I like Pandora because it's simple. Ironically it's Apple that has the reputation for making simple things, but Apple Music is a maze. It has this heart button as well as star ratings. What's the difference? What effect do they have? Why do I still have this "iTunes Store" and this "Music" on my phone? I can't buy songs through the "Music"?
With Pandora I hit thumbs up if I like it, thumbs down if I don't. Simple.
I have found Pandora's selection frustratingly repetitive and looked toward using other services because of it. I have made a bunch of radio stations and cycle through them but they always have the same songs mixed in.
Now that I have Spotify premium, I see no reason to use Pandora again. Spotify has radio if I want to use it or I can just turn on any song or album I want. That's a big plus in my opinion.
One feature that I really wanted when I used Pandora was the ability to create groups of stations that stay out of each other's musical territory. Add a bias against songs that are a better fit on other stations in the group and a bias towards songs that fit best on the current station.
Is Pandora's limited selection really the result of restrictive licensing? IIRC Pandora pays the statutory rate for internet radio plays, and doesn't need to negotiate with labels for rights or price breaks.
Problem is, sometimes you're just sick of the song, not that you hate it and don't want t hear songs like it. Pandora has a "don't play this for a month" option, but even that's too short. It's also not available on in the iOS app (or at least it wasn't before I cancelled my Pandora subscription earlier this year). They just don't seem to get that people don't want to listen to the same music over and over again.
I think the bottom line is that Pandora needed to evolve, but they've stubbornly stayed the same, just like their stations.
I find that the moment I tell it I dislike something it gets spooked and goes back to one of the songs I told it I liked years ago. Which I probably did like, then, two hundred plays ago.
I think the approach is different, so it results in a different experience.
In Pandora, your only option is to start a station by seeding it and that is saved as a permanent artifact. The perception is that you've created something, but your only way to mold it is to rate songs. I tried for a long time to create a station for "Female Vocals J-Pop" but could never get it to stop playing male vocals.
On Spotify, things are presented as a playlist. They have a set number of songs and the idea is that they were curated by someone -- Spotify or another user. When you seed something from an artist or song, it creates a playlist with a limited set of songs. That playlist barely stays accessible through the UI unless you choose to save it, and then you have access to curate it.
It really surprises me that Pandora hasn't been able to negotiate dramatically better rates than Spotify et al which allow random-access listening. Pandora is competitive mainly with radio, not music purchases. Spotify competes directly with record sales.
I've been a very loyal paying Pandora customer for a long time, but now that it's up to $5/mo, I'm seriously wondering whether paying just $5/mo more for Spotify would be worth it.
Considering they had to cut their services (including subscribers, with no refund at the time because it was a "soft" restriction, so when they started IP blocking you had no case) to virtually every major market at one point in time or another, and is now currently available only in the US and Australia I'm surprised they are still in business.
I was a paying Pandora customer until I hit their limit for the number of stations one can create. I'd made 100 stations, tried to add one more, and it wouldn't let met. Then I went to Rdio, and I've been happy ever since!
Funny, because Pandora turned profitable in 2014. Much like musicians have seen their royalty earnings potential decrease in the face of music-streaming companies that are debt-financed, Pandora is seeing its earnings potential decrease due to other debt-financed companies (Spotify), or bigger companies that can have loss-leader departments (google/youtube, apple).
Pandora's repetitiveness can be frustrating at times especially for long time users of the service. The best option I've found found when creating new channels is to use "Add variety" and avoid the thumbs up / down rating. In this way I still hear new music and although there are repeats those are fewer and far between. If I want to tailor a station to genetically similar songs I then use thumbs up / down.
I wonder why we haven't seen something similar to what Netflix and Amazon is doing with music. That is, cutting out the middleman and pay some artists to make exclusive music for them.
With Pandora I hit thumbs up if I like it, thumbs down if I don't. Simple.