Spotify vs Pandora: How to Choose The Best and Stand Out?
As a fond of music, you must be aware of Pandora, the music streaming app that has been around for years now, and you may also love it for mimicking the radio format. Meanwhile, Spotify has emerged to capture the space and has already received wide recognition and applause in music streaming. Now, if someone asks you which is better, what will you say? Confused? Let’s have a comparative discussion between Spotify vs Pandora.
Spotify vs Pandora: Which is Better in Quality?
Neither Spotify nor Pandora serves high-quality streaming. So, which one will you choose when it’s about Spotify vs Pandora? Both use the AAC file format, while Spotify also uses the Ogg Vorbis format. Spotify hasn’t yet taken any constructive step toward introducing Spotify Hifi with CD quality, which it announced in 2021.
- Maximum bitrate for Pandora Premium:- 192kbps.
- Maximum bitrate for Spotify Premium:- 320kbps.
- Maximum Desktop Quality for Pandora:- 192 (kb/s).
- Maximum Desktop Quality for Spotify:- 128 (kb/s).
- The supported format for both is AAC
However, lack of high resolution may be acceptable for people as they can listen to lower bitrate and lossy audio format and still not opt for a different streaming platform. Spotify and Pandora music, being lossy, take up less storage space and internet data.
But users complain that Pandora’s buffering time is more than that of Spotify. This may affect your mood of listening to good songs and create an unsatisfying experience. Nevertheless, the premium versions of both have unlimited songs, which you can also listen to offline.
Is the User Interface of the Pandora App Better than Spotify?
The Pandora app has stations and playlists of recently played songs for you, like a nice-looking set of records in a jukebox. You can create “My Collection” with filtered songs, podcasts, stations, albums and artists and easily navigate it. The “search” and “for you” options are also easy to access.
Conversely, you can’t get a feel like vintage music streaming devices when you are on Spotify. But the interface of the dark theme is easy and looks pleasant. The intuitive “Home” and “Search” pages, along with the options like Artists, Playlists, Podcasts, Albums, Radio, and “Your Library”, make it an effortless choice for listening to favourite tracks and audio programs. However, you can’t see friends’ live listening activities and create your playlist folder in the Spotify mobile app. It’s only accessible to desktop users. Adding a song on Spotify to your queue is relatively complex in Android as you have to go through the three dots and then navigate to that particular option. In iPhones, it’s as easy as a right swipe.
Music Discovery Features
Pandora is a music discovery service where you can customise your liking in a format like radio stations. Though it’s also good at curating recommendations and offering easy access to relevant content, Spotify is more of a jack-of-all-trades.
Functionality
When it’s Pandora vs Spotify in terms of functionality, let’s see which one you should keep ahead of the other. Pandora has an algorithm to organise stations for artists, genres and songs. You can modify and personalise the stations by renaming them and adding more songs and artists. There is an on-demand playback for which you can choose songs by showing, rather pressing, thumbs up and down.
There are different modes in Pandora Music. One prioritises your preferences, while the other also recommends the choices of other users. You can get stations of less popular songs and stations on specific artists too.
Unlike Pandora, Spotify doesn’t allow you to customise its Artists Radio. The Playlist Radios arrange themselves based on your choice, though. You can add songs to the Playlist Radio by liking them, but you can’t that radio to your library. In this aspect, Pandora beats Spotify to become more valuable and diverse.
Spotify Gets you
Spotify follows your likes and listening activities, offers a Discover Weekly playlist every week, and features new songs. Besides, there are Daily Mix playlists.
Curated Playlists
When it comes to curating exciting playlists, it’s not like Spotify vs Pandora. Both streaming services offer numerous songs and other audio content which are constantly updated. They offer various combinations of songs for you, apart from podcasts. Both have different prominent genres and categories and use search filters and attractive interfaces.
What’s the Best Streaming Service?
Finally, which one should you prefer between, Spotify vs Pandora? While Pandora is an excellent competitor to Spotify, the latter has much potential to win this battle.