1/13/10

Pandora Radio: Worth the Investment?

I have been a paying member of Pandora for at least 5 months now. I have to say that before that I was an avid listener of the free commercial version, but I wasn’t impressed. At first I fought against listening to online radio because it was easier to listen to what I wanted by bringing my ipod to work and hooking it up to the speakers. After awhile though I started to tire of songs I have been listening to for years. I turned to Pandora through a recommendation for music that I was not originally accustomed too. I was hoping to find songs that I could later add to my iTunes to make a better variety. I turned to Pandora and half way through the month I had eclipsed their 40 hour free limit, and they offered that I pay $1 to finish the month or go for the premium version for $36 a year. It was around pay day so I felt… why not? I paid for what they said was higher quality, commercial free, and in general an easier to use version.


5 months later I believe it clearly is worth the investment. This is by far the best online radio I have used, and the premium Pandora “One” is actually playing music I am familiar with as well as fully utilizing their logarithms in giving me music that is similar. I have found over 20 new artists that I have now started following and realize that my iTunes is useless now. All I use is Pandora and I haven’t even thought of buying a cd or individual songs (except Talib Kweli and Anthony Hamilton) since that time I decided to pay for Pandora.

All in all I give it a 8/10.

I wish I could skip more than 6 tracks in in an hour, but with licensing I understand why it’s not allowed. The interface can by clunky at times, and I wish the skip and pause buttons were a little bigger. Other than that, I listen to Pandora on my iPhone like a radio everywhere I go, at work on the computer, on my ps3 to use my sound system, and on my laptop while I’m out. I love it, and would recommend the premium version for those who can’t live without music like myself. Thank you.

From the mind of
Keveeno Reeverts
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1 comment:

Tim said...

Yeah, I have a friend who is a paying member and what he does is shares it with another friend to get as much use out of the membership as possible. Beat the system!:)