
Pandora Shares Plummet as Competition Grows - scottfr
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/24/business/media/pandora-shares-plummet-as-competition-grows.html
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massysett
I like Pandora because it's simple. Ironically it's Apple that has the
reputation for making simple things, but Apple Music is a maze. It has this
heart button as well as star ratings. What's the difference? What effect do
they have? Why do I still have this "iTunes Store" and this "Music" on my
phone? I can't buy songs through the "Music"?

With Pandora I hit thumbs up if I like it, thumbs down if I don't. Simple.

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squiguy7
I have found Pandora's selection frustratingly repetitive and looked toward
using other services because of it. I have made a bunch of radio stations and
cycle through them but they always have the same songs mixed in.

Now that I have Spotify premium, I see no reason to use Pandora again. Spotify
has radio if I want to use it or I can just turn on any song or album I want.
That's a big plus in my opinion.

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rpedela
I have found that if a station gets stuck, liking or disliking songs will get
it to play different ones.

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metric10
Problem is, sometimes you're just sick of the song, not that you hate it and
don't want t hear songs like it. Pandora has a "don't play this for a month"
option, but even that's too short. It's also not available on in the iOS app
(or at least it wasn't before I cancelled my Pandora subscription earlier this
year). They just don't seem to get that people don't want to listen to the
same music over and over again.

I think the bottom line is that Pandora needed to evolve, but they've
stubbornly stayed the same, just like their stations.

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bpodgursky
It really surprises me that Pandora hasn't been able to negotiate dramatically
better rates than Spotify et al which allow random-access listening. Pandora
is competitive mainly with radio, not music purchases. Spotify competes
directly with record sales.

I've been a very loyal paying Pandora customer for a long time, but now that
it's up to $5/mo, I'm seriously wondering whether paying just $5/mo more for
Spotify would be worth it.

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dogma1138
Considering they had to cut their services (including subscribers, with no
refund at the time because it was a "soft" restriction, so when they started
IP blocking you had no case) to virtually every major market at one point in
time or another, and is now currently available only in the US and Australia
I'm surprised they are still in business.

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amorphid
I was a paying Pandora customer until I hit their limit for the number of
stations one can create. I'd made 100 stations, tried to add one more, and it
wouldn't let met. Then I went to Rdio, and I've been happy ever since!

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tunesmith
Funny, because Pandora turned profitable in 2014. Much like musicians have
seen their royalty earnings potential decrease in the face of music-streaming
companies that are debt-financed, Pandora is seeing its earnings potential
decrease due to other debt-financed companies (Spotify), or bigger companies
that can have loss-leader departments (google/youtube, apple).

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johnward
Spotify is not profitable even with paid subscribers?

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upbeatlinux
Pandora's repetitiveness can be frustrating at times especially for long time
users of the service. The best option I've found found when creating new
channels is to use "Add variety" and avoid the thumbs up / down rating. In
this way I still hear new music and although there are repeats those are fewer
and far between. If I want to tailor a station to genetically similar songs I
then use thumbs up / down.

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kryptiskt
I wonder why we haven't seen something similar to what Netflix and Amazon is
doing with music. That is, cutting out the middleman and pay some artists to
make exclusive music for them.

