As technology has advanced, music has become widely accessible – you can blast it on the radio, jam out to it in your room, or even play it as background noise while studying. There are many streaming sites where you can listen to music, but Pandora and Spotify are two of the more popular ones.
A company statement states that Pandora was founded in January 2000 and currently has over 250 million users. It is mainly a radio service where users can discover new songs based on songs, artists, or genres that like.
According to Matt Peckham of Time magazine and his article, “13 Streaming Music Services Compared by Price, Quality, Catalog Size and More,” Pandora has both an online and a mobile version accessible in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and is available for Apple, Windows, Android, Blackberry, and WebOS devices.
Radhika Puppala ’17 praises, “Pandora is a great app for all demographics; it’s readily available in so many places, like your phone, tablet, and your car! The best part of Pandora, though, is that it allows you to expand your horizons and listen to songs you’d never previously opened your mind to.”
As Burt Helm of Inc. Magazine explains in his article, “Inside Spotify’s U.S. Invasion,” that Spotify went live in July 2011, accumulating over 40 million users and 10 million subscribers. It functions primarily a music streaming application. Peckham also states that Spotify has both an online and a mobile version available in over 58 countries and is available for Apple, Windows, Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Boxee, Linux, MeeGo, Roku, Samsung, and many other devices.
Brian Weil ’16 lauds Spotify: “Being an avid music listener, I am always looking for new songs and artists. Spotify lets me listen to songs I already know and discover new songs based on what my friends are listening to.”
Both Pandora and Spotify are available as mobile and web apps, as well as include advertisements on their free versions. However, there are notable differences between the two. As Peckham points out, while Pandora includes only over 1 million songs, Spotify has over 20 million songs. Spotify is available on considerably more devices than Pandora, and its audio quality is also higher (320 kbps compared to Pandora’s 192 kbps.)
Nevertheless, Pandora has its positive features, as well; a subscription for Pandora’s premium service costs $4.99 per month, while Spotify’s premium service costs $9.99 per month. Certain artists have even refrained from releasing their songs to Spotify, including Taylor Swift, Pink Floyd, and Led Zepplin, as Adam K. Raymond lists in his Spin article, “Five Artists Who Still Say No to Streaming.”
Both Spotify and Pandora have benefits and disadvantages, but your own preferences truly decide which service is the right fit for you. You can check out Pandora at www.pandora.com and Spotify at www.spotify.com.