Spotify vs Pandora: A Comprehensive Guide of Music Streaming Services!

It is very important to understand the music apps in detail before investing in them. So, I will tell you a detailed comparison of Spotify vs Pandora. After reading this, you will know better about both of these apps. Music is an essential part of our lives, and before making an investment in it, it is essential to figure out if it will be beneficial for you.

Spotify is one of the leading music streaming apps. However, it is not the only one. On comparing Spotify with Deezer, Spotify turned out to be a better option. However, on comparing Spotify with Tidal, The latter had the upper hand. In this article, I will take you through a detailed comparison of Spotify and Pandora. You will get to know all the details of the features, plans, etc, which will help you make an informed decision. 

You might already be knowing about both of these apps, but this blog will help you in knowing about these apps with a magnified glass. Read the article till the end to gain complete information regarding Spotify vs Pandora. 

Spotify vs Pandora: Features

Spotify and Pandora, both of these apps, have amazing features that users love and enjoy using. Spotify has its own amazing features that you love to explore, whereas Pandora has its own different and unique features. Here we will discuss all the features in a divided category to understand and compare them in a better way. 

1. Music Library 

While deciding whether Spotify is better than Pandora, you will need to make a comparison between their music libraries. If we talk about Spotify, there are currently more than 80 million tracks on the app, plus they claim to add 18k to 20k tracks every month. Spotify also allows you to create and customize your own playlist, and you can save them and listen to them anytime you want. Spotify has another category of music content, such as cover songs, podcasts, unplugged tracks, etc, which makes its category wider and all in one place for users. 

Pandora, on the other hand, has up to 1 to 2 million tracks on its platform. Pandora does not have any sort of cover songs, unplugged tracks, or user-generated tracks like Spotify has. Also, Pandora does not allow you a free hand in creating a playlist of your own. Pandora does have a collection of Podcasts, but again when compared to Spotify, it’s not as huge as it needs to be to compete with Spotify.

2. Sound Quality 

When it comes to the difference between Pandora and Spotify, there is a minor difference. Pandora has no superior sound quality, and it has all the same audio quality in the basic and premium versions, which is 192/kbps ACC. 

Spotify, on the other hand, has an average sound quality of 96/kbps that can maximize up to 360/kbps 3D AAC in premium versions. It is a lot better than what Pandora has to offer in terms of sound quality. 

3. User Interface 

There is a lot of difference between Pandora and Spotify when it comes to the comparisons of user interfaces which are the most important part of a music streaming application. Spotify has a user-friendly interface where users can easily navigate to what they are looking for. It has a dark theme which makes it even more pretty in appearance. Spotify’s user interface is very direct and convenient. There are many more interesting features, like viewing your friends’ listening activities on Spotify and more.

Whereas Pandora is more cute in appearance and easy to navigate to My Collection lists. In Pandora, your recently played radio stations are set in an organized manner. It is also easy to navigate by filtering it by playlists, stations, artists, genres, podcasts, songs, etc, and it gives a resemblance to Jukebox. 

4. Music Discovery

When it comes to exclusive audio content and music discovery, Spotify has a wider content collection as compared to Pandora. Spotify has a great collection of Audiobooks, unplugged live recordings, podcasts, and other audio content that you can collect, select and keep in your customized playlist. 

Whereas Pandora, on the other hand, has stations more like that of radio stations. However, you can customize and set these stations according to your liking. Pandora will not allow you to land directly on the requested content and artists and has its own way of presenting content to the user. 

5. Social Skills

Both of the services, Pandora and Spotify, have their own skills in social sharing aspects. But sharing on Spotify is far easier than on Pandora. You can easily put up stories and share your favorite Spotify tracks on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, but the condition is that your Spotify account should be connected to your Facebook account. 

Pandora also has its own sharing features, but that sharing skill is not as developed as Spotify’s. Pandora has individual links for each track and is dependent on sharing the track links.

6. Parental Controls 

The question of the difference between Pandora and Spotify has dragged in the point of comparison of whether they both have parental controls or not. And if they have, which one of them has a better one? In this one, Pandora wins because it has parental control, which means that parents can control what their children can listen to. Whereas in Spotify, there is no such strict parental control. 

Although you can get parental control in case you choose the Spotify Family plan. If you go for a Spotify Family plan, only then you can have control over what your child is listening to on Spotify. On the other hand, Pandora has a separate Pandora-for-kids station you can choose for your child. 

 7. Radios

The difference between Pandora and Spotify is that Spotify offers weekly discoveries of new and unexplored tracks through release radar. Personalized playlists are made on the radar and track you listen to. Each week new playlists are created and released on the platform for users. 

Pandora, on the other hand, works a bit differently. It straight away offers radio-like stations to its listeners. Pandora chooses other likewise libraries similar to the artists and songs you have chosen. On Pandora, you also have the option to like and unlike the song. By unliking a song, you can never see or hear that song again. 

Verdict: Spotify  
Spotify is the winner here! Spotify, in almost all categories, is superior to Pandora. Spotify has a way more user-friendly interface than Pandora. Just being cute in appearance will not do for users and users will need the Music app to be convenient in every category. Its broader social sharing skill, giant Audio content collection, better sound quality than Pandora, and great user friendly interface makes it better than Pandora in every aspect of features and user service convenience. 

Spotify vs Pandora: Pricing

Spotify and Pandora both have different and unique beneficial plans for their users. I have listed all these plans below. 

