Spotify & Pandora and Why I'm Stuck With Both

I've had a Pandora account forever. And ever. I used it all of the time. Of course a quick peek on Facebook showed me that Spotify was taking up a lot of real estate. I was fairly certain that Pandora users were in that same elite class with people who still have AOL email addresses. I did not want to use my mom's streaming music service.

I decided to give Spotify a try and I was hooked. But I can't let Pandora go. At least not yet. I loved using Spotify to instantly listen to basically any song I wanted. I loved that I could create and download playlists and listen offline. And just like Pandora I could create a station based on a musician, album or song. (Or specifically on Spotify a playlist.)

There's really just one problem. Spotify, for all of its features, isn't as smart as Pandora when it comes to playing what I want to hear. And it repeats itself. A lot. And sometimes the sound skips and takes forever to load. Wait, that's more than one problem. That's a bunch of problems. Yesterday while driving I was listening to a radio station on Spotify based on my "On Repeat" playlist. I heard the same exact songs, in the same exact order, a few hours later at home. (Spotify, that's not what I meant when I called the playlist "On Repeat"...) Many other times I've been listening to radio stations based on my playlists that had no logical connection. I've thumbs downed as many as a dozen songs in a row that made no sense based on the station's inspiration.

Technology (at least the tech I have) hasn't caught up yet, either. I have three streaming boxes in my house and only one can access Spotify. All three connect to Pandora. It's possible that firmware updates will change this in the future, but as of two days ago everything was up to date.

So for all of my complaining, in the end, Spotify still wins. I'm impatient. If I want to listen to a song or an album I want to listen to it that second. And to that end Spotify got me to do something that Pandora never did. Pay for the service.

Pandora, I still love you. And I think you're totally smart and you get me and you know just what I want to hear. But Spotify gives me more so I'm willing to put up with all of it's little annoyances. (But don't worry...you'll still get used. Sometimes. Just not as much. And I'm not paying you.)