I had a paid subscription to Pandora for years & was generally satisfied with the service. I was also happy with the $3.99 cost for commercial free streaming music.
I read an article earlier this year comparing several of the online music streaming services. I was surprised to learn how much I was actually missing by using Pandora. I had no idea the Pandora catalog was a fraction of what other services offer (1 million songs vs 20 million with Spotify). I also didn’t realize the other services let you listen to an entire album, repeat songs, and pick exactly what you want to listen to! (Face palm)
So I switched to Spotify. They had a promotion that gave you 3-months for something like $0.99 so it was a no brainer to try it out. I wasn’t able to convert my playlists from Pandora but it was easy enough to start typing in my favorite artists and flagging them as favorites.
Then Apple released their new music platform. Same price as Spotify and same size catalog. They’re giving away a 90-day free trial and I’ve tried it. The Apple Music interface isn’t as intuitive as Spotify but it gets the job done.
Now I’m torn. Do I switch again (to Apple Music) and take advantage of it’s tight integration with IOS? (Hey Siri, play The Church) The OS X interface uses iTunes which needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt to from the ground up. Spotify’s OS X app is pretty user friendly but takes some 3rd parry apps and plug-ins to make it integrate with the OS (and use the play/pause controls on the Apple keyboard.
Is there another streaming service that beats Apple & Spotify? I’d love to hear your feedback on what you use, what you like, & what you don’t like.