I have wanted Apple to put a sleep timer into the music app for years and never knew this existed. I cannot thank you enough for posting this, I am eternally grateful!!
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iTunes Radio vs. Pandora?
- Thread starter MagicThief83
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I have wanted Apple to put a sleep timer into the music app for years and never knew this existed. I cannot thank you enough for posting this, I am eternally grateful!!
I'm in the same boat. I loved Pandora One, but I can't justify it when i'm already paying iTunes match and iTunes radio appears to be very strong.
I need to figure out pesky spotify premium, though. Might have to do away with that.
Just thought I'd chime in this morning. After turning on iTunes Radio this morning, I almost immediately starting running into the issue of songs repeating. There is a definite repeat problem with iTunes Radio. I hope Apple gets that taken care of soon.
What about Rdio? Anyone try that yet--so far so good--enjoying it! I haven't listened to iR enough to form an opinion yet...
My mistake. I meant I got some ads on iTunes Radio on the Mac--wrong forum. I updated iTunes Match and hopefully they will go away.
My question as well. My favorite feature of Pandora is to do a shuffle amongst my selected stations. Can that be done with itunes radio?
There is no need for Pandora anymore.
I sure wish you could make artist stations on any of these, (so it just plays one artist)
I suppose that would have huge copy-write issues though
I suppose that would have huge copy-write issues though
Think radio...change the station. I've never seen a radio tuner that could shuffle stations.
Right. Except that Pandora lets you do this. And it is VERY VERY useful to have narrow genre-specific stations for when you want them, but to *also* be able to grab 2 or 3 of your stations and let them all play together all day long.
I use it all the time, but I've never thought to do that because each station is customizable. I just switch stations when I tire of one.
I also find the shuffle feature in pandora extremely useful. My musical tastes are all over the place and I love having the stations shuffled. I'm sticking with Pandora for now just for that feature.
Exactly. Say I've got the phone hooked up to the stereo inside for my deck. If I'm by myself, I might play a shuffle of stations of Beck, AC/DC, Beastie Boys, etc. Then wife comes out. She hates rap, so turn that station off the shuffle and then add Tom Petty.
If I can't do this, I'll probably still stick with Pandora.
If I can't do this, I'll probably still stick with Pandora.
I've been a Pandora One subscriber for a little over a year. I use it mostly when traveling. My only significant complaint is that Pandora repeats songs too often. It seems their library of music within each of my favorite genres/stations is fairly limited. Within a 3-4 hour period of continual listening, I'll hear one or two songs over again (all on the same station).
I'm hopeful that iTunes Radio will have a larger library of music. But, since I seriously doubt it will be worse than Pandora, I've already made up my mind to cancel my Pandora One subscription. I'm already paying $24.99/yr for iTunes Match so no ads. Saving the extra (nearly) $48/yr I've been spending on Pandora will be nice.
Mark
I'm hopeful that iTunes Radio will have a larger library of music. But, since I seriously doubt it will be worse than Pandora, I've already made up my mind to cancel my Pandora One subscription. I'm already paying $24.99/yr for iTunes Match so no ads. Saving the extra (nearly) $48/yr I've been spending on Pandora will be nice.
Mark
iTunes radio is pretty good out of the box, but there are some annoyances that will keep me subscribing to P1 for now:
1. Can't ditch the Featured Stations - I have zero use for them and they take up a fair amount of prime screen real estate promoting a lot of stuff I will never listen to or buy.
2. The selection algorithm isn't as refined (even though the song d-base seems larger) - I've had too many repeats already in a short time of use in a very broadly seeded Reggae category.
3. Inconsistent streaming - I realize that it's early days and Apple's servers are likely getting slammed, but I had a lot of stuttering and drop-outs last night.
4. I don't trust the reliability of iTunes Match - annoying stories abound and I want no part of those.
5. As someone pointed out above you can't combine stations into a cross-genre mix.
Hopefully they get it together on iTunes Match and give us the flexibility to kill all the Featured Stations if we want. If they can manage to do both of those things I'll let go of Pandora, but given Apple's history with online services and user customization, Pandora will probably be getting my money for a while to come.
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1. Can't ditch the Featured Stations - I have zero use for them and they take up a fair amount of prime screen real estate promoting a lot of stuff I will never listen to or buy.
2. The selection algorithm isn't as refined (even though the song d-base seems larger) - I've had too many repeats already in a short time of use in a very broadly seeded Reggae category.
3. Inconsistent streaming - I realize that it's early days and Apple's servers are likely getting slammed, but I had a lot of stuttering and drop-outs last night.
4. I don't trust the reliability of iTunes Match - annoying stories abound and I want no part of those.
5. As someone pointed out above you can't combine stations into a cross-genre mix.
Hopefully they get it together on iTunes Match and give us the flexibility to kill all the Featured Stations if we want. If they can manage to do both of those things I'll let go of Pandora, but given Apple's history with online services and user customization, Pandora will probably be getting my money for a while to come.
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I have found that if you star a lot of songs, it increases the overall song selection. Thus, not as many repeats.