Pandora replacement?

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Horseychick

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#217963 20-Jul-2017 12:03

So, now that Pandora appears to be going has anyone identified a good replacement? I read the thread where some users are hoping they are identified as US listeners and fingers crossed that works. I've also tried Spotify free for the last few days and don't like the music I'm getting. I could possibly pay for it, but I'm reluctant to do so unless I think it's going to work. Hubby is also a high user of Pandora and a non-techie so I will shortly need to provide Helpdesk support to him when Pandora goes.

Any suggestions what else to try?

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Geek of Coastguard
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#1825860 20-Jul-2017 13:07

I liked Pandora a lot because it introduced me to new artists etc Id never come across before, but lately been using Spotify more, mainly because it has more mainstream stuff where as my tastes dont really lie there ;)

As for not liking the music youre getting, you can make playlists, search specific artists etc.... its only as good as what you click on ;)

XPD / Gavin

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turb

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#1825879 20-Jul-2017 13:41

They've emailed to say they are going to stop my subscription, so I was going to rejoin as an American and listen at home through DNS4ME.

Of course that won't help for when I'm on mobile...

Interests: HTPC, Web App authoring.

dazhann

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#1825883 20-Jul-2017 13:51

You can add dns4me settings to your phone

mattwnz

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#1825889 20-Jul-2017 13:57

I never got an email to say my subscription would stop, or that it was even closing down. I have now changed my postcode to a us one so hopefully it will continue to work

dclegg

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#1825894 20-Jul-2017 14:01

I used to be an avid Pandora user, due to it being great for discovering new music. But I now find Spotify serves that purpose pretty well. Its Discover Weekly playlist has helped me find a bunch of awesome new artists to check out. As an example, here's a screenshot from the last one they generated for me (I primarily listen to prog metal/rock). It shows a pretty good mix of known and unknown (to me) artists.

RexHavoc

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#1825898 20-Jul-2017 14:06

Tried Spotify. Was ok at first but grew a disliking to it after about a week. Am currently trying Deezer which I'm finding to be quite good.

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michaelmurfy

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#1825932 20-Jul-2017 14:58

I use Google Play Music and it has gotten to know my music taste damn well. Always finding new things through it.

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ubergeeknz

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#1825940 20-Jul-2017 15:14

I find spotify to be quite good, although the stations aren't as adaptive as Pandora. I don't generally like spending a lot of time making playlists, thankfully I spent some time circa 2012 with spotify and built a few good ones and mostly use those. We have a family subscription because ads suck. A good benefit for Spotify is that you can sync playlists to your device. It would be nice if you could also pre-cache stations tho

nitro

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#1825948 20-Jul-2017 15:29

michaelmurfy:

I use Google Play Music and it has gotten to know my music taste damn well. Always finding new things through it.

same here. and it comes with youtube red, plus the family subscription offers very good value.

ripdog

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#1825953 20-Jul-2017 15:36

michaelmurfy:

I use Google Play Music and it has gotten to know my music taste damn well. Always finding new things through it.

What kind of latency do you have when you start playing a song? Whenever I try GPM I have to wait around a second, sometimes more, for a stream to start. Spotify consistently feels like it's playing local media, it's crazy.

Also spotify has a 'native' app (at least it supports media keys and Win10 integration) and is really good at keeping track of what I was listening to last time, and synchronising state across devices.

Heh, trying to load music.google.com in a tab, it's not even loading. That's a nail in the coffin for me.

EDIT: It loaded. Tried to play a song. Waited 5 seconds to get a stream. I have gigabit internet, it's not my fault!

richms

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#1825959 20-Jul-2017 15:41

If you are changing post codes to a US one, make sure its in a sales tax free state or you might pay more than you need to.

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richms

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#1825960 20-Jul-2017 15:43

ripdog:

What kind of latency do you have when you start playing a song? Whenever I try GPM I have to wait around a second, sometimes more, for a stream to start. Spotify consistently feels like it's playing local media, it's crazy.

Also spotify has a 'native' app (at least it supports media keys and Win10 integration) and is really good at keeping track of what I was listening to last time, and synchronising state across devices.

Heh, trying to load music.google.com in a tab, it's not even loading. That's a nail in the coffin for me.

EDIT: It loaded. Tried to play a song. Waited 5 seconds to get a stream. I have gigabit internet, it's not my fault!

There are 3rd party apps that claim to do all the useful things, but the way google accounts work I dont really want to grant a random free app access to all my mail and stuff just to play music.

Richard rich.ms

mattwnz

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#1825998 20-Jul-2017 16:34

richms:

If you are changing post codes to a US one, make sure its in a sales tax free state or you might pay more than you need to.

Personally I am just using the free version as it does everything I need. I used Oregon which is what NZ post uses for Youshop, which looks like it is sales tax free, which must be one reason they used it.

ripdog

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#1826320 21-Jul-2017 08:31

richms:

There are 3rd party apps that claim to do all the useful things, but the way google accounts work I dont really want to grant a random free app access to all my mail and stuff just to play music.

The GPM client I'm talking about is open source, and it runs completely locally. It's a chromium embedded framework browser (or electron...?) with some JS hooks to do media keys and the like.

No risk, but GPM is slow as sh!t.

Senecio

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#1826326 21-Jul-2017 08:42

Spotify consistently feels like it's playing local media, it's crazy.

Unless you're using Spotify connect to a system that supports it, or playing a song for the very first time you're more than likely to be playing from local media. Spotify downloads a local copy to your phone even when streaming and it stays there indefinitely. When you download an album for off-line listening and delete it later, it doesn't actually get deleted either, just hidden. Its how Spotify reduce the demand on their bandwidth. Storing as much as possible on our local devices. If you're using and android device you should have the option of clear cache but on an iPhone the only way of deleting the downloaded media is to delete the App and reinstall it.

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