Pandora is awesome!

[richidoo]

My friend got an iPhone 3G recently, and loaded Pandora on it. We danced to it after dinner on a little Logitech iPod speaker dock and I got to check it out. His wife requested some salsa so he typed in something and Celia Cruz started gushing forth. Hmm, if it's good on salsa, what can it do with bebop? I was skeptical...

Squeezebox and Sonos invite free trials on the streaming music services, but Pandora used to have a sign up fee, which turned me off. So now they allow 40 hours of free music per week for free. So I signed up and been listening to a couple stations I created. I love it!

My wife tells me she has been using it for months at work, and told me how great it was 6 months ago. But I don't remember that...

My favorite is a shared station called "Bebop / Combo."  In 2 days of listening there was no bad tracks as so common with college radio DJs that don't know anything about the music. I have only nuked one track, which was good, but not my style.  Just hit the FF button and it's gone. I don't even remember what it was.  No repeats yet, in 8 hours listening, unlike other internet radio stations.

I have listened about 10 hours in three days already, so I'm sure I will have to register and pay the fee, $36/year so I don't get timed out. But then I get 192kbps instead of 128kbps sampling rate, and no limits on songs per month, and no 6 skip limit per station per day. Oh... and no ads either.   I did see some ads when I played songs on my laptop, but on the Sonos I have not heard any ads at all to interrupt the music stream.

I'm thrilled with the service, except for the sound quality. But the music is so great I can ignore it.   The other thing I would like to see is integration of my Sonos stream with my laptop. So if I fire up the PC cient, it is already playing the same song as my account has in the Sonos. Then I could buy the recordings I hear on Sonos easier. 

As for the music, it's cool to learn about new acts and hear new music from favorite performers and composers. Jazz, rock and pop seem to be great. I have not tried too much classical yet. I did make a Shostakovich station, which played one Shodty track, then Britten, then Prokofiev, all my favorites, but not Shostakovich. I'm sure that will work out fine. But the low resolution is easier to listen to jazz and rock than classical.

Classic rock bands and weird new stuff is easy sample and learn without paying. Its about exploring a genre, not about any specific artist, I think. Perfect for right brain music lovers.

Anyone else using Pandora?

[Black Sand Cable]

My wife tells me she has been using it for months at work, and told me how great it was 6 months ago. But I don't remember that...

I told you the same thing when you first got into Sonos! 

Anyone else using Pandora?

I was and was very happy with it.....then they banned Canada. 

Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in Canada (your IP address appears to be SHIT.ON.CAN.ADA). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com

If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.

We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.

We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.

[richidoo]

Bummer!

Anyway, thanks for getting me setup on Sonos, and telling me about Pandora... I'm a slow learner.

[allenzachary]

Pandora is fabulous.  I turned my kids on to it.  I love sucking the bandwidth out of my company's network.

[tmazz]

I've being using Pandora at work for almost three years now. It's great to be able to program what you want to hear (at least by type) and I love the fact that they slip in music of similar types by other artists. I have found some great new stuff that I would not have ordinarily come across. You are right, the sound is marginal, I'm not sure I would want to use it as a source for my main system),  but what the heck, I am playing it through crappy computer speakers, not Wilson WAMMs. The sound is more than good enough for cubicle listening and the music is just great. Highly recommended service.

[StereoNut]

It would be nice if my F___'ing IT department at work didn't have a firewall up for practically everything, so I could have some sort of music to listen to during the day!  Grrrr!!!!!!! 

[djdube525]

I concur... Pandora rocks! On several occasions it's pointed me to artists I had never heard before which resulted in my buying some of those artist CDs.

[richidoo]

I discovered a cool thing on Pandora. There are Genre Stations that feature a type of music by genre name, not by artist or track name.

FAQ:  http://blog.pandora.com/faq/contents/11002.html

Within the web player you can find the genre stations here: http://www.pandora.com/#/genres/

Afaik, it is not possible to select these genre stations from within the Sonos controller or Sonos PC app.  don't know about Logitech or other streamers. The good thing is that genre stations selected on the web do eventually appear in my Sonos list of stations, after a day or so. Then I can choose them with Sonos anytime.

I would like to learn more about some types of music, but I don't know any artists or tunes. Genre stations are a good starting point.  Some of them (like bebop) are "shared," which doesn't allow you to like or not tracks. But most do allow learning from your input.

I'm listening to the Choral Music Radio right now. I don't know any choral bands or composers, but I love the music! I also added Cool Jazz, Latin Jazz, Acoustic Blues, Solo Piano (classical)
Rich

[Carlman]

OK so my wife's had Pandora for about 9 or 10 years.. since it first came out... Was always listening at work.. then work shut it down a couple of years ago..
When she first got into it, I wasn't keen on using bandwidth to play music over computer speakers when I had a super nice hifi with cd's and vinyl.  (pre audio pc)

The idea somehow got lost.. Then Rich got into it a few months ago and I thought about it briefly again. 

