Spotify vs. Pandora — it depends on your needs

So, do you still have CDs in the car? Me either. It’s just too much trouble. It didn’t used to be. We all had CDs in the car and cassettes before that. Some of us even had 8-tracks. But about the time it became possible to carry every song you own on an iPod, we all decided that CDs were too much trouble. I have a 120-gig iPod with 8,000 songs on it and it’s only about one-quarter full. Amazing technology, and it’s out of date.

Since it became possible to put music on your cell-phone, nobody wants to carry both around with them, so goodbye iPod. But we all have too many photos and apps on our cell phones to keep much music on them. And who wants to change the music on them every couple of weeks?

You could always listen to the radio, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s depressing. We’re not in the 18-to-39 demographic anymore so the only thing on the radio for us is oldies. It’s just a question of how old you want to go. There’s still plenty of good music being made that we don’t already know by heart.

Please don’t play “Radar Love” again.

Anyway, rant over. The point I’ve been trying to get to for the last three paragraphs is that there are streaming services out there that provide music you can listen to over any internet equipped device. Be warned that many cell phone companies charge data rates for streamed music. Others don’t. Look into it before you decide which direction to go.

There are many music-streaming services out there, but I’m going to concentrate on just two, Spotify and Pandora. Both have free versions and commercial free premium versions. Let’s assume that we’re willing to pay a little to not have to listen to the same commercials over and over. Pandora charges $5 per month and Spotify is $10. But that’s not the only difference.

The big difference is essentially this — Spotify is like carrying your record collection around with you. Just about anything you want to listen to is there; you just have to call it up. In fact, if you pay the premium price, you can even put your own iTunes library into the cloud and access it through Spotify.

There are a few prominent artists (Taylor Swift for example) that don’t license their music to Spotify, but if they’re in your iTunes library you can get around that. But you’ll be amazed what is there. I tried to think of the most obscure album I could think of — Glad Game by a band called Hydraulic Woman. It was there. This is a really good album, you should check it out, but it was made in 2002 and was one of only two the band made.

I thought I would stump Spotify, I couldn’t.

Pandora can’t do that. It doesn’t allow you to choose the exact next song you will hear. What Pandora does is it allows you to create a really good radio station, one exactly suited to your tastes. You don’t know what’s coming next, but chances are you’re really going to like it.

Spotify will tell you that it can do that to, but only if your tastes are really specific. You can have a Blues station or a Pop station or any genre you like. You can even create a station based on one artist. If you choose, for instance, a Warren Haynes channel, you will get Haynes’ music as well as music that Spotify’s algorithm tells it are similar to Haynes’ music.

Both Spotify and Pandora have these algorithms, and they do a pretty good job of finding music that is similar to the station you choose. Pandora goes two steps further. It allows you to add names to each station to provide focus for the algorithm and lets you combine all your stations into one shuffle.

The first is good. I have a Bruce Springsteen station that I added Tom Petty, Van Morrison and Neil Young to and that takes care of pretty much all my Classic Rock needs. I did similar things to some of the other stations. But it’s the second bonus feature that separates Pandora’s stations from Spotify’s.

I’m usually in a mood where I just want to listen to music, I don’t want to limit it to Classic Rock or Blues or Soul. As you can tell from the list of artists profiled on this site, I have pretty eclectic tastes. And by combining all of my Pandora stations into one shuffle I never know what’s going to come on next.

My stations are Tab Benoit, Ozomatli, Widespread Panic, John Hiatt, Drive-By Truckers, Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Trombone Shorty, Sonia Dada, The Detroit Cobras, R.E.M, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Old 97’s, Howlin’ Wolf and Alejandro Escovedo. Put all those on shuffle and you’ll never be bored.

It might give you the musical bends, but that’s part of the fun when you jump from Allison Krauss to Big Sam’s Funky Nation.

So which do I prefer? It depends on the mood and what I’m doing. I don’t have a conventional stereo in the living room anymore. I have a soundbar paired with the surround sound on the TV. I have a dock that can play the giant iPod through it, but mostly I connect an iPad to it through Bluetooth and the listen to the Pandora on shuffle.

But in the office when I’m writing I have Spotify on the computer. It allows me to find just what I’m looking for or put on a specific artist while I’m writing a profile. Right now I’m remembering how much I enjoy this Hydaulic Woman album.