Streaming Success

Staffer Sophie Storbeck reviews three music streaming sites: iTunes, Spotify and Pandora. Each of the sites are free, but Spotify allows a broad range of individual songs while Pandora and iTunes create individualized radio stations.

iTunes

I haven’t really explored iTunes Radio as much as other music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, mostly because I was afraid the radio would only be based on my old Hannah Montana albums– luckily it wasn’t.

iTunes Radio gives users the option to tune their stations to one of three options. The hits station plays popular songs for any station you make, the discovery station plays lesser-known songs and the variety station is a mix between the two. While you’re playing a station at the top right corner of the screen there’s a button to buy the song playing. Although I haven’t actually bought music for years, it’s a nice aspect for easy access.

Across the top of the home screen there are featured stations consisting of Top 50 Pop/Rock/Country/Alternative etc. Although tempting, I don’t recommend listening to them unless you like overplayed, generic music like “Timber.” Instead, try making stations based on songs and artists.

Out of the three, I like the range of songs iTunes Radio plays better — especially when on the ‘variety’ setting which features a mix of music that I both recognize and haven’t heard before. However, iTunes falls short of victory because it lacks the option to enjoy playlists that Spotify has.

Pandora

I’ve been listening to Pandora for years. I still have the same account as I did when I was 10. I find Pandora’s layout the easiest to use out of all three. Until recently I was loyal to Pandora, but after venturing to different music sites I’ve decided that I’m not going back.

The only reason Pandora is still around is because of its age. Pandora is 12 years old, while Spotify is six and was only introduced to the United States in 2011. iTunes Radio is the newest, released in Oct. 2013. Pandora is most threatened by iTunes Radio; in October, after iTunes Radio was released, Pandora lost 2 million of its 16.8 million monthly visitors.

iTunes and Spotify have more than 20 million songs, whereas Pandora has only 1 million. Even worse, Pandora’s sound quality is so bad that I can hear the difference compared to Spotify’s clearer music. Pandora’s only redeeming quality is that it costs only $3.99 — six dollars less than Spotify.

I am surprised to come to the realization that Pandora is the ultimate loser in the battle between radio services, falling behind in sound quality, number of songs and lack of unique features. These factors could ultimately be the downfall of Pandora.

Spotify

Unlike its competitors, Spotify lets users create their own playlists and stations. Spotify also connects to Facebook so I can share my favorite tracks with my friends. I don’t use it to post, but I still think that it’s a useful tool. Spotify isn’t threatened by its competitors because it allows customers to choose the specific songs they want to play, which other services don’t do. However, Spotify runs on an installer and the paid version costs $9.99 a month to access certain features, like the ability to pick specific songs to play on mobile or to listen ad-free. Although it seems like a lot, I think that with the playlist feature makes it worth the price.

Recently, Spotify took a big step towards free streaming for smartphones. Before the update, users could only play computer-generated playlists that consisted of songs that sounded like the artist the user originally chose. Now, customers can play a list of songs sung by the chosen artist.

Even though it costs more than its competitors, it’s worth the money to use because it can make playlists and radios, it has better sound quality and more songs than other music streaming apps. So in the end, Spotify wins this competition based on the fact that it allows users create their own iTunes Library for free while giving them the option to make radio stations.