I kept seeing it popping up... it's on car stereos now.. It's an app for your phone... Just seems like it's everywhere.

I have been on a late 70's music finding mission lately.. so I looked up Kenny Loggins, Atlanta Rhythm section, etc.. and got a station put together with all sorts of cool music.. I was immediately addicted.  I put together 4 more stations and customized them to the sub-varieties of genre's I like. (i.e. I don't like just 'alternative' I like Radiohead, Sufjan Stevens, etc.)  So, I ended up making a couple of sort-of-rock sort-of-melodic folky station and a harder, more grungy sort-of-rock-melodic station.  It's great to bring it all together on the ultimate 8-track player.

I have a new phone now too... Samsung S4.. I think I can plug in a dragonfly DAC to its usb port and output real hifi to nice amplified speakers. (like my Kanto's)  I then have a serious portable hifi.  I'm taking donations for a dragonfly, btw.

$36/year is the right price for Pandora. I paid the man... and the man is Tim Westergren.  Way to go, Pandora.  BTW, They can sell my email addy, I don't care... there is nothing real in my profile anyway.

Thanks for the nudge from Rich... It's amazing that it's taken me this long to try it...

[djdube525]

So a few things I've noticed with Pandora...

They do have a "limited" supply of music. Certainly it's a lot, but Spotify has something like 10X the number of songs. I find it doesn't take long before songs repeat if I'm listening to extended periods of time.

If considering purchasing the service, you can get higher bit rates from Spotify.

If it sounds like I'm bashing Pandora... I'll admit, I pretty much lean towards Pandora. Subconsciously, it may be because I started with Pandora and that's why I gravitate there, but I honestly like the UI/UX better on Pandora.

Either way, both services are damned addictive. It'll be interesting to compare iRadio in all it's glory. While I wouldn't call myself an Apple fan boy, I seemed to have acquired a number if iDevices along the way. If the iRadio experience is better than Pandora, I'll likely switch on over.

Time will tell... amazing how fast all this changes.

Dave

[JBNY]

So I pay for pandora, rhapsody, and MOG. I find that pandora is best at giving you music that fits in the genre you are trying to listen to, they do help you to get some new music in there that you might not have heard before. Rhapsody gives you lots of radio choices for genres but not as much, individual control for songs etc. MOG is pretty good for finding artists that are similar but that's about it. Sound quality is much better with both rhapsody and MOG though, even if you pay for the ONE service with Pandora. But you are right Pandora is the most limited with regard to music selection and you do hear a good amount of repeats with them.

[richidoo]

Joe, with MOG can you play songs by one artist only? Can you play a specific song or album on demand?    The higher bitrate appeals to me, and the possibility to focus on one artist. I think Spotify is also similar higher resolution as MOG. Standard Pandora is 128kbps, ONE service is 192.

I still get unlimited Pandora service for free on Sonos with 6 skips per hour. I hear a single ad about every 2-4 hours. Mostly benign ads, except once when the ad was the Geico lizard pretending to look into my livingroom, telling me that the curtains look nice. That was a little creepy. 

[JBNY]

I have Sonos too, had it since it came out. Love it.

With MOG you can choose to play "artist only radio" or "similar artist radio" The difference is with similar you get a mix of about 30% that artist and 70% other artists. You can also do unlimited skips with MOG radio, something I can't do with Pandora.

You can also choose to play any album or song on demand. The streaming rate is 320kpbs. Spotify is similar to MOG, they are supposed to have 320kbps too, but I did not think it sounded as good as MOG, and some people have been thinking that are not streaming true 320kbps. I subscribed to Spotify for about 6 months, the Sonos integration was not that great (and the catalog was not a big as MOG), and it really took away from the experience IMO.

They all have 30 day trials. As I said I have Rhapsody and MOG. Rhapsody has really good integration with Sonos, like MOG you can play any song from any artist as well. It is really very easy to navigate and when friends are over most times just use Rhapsody to choose songs because it is very easy to find what you are looking for. My wife like Rhapsody from a usability standpoint more, I like the quality of the streams from MOG. So just keep both.

[Carlman]

MOG is $5 for basic and $10 per month for unlimited accounts.  That's at least $60/year up to $120 vs. Pandora's $36.

I'm listening to MOG on my PC and it does sound nice, a little richer/fuller than Pandora... and I like that you see the whole album, brand new stuff, looks slick, etc.. and yes, you can search on anything in a number of ways and play it straight away.

But using it for a radio station for me, I prefer Pandora partly for the price, also for the simplicity... but if I were listening at my PC all the time, and as a regular way of exploring music, I'd do MOG.

[JBNY]

Yeah for custom radio stations I think Pandora is better too. In MOG try choosing an artist and clicking on the similar artist radio. Also MOG has an infinite playlist feature. If you turn on the radio button, after you play music from an artist album or just some songs and the playlist has ended, it will automatically play songs from similar artists and add them to the playlist, so you can keep track of what was played. It's pretty neat! That feature doesn't work on Sonos, but it works on the PC, web, and iphone versions.