Plans	Spotify	Pandora
Free Plan	Available	N/A
Premium Plan	$9.99/per month	9.99/per month
Duo Plan	$12.99/per month	N/A
Family Plan	$15.99/per month	14.99/per month
Student Plan	$4.99/per month	4.99/per month
Military plan	N/A	7.99/per month

As you can see in the table above that both of the music apps have their own benefit plans for users. You can clearly figure out the plan that you want or is suitable for you. 

Verdict: Both
As per the price comparisons, the price plans are unique regarding both music platforms, which makes the topic of Spotify vs Pandora interesting. Pandora, on the one hand, has a beneficial and special plan for Military veterans, whereas Spotify has this Duo plan that is way more cheaper than two individual premium accounts. So, it is clearly a tie between these apps in terms of pricing. 

Spotify vs Pandora: Availability

Both of these apps are used by an immense number of users. In this topic of Spotify vs Pandora, I will talk about the availability of both music applications. 

Spotify Availability 

Spotify is undoubtedly the most popular online music application in the global market. It is available in more than 180 countries across the globe. Worldwide it has a great user base in both free and paid plans of the apps. Spotify has over 490+ million users globally and nearly 200+ million subscribers, which is really a big deal. 

Pandora Availability

Pandora is mainly available in the internal market of US states and in some minor parts of Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. It has nearly more than 52 million users in total and nearly 7 million subscribers. Its users mainly belong from the US and some parts of Europe. 

Verdict: Spotify
As per my study and analysis, in terms of availability, Spotify takes the lead here. The great expansion of Spotify across the territories makes it easily available globally. If you are a Spotify user and love to travel internationally or have a work field that requires traveling, you will have no issues. Whereas Pandora users, before traveling out of their respective states may have to consider a few things as they cannot use the Pandora application internationally.  

Spotify vs Pandora: Compatibility

Both of these devices, Spotify and Pandora have great compatibility skill sets. Let us discuss in this section the compatibility of both music applications. 

Spotify Compatibility

Spotify is already an established global music brand compatible with almost every device. It is accessible with all sorts of devices like iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. In addition, there are various formats of web browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and Opera. Other devices that Spotify supports include Car devices, Smart televisions, game consoles, and smartwatches. Spotify is also compatible with wireless devices like Bluetooth, Chromecast, Apple Airplay, Alexa, Google Assistant, etc. 

Pandora Compatibility 

Pandora, on the other hand, has some limitations that may bother you sometimes compared to Spotify. Pandora supports devices like iOS and Android devices. It is compatible with Amazon devices like Amazon Fire TV and Amazon Kindle. There are a few selected Roku devices that Pandora also supports. Some other devices are Sonos devices and Samsung devices that can also be used with Pandora.    

Verdict: Spotify 
In my opinion, Spotify cracks the deal here. It has a more expanded and wider field of compatibility when it comes to the comparison in compatibility in Spotify vs Pandora. Spotify is a globally dominant application with far better compatibility than Pandora.  

Spotify vs Pandora: Pros and Cons

Spotify is the shark in the world of online music streaming apps. Spotify’s popularity and user base worldwide cannot be matched. But like every other application Spotify has its own advantages and disadvantages. In one or the other way, it is better than Pandora, and in some aspects, it may lag behind Pandora. Here is a table mentioned below with all the organized patterns of pros and cons of Spotify:

Spotify Pros	Spotify Cons
Giant music library	Limitations for the free version
Better audio quality	Ad interruption
User friendly interface	Expensive
Global availability
Widely compatible
Flexible in sharing
Customizable playlists

On the other hand, Pandora is a very popular app in the US and Europe It is also available in some states of New Zealand and Australia. This app is more like a music-finding app and has its own advantages and disadvantages. Here is a table mentioned below to make this comparison more clear and confined in the form of Pandora’s pros and cons:

Pandora Pros	Pandora Cons
Colorful and cute user-interface	Inferior audio quality
Customized radio stations	Narrow geographical availability
Tailors stations acc to your preferences	Less flexible compatibility
A special plan for Military Veterans	No direct access to origin]al content and artists.
Parental control is strong	Rigid social sharing habits
	The music library is very small in numbers

Spotify vs Pandora: Final Verdict

I think Spotify is the overall Winner of this battle of Spotify vs Pandora. Spotify almost took the lead in all criteria over Pandora. With all its features, Spotify proved that it is superior and better than Pandora. Be it availability or compatibility. Here is a Final Verdict table mentioned below for a better understanding and to make a clear decision. 

	Spotify	Pandora
Music Library	80+ Million	1-2 Million
Sound Quality	320/kbps 3D ACC	192/kbps ACC
User Interface	More easy and direct	More eye pleasing
Music Discovery	Plays according to the requested artist, album or track name	Not convenient (Doesn’t give direct access to the original content and lands you on stations)
Social sharing	Flexible	Rigid
Availability	180+ Countries	Only in US and Europe
Plans	Spotify Duo is there.	Special discount plans for military veterans.
Compatibility	More Compatible	Less Compatible
Parental Controls	Yes, but in Family Plans.	Yes
Device Variety	Yes	No

Wrapping Up

In this blog on Spotify vs Pandora, I have discussed all the important details and information you need to know before deciding between these two apps. I hope this blog clarifies all your doubts and queries. If you have any questions or doubts, leave a comment below, and we will contact you soon. To read more interesting and informative blogs, keep visiting our website, Path of EX. 

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