While the $10 single-person subscription isn’t any cheaper than other paid services, Pandora’s $5 “compromise” option and free radio make it stand out among other services that don’t offer the same alternatives. Pandora also offers a free trial for paid subscriptions, plus student and military discounts.
Pandora also matches Spotify—the most popular streaming service—in its music and podcast collection and music discovery functions. Pandora is great for recommending fresh new tunes regularly![2] X Research source
The ’normal’ quality setting is also fairly efficient in its data usage. Normal streams at 96 kbps, meaning it’d take 23 hours to use up 1 GB of data. Other quality settings can take up more data, but even Spotify’s highest quality stream (320 kbps) isn’t as strong as other services. This might be a dealbreaker to an audiophile, but it also has an upside. You lose audio quality, but save data! Spotify’s download feature will also save you data. While connected to the internet, you can easily download a song, album, or playlist onto your device, meaning you won’t take up data when you listen later.
For example: if a Tidal user only streamed Arcade Fire, that band would get the money from the user’s subscription.
