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iTunes Radio vs. Pandora?

There is variety but it's mind seems to wander after a while. I thought I had tuned one station so it was similar enough to another I listen to from Pandora and then suddenly it brings Bette Midler and Celine Dion into the mix from out of nowhere... there may be nebulous reasons why but it was entirely unwanted (and I have no complaints about those artists, i just don't want them on this station and don't see the connection).
 
NewishMacGuy said:
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. Amen to that! Featured stations should be un-featured!

5. You can actually combine stations for a cross mix, just click the plus sign and then type in the type of music you want the station to try to play more of.
 
I was using slacker rather than pandora

After using iTunes Radio for the past 2 days I am impressed. Sure it has some bugs/issues but considering it only 'went live' 36 hours ago it will get way better over time. I took a leap of faith and dropped slacker. I believe iTunes Radio will only get better
 
Crap, getting the repeats again, this is annoying. It's funny how when I read a review recently of iOS 7, someone stated that iTunes Radio was "frighteningly accurate," and my experience with it thus far has proved that to be far from the case. Pandora has my ears for now...
 
MagicThief83 said:
Crap, getting the repeats again, this is annoying. It's funny how when I read a review recently of iOS 7, someone stated that iTunes Radio was "frighteningly accurate," and my experience with it thus far has proved that to be far from the case. Pandora has my ears for now...
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Well, unlike Pandora (unless you're paying for it), you can skip the songs. ;)

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MagicThief83 said:
Yes, iTunes.
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Sweet! Apparently I already have it after updating iTunes yesterday to get iOS 7.
 
MagicThief83 said:
Crap, getting the repeats again, this is annoying. It's funny how when I read a review recently of iOS 7, someone stated that iTunes Radio was "frighteningly accurate," and my experience with it thus far has proved that to be far from the case. Pandora has my ears for now...
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Honestly I have used iTunes Radio probably 6-8 hours since yesterday and I can't recall a repeat.
 
I like iTunes Radio over pandora as it's a built in app, not something I need to download and most importantly it's so easy to switch between radio and my iTunes Match library.

Does anyone know if iTunes Radio streams at iTunes Plus, 256kbps? Definitely seems to be better than pandora but wondering if anyone has any confirmation.

+1 for whoever mentioned removing the built into iTunes Radio channels or whatever they are. I would really like to have those not there.

I also have been getting some repeats in songs but I haven't spent that much time tweaking my stations.

It would be cool to have a thread about people sharing their iTunes Radio stations. I am working on a bob Dylan one now and it would be cool to see what everyone else is working on.
 
Icculus said:
I like iTunes Radio over pandora as it's a built in app, not something I need to download and most importantly it's so easy to switch between radio and my iTunes Match library.

Does anyone know if iTunes Radio streams at iTunes Plus, 256kbps? Definitely seems to be better than pandora but wondering if anyone has any confirmation.

+1 for whoever mentioned removing the built into iTunes Radio channels or whatever they are. I would really like to have those not there.

I also have been getting some repeats in songs but I haven't spent that much time tweaking my stations.

It would be cool to have a thread about people sharing their iTunes Radio stations. I am working on a bob Dylan one now and it would be cool to see what everyone else is working on.
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Agree......Admittedly I am anal. I like everything under one umbrella
 
jfware said:
Agree......Admittedly I am anal. I like everything under one umbrella
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Totally. I am also the kind of musical nazi to where if I hear rock n roll by led zeppelin on iTunes Radio I am going to want the entire album so to be able to jump very quickly to play it is a big thing for me. I know this probably won't matter to most but to me music is part of breathing.

Edit: yes I did reference led zeppelin IV but you have to understand that I don't have stairway to heaven, the only track I left off when I ripped that cd, for the few zeppelin enthusiasts that actually care, haha.
 
jfware said:
Honestly I have used iTunes Radio probably 6-8 hours since yesterday and I can't recall a repeat.
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I am noticing some variety and the repeating has lessened to some extent, but it is getting better. I just have to continue fine tuning I guess...

