you are picky, however, this limit could drive you to another service. - Anytime, Anywhere: Normally, Pandora will not play on all devices and will require a subscription to play on certain devices. Under Pandora One, all devices that have Pandora can be used.
Let me be perfectly clear on this: I NEVER encountered a situation where I "needed" to be subscribed to play my music. Under normal usage, I find it incredibly unlikely you will ever use this "feature." I could not even find a device while researching for this article that needed it. So unless you are someone who simply must stream out of your Belgian waffle-maker, I don't think this will ever effect you. - Premium Quality Audio: This feature enables listeners to listen at 192K bits per second, on WEB ONLY (aka Desktop). Normally, Pandora streams at 64K bits per second.
While this may seem like a huge upgrade, both of these numbers are outrageously low compared to other services. 64K bits is often considered the "Only if you have to" listening range for other services, because at this rate the music is compressed to an extreme point. While the 192K bits can be compared to 320K bits offered by other services, or the Lossless (uncompressed music) sound offered by Tidal. But compared to the 64K bits, the 192K sounds a hell of a lot better. - Webskins: Pandora One offers customizable skins that change the background image present while listening to music (WEB ONLY).
So this is more of an add-on then a feature. I had one. It was cool. And that's about it on this.
There is also a desktop app available to subscribers, but it is not updated frequently and is simply better to listen on the web.
Pricing
Pandora One is $4.99 a month, or $55 a year.Final Thoughts
Over my year of Pandora One, I never once questioned my actual subscription to Pandora. It was a good value, and I used it all the time. Instead, I simply found myself wishing for more. Pandora is a great service, but I always wondered if there was something better, or if there was something I would like more. While Pandora certainly turned me on to a lot of bands, I will not be keeping the subscription.So who should subscribe to Pandora One?
If you are already a heavy user of the service, I highly recommend that you do subscribe, as you are getting a relatively good deal and will see a large improvement in the service. You may feel like you want more, however.
If you are a casual user, or some one looking for the best overall deal, go elsewhere. While this service is one of the cheapest around, it is not cost-effective. Other services offer more for the money, and unless you are absolutely set on the discovery of Pandora, you will find something you enjoy and use more.
As always, this is Ethan telling you to Be Moore Man!
