Is Pandora One worth it?

[MonKENy]

For $36/year we'll upgrade you and enhance your experience with these new features:

* High Quality Streaming: When listening on the web, experience 192K bits per second audio. That's the highest quality streaming experience on the Internet. More bits means better sounding music. not that big a difference

* Pandora One Desktop: Listen to Pandora from a dedicated desktop application; no need to keep a browser window open. Control playback from the Windows taskbar or the Macintosh dock. Get popup alerts when a new song starts to play. This is the ultimate Pandora experience: simple, efficient, pure. dont know why anyone would care about leaving the browser open, and besides that just one more program for your comp to load and run

* No Ads: Pandora One is completely free of any sort of advertising: no audio ads, no visual ads. It's just you and your music. ok thats good

* Personalize Your Look: Surround the Pandora player with one of 8 custom "skins" that will make the look of Pandora as personalized as the music. one of 8 skins is hardly "personalization" that means by odds about 3,750,000,000 other people are using your "personalized" skin"

* Mini Player: Minimize Pandora One into the smallest possible browser window. This makes it easy for the web version of Pandora to live side by side with other web sites and applications. same as aobve, shame on you for repeating the same thing twice as another feature

* Skip All Day Long: With the standard ad supported version of Pandora you're limited to 12 total skips per day. With Pandora One you'll be able to skip as many times per day as you'd like (note you will still be limited, thanks to licensing constraints, to six skips per hour). again only half as good as it should be

* Extended Interaction Timeout: Listen for up to 5 hours in a row without interacting with Pandora at all. Just turn it on and let it go. Every time you interact the timer is reset so just one click around lunchtime can get you through an entire workday. if you are listening than you are prob close enough to click YES PANDORA IM STILL ALIVE

So that's Pandora One. The highest quality audio. Pandora One Desktop. No Ads. More features. No limits. As with everything we do, we're very interested in hearing your feedback. Drop us an email or a comment here to share your thoughts. Your feedback will help shape future versions of Pandora One. This is just the beginning.

 

[mgttr]

* High Quality Streaming: When listening on the web, experience 192K bits per second audio. That's the highest quality streaming experience on the Internet.

That's totally false - MOG streams at 320 kbps.

 

[edro]

I listen to Pandora all day at work using Chrome. I have never heard an ad.
When I listen to it on my iPad at home, I get ads all the time.

Why? I have never paid for Pandora. I have had my account for a long time though.

 

[Wyndru]

I listen to Pandora all day at work using Chrome. I have never heard an ad.
When I listen to it on my iPad at home, I get ads all the time.

Why? I have never paid for Pandora. I have had my account for a long time though.

Do you have adblock running on chrome? I don't get pandora ads on firefox or chrome when I use adblock. My rooted kindle also has ad-away, and I don't get the ads on that either. If I play it on something without an adblock program (PS3) I get the ads. I initially didn't realize that these addons affected streaming audio, but I guess they do.

I stopped using Pandora and have been using slacker for the past year or so. It has more control over how songs are selected, but it can get unpredictable....I've messed up a few playlists by screwing around with too many settings.

 

[Vic Vega]

I prefer Slacker.

 

[edro]

Do you have adblock running on chrome? I don't get pandora ads on firefox or chrome when I use adblock. My rooted kindle also has ad-away, and I don't get the ads on that either. If I play it on something without an adblock program (PS3) I get the ads. I initially didn't realize that these addons affected streaming audio, but I guess they do.

Wow, I wouldn't think they would affect it either.
Nice to know!
AdBlock 4 life!

 

[aviris]

As others have said, a lot of how good Pandora is depends on how well you seed it with artists and songs. Seed with Artists sparingly as that is when it tends to really go out of what you had in mind. I actually think this is because it has so much data about songs that it includes songs by an artist that may have been experimental or something and links you into a different genre.

The audio quality is noticeably better if you've got even a semi-descent pair of computer speakers and is a must if you are using headphones.

 

[Staples]

I have started listening to Pandora lately and thinking about upgrading to the paid plan but I think everyone is missing the most important thing (at least to my understanding) that isn't upgraded when you pay.

No ads are great (the audio ones are minimal as it is), I don't care about the image ones that I never see but audio quality would affect me but stop right there, as I understand it, audio quality is only increased if you are listening though a browser. I only listen in the car or walking my dog through the iPhone app.

So if I see no audio improvements over mobile data, then it is $36 wasted.

 

[Mandres]

the pandora app doesn't work worth a damn on my Android phone. It constantly plays half of a song and then skips to the next one with no warning. It also crashes more than any other app I've ever used.

If it worked right I would have no problem paying $40/yr. for it.

 

[ZaneNBK]

Slacker seems to have better stations and better selection than Pandora for the stuff I like. They also have talk stations with news and multiple comedy stations. I believe there are also sports talk stations as well.

 

[T2urtle]

I have it for my android phone, honestly its great to be able to skip a ton but honestly thats where it ends. Sound isn't better. If I didnt get it for free, I wouldnt pay for it.

 

[subwayrocket]

If you don't mind listening to alot of "Live versions" of songs , use or pay for Pandora . Depending on what genre's one likes, there may or not be alot of live versions of that music genre, and if there is, pandora will force feed it to you because they pay less royalties on live versions. Yes, you can hit thumbs down all day long, but then you sit there wasting your time and get aggravated the whole time . I don't mind paying the $50 a year for 192 and no commercials. It is definitely worth it, for portable music, the 192 sound quality is good on the studio versions , but "live versions" all day kind of defeats the whole purpose of paying for higher clarity 192 ....unless you don't mind live versions, some people don't . I have emailed them a few times and suggested they add a setting where one could select either "NO" or even "Less" live versions . They just email you back with lip service . I listen to alot of varied genres from 80's, 90's to newer metal , EDM , blues, hip hop, Jazz , classic country and more ... some genre's such as EDM and hip hop don't seem to have alot of live versions , so those kind of stations work great...but the rest play too many live versions . Sure there are some bands that sound good live , but for me seeing a band live is an experience, and you're there for that whole experience of seeing and hearing them live . But to listen to live versions of Iron Maiden is not my cup of tea, i've seen them live, Phila spectrum 1987 with Yngwie , was a great concert, but 90% of bands I like I like the studio/album version .
I have even suggested they offer a "Premium+" subscription for an extra $10 to $20/yr where you would get the 192Kbs, no commercials and "NO LIVE VERSIONS" button .
Another problem they have is they will always play the one hit song off and album when that album has 9 other songs that are great . RHCP , they will always play "give it away" or "under the bridge" ...they never play Apache Rose Peacock or Sir Psycho Sexy ....if Judas Priest plays, it will always be "Screaming for vengeance" even though that album has a pile of great songs , they've never played Judas Priest Bloodstone or Take these chains off . Yes, you could make a station from those songs but then they'll just play the most popular songs off similar bands album. The concept doesnt carry across albums on a station you make. Those are just an example , they do this with most bands. You politely email them to express what you think about it and they reply with lip service ... so my year is up and i'm looking for something else . I really liked iTunes radio when I had that, that was a good internet radio service .
Not sure what else is around now that's good but i'm looking
Anyway ...I guess this sounds like a rant...haha .

 

[Naer]

youtube red has a better value since it comes with google play