Spotify vs Pandora

Pandora has been around a long time and made a name for itself by mimicking the format of a radio. In recent years Spotify has exploded not only as a popular music listening platform but also as a top-notch service for music discovery, and Pandora has changed a lot. Which one is ultimately better, you ask? Read on to find out. In this Spotify vs. Pandora comparison, we will go over everything you need to know about Spotify Premium and Pandora Premium.

Editor’s note: this Spotify vs. Pandora article was updated on May 16, 2023, to ensure timeliness of the information within the article.

Does Spotify or Pandora offer better streaming quality?

Unfortunately, neither Spotify Premium nor Pandora Premium offer any high quality streaming options, though Spotify announced Spotify HiFi, which would offer streaming in lossless CD-quality, back in 2021 and we haven’t heard an update since then.

As of now, both Spotify and Pandora use the lossy AAC file format and Spotify also uses the lossy Ogg Vorbis format. However, while the maximum bitrate for Pandora Premium is 192kbps, Spotify Premium’s is higher, offering up to 320kbps. Lack of high resolution audio isn’t necessarily a reason to opt for a different streaming service—for many people, lossy, lower bitrate audio sounds just fine. Additionally, lossless files tend to take up more storage space or use up more Internet data, so plenty of people find lossy files to be worth their drawbacks. If you’re looking for a high resolution streaming service, check out Amazon Music HD, Qobuz, Tidal or Deezer.

In addition to lower quality streaming, Pandora’s connection buffers a lot more than Spotify’s, which can interrupt your music mid-song and make the listening experience unpleasant. Luckily, with both Pandora Premium and Spotify Premium, you have unlimited access to download songs for offline listening.

Which has a better user interface, Spotify or Pandora?

Your Pandora Collection organizes your recently played Stations and playlists as if they are a set of records in a jukebox, which looks really nice. It is also easy to navigate My Collection by filtering it by playlists, Stations, artists, albums, songs, podcasts, or everything. The For You and Search pages are not as attractive, but are still easy to navigate.

Spotify doesn’t have any cute resemblances to vintage music-listening devices, but its dark-themed interface is very nice and easy to navigate. You’ll get tabs in Your Library for your playlists, artists, albums, and of course podcasts. Plus, the Home and Search pages are intuitive as well. The only drawback is that some of Spotify’s features such as creating playlist folders and viewing friends’ live listening activity are only available on the desktop app and not the mobile app. Additionally, one very small but annoying thing I noticed when I switched from an iPhone to an Android phone is that adding a song to your queue on iOS is as simple as swiping it right, but on Android you have to click the three dots next to the song title to add it to your queue.

Does Spotify or Pandora have better music discovery features?

First and foremost, Pandora is a music discovery service. Its main feature is Stations which function like radio stations, but are customizable to your liking. Spotify is more of a jack-of-all-trades streaming service; though, both do a great job of curating recommended playlists, and make it easy to find new, related content.

Pandora Stations has more functionality than Spotify Radio

Pandora algorithmically creates Stations for every artist, song, and genre. Once a Station is made, you can customize it by renaming it and adding other artists and songs to base the algorithm off of. You can also thumbs up or thumbs down songs to control what plays on the Station and to save for on-demand playback later. You can even save any Station or playlist to My Collection.

Each Pandora Station can be adjusted to different modes. First, there’s the My Station mode which is the basic mode that generates music based only on the way you have customized that Station. Then there is the Crowd Faves mode generates music based on the way you have customized the Station as well as the songs that have been given the thumbs up the most by other users. The Discovery mode generates music based on your customization and by prioritizing artists who don’t usually play on that Station, but still fit into it. Then you have the Deep Cuts mode which prioritizes the less popular songs from the artists you have added to the Station. After that, you get the Newly Released mode which is pretty self explanatory and prioritizes the newer songs from the Station’s artists. Lastly, the Artist Only mode plays music only from the artists in the Station.

Spotify has a similar functionality to Pandora Stations. Spotify generates Radio for every artist, playlist, and song. Artist and song Radios are static, though, so you cannot customize them through likes or dislikes, but this does mean you can save them to your Spotify library. Playlist Radios, on the other hand, generate new songs as you continue to listen to it and allow you to like or dislike its recommended songs to customize its recommendations. Every playlist you create on Spotify generates a Radio, and you can customize the Radio by adding songs to the playlist. This does mean, however, that you cannot save a playlist Radio to Your Library. While Spotify Radio has similar features to Pandora Stations, Pandora Stations is more diverse and useful.

