Difference Between Pandora And Spotify

There are a ton of different music services out there today. There are just a ridiculous amount of quality services that you can choose from: Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, YouTube Music, and more. We could go on forever. But, with so many different choices out there, picking a music service to use on your computer, laptop, or phone can make things pretty difficult. That said, in order to make a decision, you need to start doing some research on the different options available today and then decide for yourself as to which one is better. Each one does have a difference, whether that be in price, the content offered, and more.

Breaking all that down can take some time, but worry not — we’ve done some of the legwork for you already. We’ve constructed this guide in order to show you the major differences between Pandora and Spotify to hopefully help you make a decision between these two. So, let’s dive right into the difference between Pandora and Spotify comparison, shall we?

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Pandora

Radios. Radios have been in many of our vehicles since the beginning. They’re a great way to keep noise going during those long car rides, or at least a way to help you jam out to your favorite tunes during your commute. Many music streaming services are ditching that radio style, but there’s at least one service that has designed its entire music streaming service around the radio style — Pandora.

Pandora will give you access to tens of thousands of songs from thousands of different artists, but you don’t setup your songs in the traditional playlist format. Instead, you choose a song or artist that you like, and then Pandora creates what it calls a “station” for you. In that station, you’ll get songs similar to the song that you chose to base the station around — or if you chose an artist, similar to songs made by that artist. You can then “like” or “dislike” songs within that station to customize that station to your tastes.

The neat thing about Pandora is that you can create multiple stations based on what you feel like listening, too. You can even create stations around different genres based on your current tastes — for example, you could create a modern country station, and then a old rock station. Stations are supported by advertisements, but can be gotten rid of

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Spotify Music

Spotify is obviously majorly different than Pandora. If you’ve used Spotify for any time at all, you know that Spotify doesn’t operate based around stations, but around playlists. Spotify, even at a free level, will allow you to create playlists with your favorite songs inside of them. On the free version, Spotify will allow you to listen to those same playlists, but you’ll also have to listen to them in-between advertisements. The free version will also only let you listen to these songs on “Shuffle” — you cannot actually pick what specific songs to listen to.

But, when you upgrade to a paid Spotify subscription, you have a whole lot more control over what you can do with the music streaming service. Not only do you get rid of ads, but you can pick specific songs in a playlist that you want to listen to. You can also listen to individual songs by searching for them in the Spotify database.

With the subscription, playlists can be downloaded for listening on offline use. There are also discounts offered if you can prove that you’re a student — i.e. through providing attendance records or by verifying from a .edu email. Pandora doesn’t seem to have anything like this.

Download it now: Google Play

Verdict on the Difference Between Pandora And Spotify

As you can see, there are some difference between Pandora and Spotify. Like we mentioned earlier, those differences are primarily around the fact that Pandora is based around a station model, whereas Spotify uses the standard playlist style that is so common in music streaming services.

Do you have a favorite music streaming service that you use? Are you a fan of either Pandora or Spotify, or do you have another personal go-to? Let us know in the comments section below — we’d love to hear from you!