I have been listening to Pandora for years, in cars and streaming at home. Last week I decided to try Spotify on their subscription platform. They (Spotify) advertise that the "subscription sound quality is better..." than their free access. Aside from their superior download logic, the sound quality in my opinion is indeed considerably better. I'm curious if anyone has had this experience?

 

Ha. No. I’m too cheap. Amazon Prime Music for me!

 

I'm even cheaper - ripped my CDs to USB stick and listen to that.

 

Bluetooth iTunes is plenty good for me.

 

Good old-fashioned CD player works Just fine for me. But hey I'm old.
As far as the streaming, sound quality seems the same

 

I used to listen to the free Pandora service but switched to Spotify. It wasn't due to sound quality differences though, Pandora pulled out of New Zealand!

I never thought I would pay for a streaming music service but I wouldn't be without it now. I pay for the family edition and have 5 people all sharing the same account so it is pretty good value for money.

My son who was a pay for streaming skeptic now even has 18 of his own tunes published on it!

 

Both. They are cheap. Spotify is better if you want to listen to just ONE artist's albums. The better audio quality is probably BS.

 

Own both. Pay for both.

Pandora has much better radio stations. Annoying that if you skip too many songs per hour you loose the ability to skip.

Spotify has 50% more rate. Thus sounds better. I have the family plan for all of us. Less than $20 a month for five.

On Spotify you can listen to exactly what you want.

The sound quality is noticeable on a good home stereo. Really no big deal in a car. Mine is a convertible, never sounds that good with the top down. We are now sitting in a campground in the smoky mountains. Had to change Spotify to minimum use. The campground limits us.

 

I am cheap, too. I use the free trial of Spotify and then use a converter to download Spotify music to MP3 so that I can listen to them without a subscription.

 

I would only be interested in either one if there were specifically appealing programming. For music listening, I'm in the USB camp. No one picks the tracks I want to hear better than I do. I've use Pandora and find it annoying when they pick "related" artists. Sorry, but when I pick the Pink Floyd channel, I didn't mean the Monkeys and the next 6 non-Floydian artists played afterwards. (User tip: pick Roger Waters and Floyd becomes the first alternative.)

 

I used to be in the USB camp (and burned CDs before that) but I reckon spotify is fantastic. I get great playlists, the recommended songs have been really good, the interface is easy, the search function is easy, and I dont have to go ferreting through 6 USB's to find the one I want, also I can bring the same playlist up on my work PC, my home PC and my car. I see that there are comments about quality, but I havent noticed it. One thing I did notice was that sometimes the songs play a little quicker. It might only be 2 or 3 seconds over a 4 minute song, but it is enough to notice.

 

I am usually connected to my IPOD classic, contains 4000+ songs (uncompressed).
Sometimes I'll stream Sirius XM or Slacker. Slacker is free, if you are willing to listen to a commercial every 20 minutes. They also allow you to skip a few unwanted songs.
If I forget my phone or IPOD, I have 10 cd's uploaded to choose from.

 

My wife uses both and when I ask her to pick one she says no!

 

I claimed I wouldn't pay to "borrow" music but after so many ads on regular radio and same garbage I thought I would give it a shot. I have had Pandora that I listen to in the house but the free version. I received a free 3 month trail to Apple Music and have been using them for about 6 months. I don't pay for cable and haven't in 10 years as I would prefer music over TV if I had to pay and at $10/month is a good value at this point. I lost my 1,000s of CD's in my divorce and don't want to rebuild a collection. I am curious if Spotify is better than Apple Music. I figured they are similar and I don't take the time yet to create playlists.

 

I cannot comment on the fidelity difference between Spotify of Pandora nor if the paid version actually sounds better. But I tried Spotify and didn't care for their channels. For Pandora, before I retired I used to listen to it daily on a small set of powered speakers attached to my computer while working. For more than 10 years I had fine tuned it by giving a thumbs up or down to each song that was playing. I ended up with a channel that Pandora calls "Thumbprint Radio" which is only the songs that I gave a thumbs up to. They occasionally add a new track which I can also approve or disapprove to add to the channel, but it is nothing like the amount of new songs that their algorithms try to add to the standard channels.

I also have filled up several 16gb USB sticks with FLAC hi resolution format songs, making folders of "greatest hits' by artists I like and burned from CD's. Works for me.

 

I dont want to sound ancient (which I am approaching) or starchy, but there are some fantastic artists who get revenue from being played on (say) spotify and downloading the stuff takes that revenue away. These arent guys who have private jets and garbage bins full of cocaine, these are guys who make great music for niche audiences and pretty much get a living and some fun out of it. I'm happy to pay to support them. Cases in point The Crazys, and my current favorite Thomas Vent.

But I'm all for pirating mainstream stuff, if that is your cuppa.

 

AIUI, streaming services pay the bulk of your subscription to the artists who get played the most, not necessarily the ones you listen to. Bjorn Ulvaeus from ABBA, among others, is trying to get the money distributed more fairly, even thoiugh he actually benefits massively from the current system. There was a BBC radio documentary about it broadcast on 2 March 2021, called "The Price of Song".

 

The amount of people on the F-Type forum saying they're too cheap for Spotify is baffling lmao

 

I'm too fussy - rip my own CDs onto a USB stick. I know what I like!

 

I'd rather spend my money on cars & driving than music.

PRIORITIES!