Spotify just gets you

Spotify knows what you want to discover and has algorithmically designed playlists for almost anything you could wish for. Each week, Spotify churns out a Discover Weekly playlist, designed based on your listening history. It also makes a weekly Release Radar playlist which features new releases from the artists you follow. In addition, it makes Daily Mix playlists which are combinations of music you’ve listened to and music Spotify thinks is similar to those songs.

It doesn’t end there, though: Spotify is constantly coming up with creative new personalized playlists, such as the Time Capsule playlist (released in 2017) that took data from your listening history and created a playlist of music you likely would have listened to as a teenager. Additional examples are The Ones That Got Away playlist released at the end of 2017, which was made up of songs from earlier in the year that you didn’t discover but should have, the Tastebreakers playlist (2019) was made of music you wouldn’t normally listen to but would probably like, and the Pet Playlist (2020) was designed based on your listening history and the species and character traits of your pet.

While it seems like Spotify can read your mind, Pandora lets you decide what you want to discover by personalizing their algorithms manually. As I previously mentioned, each Station is customizable to your liking based on artists and songs as well as Station modes. It also recommends Genre Stations based on your listening activity. It can be nice to have autonomy over what songs you’re being fed, but when it comes down to it, Spotify makes great suggestions without you having to ask. And, when it comes to recommending songs for your playlists, Spotify gives you a little more freedom in accepting or rejecting its recommendations than Pandora does.

Both Spotify and Pandora make great curated playlists

Spotify also creates editorial playlists which are curated by employees of Spotify. There are hundreds of these being constantly updated, and they span across categories of genre, mood, language, region, record label, activity, artist identity, and more. The Browse tab is easy to navigate and some categories have categories within them, further allowing you to narrow in on what you want to hear. Some categories contain more than just music playlists; for example, the Class of 2020 category features podcasts about graduation as well. Furthermore, your Spotify Home page recommends a few of these editorial playlists based on what it thinks you will like.

Pandora is very similar when it comes to the quality and variety of its curated playlists. It categorizes playlists by mood, genre, time period, activity, and more. Many categories contain more than just music; they include anything relevant to the theme, like relevant Pandora Stories. Additionally, Pandora Stations based on genre and mood function very similarly to curated playlists, but what they play is variable rather than static.

While Pandora Stations is much better than Spotify Radio, Spotify makes up for it by having a better discovery algorithm. Whether you prefer the music discovery style of Spotify or Pandora is completely up to preference. You can’t go wrong with either.

Which has more available content, Spotify or Pandora?

While both Pandora and Spotify have large libraries of available music, some of your lesser-known favorite indie musicians are not available on Pandora.

You can find more indie music on Spotify

Spotify accepts music from pretty much anyone who submits to it, whether it is a direct submission to Spotify or from a third party distributor such as CDBaby. Independent artists can submit their music to Pandora for consideration, but the service only accepts submissions if artists sent via third-party distributor. It then follows up by filling out a Pandora-specific submission form for each individual release.

If you’re someone who only listens to relatively popular musicians, this shouldn’t count against Pandora, but independent musicians who have chosen not to use a third party distributor or have not filled out the submission form will not be available in Pandora’s catalog. Once an artist has done these things, there is still a chance Pandora will not accept their music. Additionally, Pandora pays artists less on average than Spotify does.

Podcasts are available on both Spotify and Pandora

Podcast fans don’t need to worry about whether you choose Spotify vs. Pandora: both streaming services offer a wide library of podcasts and allow you to save them to Your Library or My Collection. Both services allow for a few podcast-specific playback features such as forward and backward skipping and bookmarking your place, but Spotify also allows you to change your playback speed and set a podcast-specific sleep timer. Neither Pandora or Spotify offer silence trimmers or the ability to skip the first few minutes of every episode. For apps with more specific podcasting features, check out our list of the best podcast apps.

Does a Spotify or Pandora subscription cost more?

In this article pitting Spotify vs. Pandora, we are comparing Spotify Premium with Pandora Premium, but there are actually many different options for subscriptions available on both of these streaming services.

Additional Pandora Premium features include the Artist Only station mode, and the jukebox-style interface. If you’re interested in learning more details about the different Spotify memberships, check out our Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium article.