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Update: it's starting to play songs I consider "hits" or good :D
 
I find that my iTunes radio stations are much more consistenct than Pandora. In my experience Pandora stations need constant maintenance and fine tuning or they drift into completely unwanted territory. Pandora also loves to foist artists I've never heard of and have no interest in on me. My lightly-seeded alternative rock station has presented me nothing but solid alternative rock tracks, only a handful of which I've skipped in three days' listening. In Pandora I frequently ran out of skips trying to prevent unwanted junk from appearing in my stations.
 
Have been listening to IR for the past half hour: so far no repeats! Looks like the "genre experts" are tired of hearing me complain about repeats...
 
I switched to iTunes Radio for good now, in the first few beta releases I seem to get many repeats, now very few repeats. Also I don't get many ads at all but I think that will change but now I'm hooked in, but I could see paying for this:D

Another plus is it seems to use less battery than Pandora, anyone else notice that?
 
Alphabetic Order for Stations

Unless I'm overlooking a setting somewhere, it is not possible to alphabetize your iTunes Radio stations. I recently switched from Pandora (paid) because I also pay for iTunes Match. I've been re-creating my 100 stations from Pandora, but again, I can't seem to alphabetize them. Anyone else think that's a weird feature to leave out?
 
I was excited about iRadio until I found I couldn't shuffle. I guess it is back to Pandora until it is updated for shuffle. Which isn't that bad, since I like Pandora.
 
KUNST said:
Well, unlike Pandora (unless you're paying for it), you can skip the songs. ;)

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The skip limit (6 per hour) is the same for both free Pandora and iRadio.

What's frustrating to me is iRadio killing my custom stations. I'll spend 30 minutes carefully creating one by adding artists and songs. Then after a few hours of listening that station will suddenly no longer work at all. It seems to usually happen after I star a song for "do not play again". The software apparently thinks that means to not play the station ever again. This has now happened to me three times.

Repeats are also a headache. I had one song that really caused a problem. It played. I chose to skip it. iRadio played it again immediately. I chose to skip it again. iRadio played it again immediately. I then starred it to not play again. That killed that custom station.

I'm going to stick with Pandora until Apple gets the bugs worked out.
 
JoeShades said:
Itunes radio is terrible but as far as the skip limit, isn't pandora 6 a day? that might be the one thing better on itunes radio
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Skips for free Pandora and iTunes Radio are the same. 6 per hour. Pandora allows 12 total skips per day, I'm not sure about iTunes. Paid Pandora allows more skips per day but they don't specify how many. Paid Pandora has the 6 per hour limit.
 
Bob Coxner said:
Skips for free Pandora and iTunes Radio are the same. 6 per hour. Pandora allows 12 total skips per day, I'm not sure about iTunes. Paid Pandora allows more skips per day but they don't specify how many. Paid Pandora has the 6 per hour limit.
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in iTunes it's 6 skips per Station, per hour. As far as I know you have unlimited skips per hour/day (never tried a lot though). An easy workaround if you want 12 skips is to make 2 identical Stations and change Stations after 6 skips for 6 more skips.
 
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It can't deal with a lot of "PLAY MORE LIKE THIS" / no shuffle btw stations

I love that in PANDORA you can shuffle between stations, I have all my favorite artists and I keep it on shuffle.

I thought I could do this by adding a lot of "play more like this" artists in one station. Unfortunately after a while iTunes Radio gets stuck on one artist and plays variations of that artist.

I've noticed this because in the "play more like this" section I have only one spanish speaking artist and dozens of english speaking artists and iTunes Radio only plays songs in spanish.

Anyone's experiencing something similar?
Did you notice that in the Feedback page iTunes 11.1 doesn't appear yet?
 
The 80's Freestyle station keeps playing "Shannon - My Heart Divided" everytime I tune in. It played the other day twice. Twice yesterday and again now and I though Slacker was bad. I am sticking with Slacker Plus which also includes AOL Radio with many great stations and I hear less repeats than iTunes Radio and has unlimited skips.
 
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