Pandora or Slacker?

[TomN]

Which one does everyone prefer and why? :icon_ devil:

 

[sqchram]

I'll keep an eye out here - I'm intersted too - I've only tried Pandora but only for maybe 30 mins - set to High quality - seems ok, but I think I've read a thread elsewhere of someone with audiophile tendencies claiming Slacker was higher quality.

 

[TomN]

I've been playing with both and I like the Slacker interface better, but it doesn't seem to sync my Favorite stations and Custom stations between the web app and the Slacker app on the phone, while Pandora does this easily.

 

[ViciouS]

i was told that slacker was better but i have never tried pandora i do know my best friend can only skip the track 3 times a day or somethin like that on Slacker but he has B B storm 1.

 

[JonKyu]

I dunno I'm really torn from choosing Last.Fm, Pandora, and Slacker. Here what I use for what:

Last.Fm- I use when I want to listen to my Korean and Japanese Music since slacker and pandora don't seem to do this well.

Pandora- I use if I feel like listening to songs that have similiar feeling/sound to it. It's nice if you prefer listening to a particular type of sound while working or something.

Slacker- I use to listen to "Today's Hits" to find out what everyone else thinks is "good" music/popular music. Basically mainstream stuff.

I couldn't decide so I ended up just leaving them all and using which ever one fits the mood lol. I'm curious to read about what everyone else thinks though.

 

[Vulcan1600]

I concur that Pandora and Slacker both are really bad to listen to via the Droid. I had them both on my Blackberry Storm, and both sounded 100% better on the BB. On my Blackberry, the sound quality of Slacker was better, plus had the ability to cache stations, so if you were driving and out of range, or in an airplane, you could listen to the cached music. So far Slacker on the Android does not have the ability to cache, however rumor has it that it is coming soon.

I also read today that iheartradio is coming out on Tuesday next week, so we will see.

 

[drd1109]

Slacker is the better app!!! I've tried both.

 

[carbonnoid]

the problem with pandora is, it plays the same songs over and over, no lie in 1 hr period, i can hear the same song, 2-3 times. I dont have that big of a problem with Slacker.

 

[Natolx]

the problem with pandora is, it plays the same songs over and over, no lie in 1 hr period, i can hear the same song, 2-3 times. I dont have that big of a problem with Slacker.

That usually happens because you thumbs downed too many times, and didn't give pandora any thumbs up to work with... so you limited the pool of songs severely and pandora doesn't have much of a choice lol.

 

[rlb]

I've been using Pandora (w/ audio stream set to high quality) and the sound is great! I wouldn't say I'm a complete audiophile but I have an ear for good sound. My only complaint is that you cannot edit station details through the Pandora app, you need to log onto the pandora site to do that. However, Pandora has the site filtered so if you go there on your droid it wont let you do anything other than download the droid app.

As for song skipping, you can skip up to 6 songs per hour on each station. If you invest enough time and build decent stations, you can just switch stations when you hit the 6 song limit.

 

[blinden]

I concur that Pandora and Slacker both are really bad to listen to via the Droid. I had them both on my Blackberry Storm, and both sounded 100% better on the BB. On my Blackberry, the sound quality of Slacker was better, plus had the ability to cache stations, so if you were driving and out of range, or in an airplane, you could listen to the cached music. So far Slacker on the Android does not have the ability to cache, however rumor has it that it is coming soon.

I also read today that iheartradio is coming out on Tuesday next week, so we will see.

Who are you concurring with?

I think pandora sounds loads better then on my curve.

Anyways, I use pandora, but not for any reason other then I had a pandora account for a while and just used it, no reason I have NOT used slacker, other then I just don't feel like going and setting up more preferences and I'm not yet unhappy with pandora.

 

[smolander]

I use Pandora and have several "stations" set up. Gives me some variety between similar sounding sessions.

I don't know who would ever enjoy listening to music throught a phone's speakers ... I use my droid hooked to the aux input on my desk and car radios. Sound is very good.

 

[Sex Cells]

i use last.fm

 

[wsbsteven]

I glanced through some of the comments here and would like to clarify somethings. The high quality option on Pandora (192kbps) is a Pandora One (paid $3/month) option only and selecting it with a free account will give you 128kbps which is the normal bitrate.

Slacker uses 128kbps even on their paid ($4/month) service from what I can tell which is a lower bit rate than Pandora. Anyone calling themselves an audiophile in the true sense and is a fan of mp3 quality is pretty much a fraud or kidding themselves.

While hearing the same song 2-3 times in an hour is possible in theory, it is an exaggeration. The Pandora license allows 4 songs by any artist to play in a 3 hour period.

I also don't care for the limited Android client for Pandora and wish they would add some of the missing features to it.

As far as one being better than the other, that's completely subjective. Pandora has a higher bit rate and is cheaper than Slacker but some may like the interface for slacker or the song algorithm more than Pandora's.

 

[mikedageek]

I prefer Slacker ... I think my issue with Pandora was due to the mood I was in on the first day ... I was looking for a certain type of music and from that point on all I got was that kind of music ...

Slacker allows you to choose the bands/artists you want and then based on others inputs it will also cycle in "like" artists

Pandora uses algorithms to find like "sounding" music ...

The pay for Slacker allows for caching and unlimited skips