If you’re still unsure, Spotify and Pandora both offer 30-day Premium trials, and Pandora offers intermittent access to Pandora Premium by watching ads.

Spotify vs Pandora: Which has better social features?

One of the best things about Spotify is its social functionality, specifically the ability for users to create collaborative playlists with friends. This means anybody with the link to the playlist can add or delete songs from it. Additionally, you can find and follow your friends, explore their listening history, playlists they’ve made, and, on the desktop app you can view their live listening activity. It’s worth mentioning that these features can be disabled if you find them invasive.

Pandora also has social features. With Pandora you can follow your friends and look at their Stations and liked songs, but you can’t view their active listening history or create collaborative playlists.

You can integrate Facebook with both Spotify and Pandora to make finding friends easier. In addition, Spotify has partnerships with Tinder and Instagram, making it easy to share your music tastes with your suitors and followers.

Get artist exclusives with Spotify and Pandora

Pandora offers exclusive artist messages, which are short messages recorded by artists that occasionally play after their songs. These include things such as information about upcoming releases, videos, and concerts. You can disable this if you prefer not to listen to these kinds of updates. Some artists curate exclusive playlists of their songs interspersed with voice messages explaining what the song means to them. These playlists can also include music by other artists with voice messages about how the other artist has inspired them. Similarly, Pandora Stories mixes music playlists with artist commentary typically describing their career or the process of creating a particular album. If you’re into behind the scenes facts this could be a very compelling case for Pandora.

Spotify also has some exclusive artist content, and while these do not contain any commentary artists can add playlists they’ve created to their Spotify profile so you can discover what your favorite musicians are listening to and getting inspired by. In addition, Spotify has exclusive music recordings of artists’ original songs or covers called Spotify Singles, which are recorded and produced in Spotify’s studios. Spotify also displays upcoming concerts of your favorite artists on their profile pages as well as on a centralized page for Concerts coming up in your city.

Both streaming services have exclusive artist features, but which ones you find more appealing is just a matter of preference.

Which has better additional features, Spotify or Pandora?

Spotify wraps up your year with a bow on top

Every December, Spotify Wrapped is released—you’ve probably seen everyone’s Instagram Stories cluttered with their results around the beginning of the month. Wrapped compiles all the data collected from your Spotify account throughout the year and delivers it to you in satisfying statistics and graphics. It tells you the artist you listened to most over the past year, the genre you listened to most, the song you listened to most, how many total minutes you spent listening, the countries your favorite artists come from, and more. It creates a playlist of the 100 songs you listened to most over the year and often creates other playlists based on your listening history to go along with it (such as songs you probably would have liked from that year). Wrapped is always a fun feature in helping you boost your feelings of music taste superiority or feelings of shame due to how many times you listened to your guilty pleasure song.

Pandora does something similar at the end of the year called Playback, which is based on Spotify Wrapped. While it doesn’t get as much clout as Spotify Wrapped, it offers very similar information for Pandora users.

Pandora’s voice assistant integration isn’t very useful

Pandora allows you to activate a voice assistant. By saying the wake phrase “Hey Pandora,” you can ask Pandora to play a specific Station, change the volume, or tell you the name of a song. Unfortunately, the assistant only works when the app is open and live on your screen, so it seems like you could just manually give these commands by the time you’ve unlocked your device.

Spotify and Pandora are excellent car companions

Both Spotify and Pandora can be integrated with navigation apps, such as Waze and Google Maps. Additionally, both are compatible with Carplay and Android Auto, so long as your car has this functionality. These tools allow for easier control over your audio playback while in the car, but you shouldn’t use them while actively driving.

In addition, some music-listening devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy Buds Plus, have partnered with Spotify for easy touch access to the streaming service. Due mainly to Pandora being less popular than Spotify, earphone integration is not likely to be found for Pandora users.

Spotify vs. Pandora: What’s the best streaming service?

Ultimately, Spotify wins this contest of Spotify vs. Pandora for a few reasons, but it truly was very close. For the same pricing, Spotify affords you better audio quality, social features, underground music, and music discovery options like Discover Weekly. However, if these things are not as important to you as exclusive artist messages, customizable Stations, or if you just prefer the interface of Pandora, you may find yourself favoring Pandora over Spotify. I didn’t expect to be this impressed by Pandora, but its really upped the ante since the old days, and I now consider Pandora a legitimate competitor to Spotify. You truly cannot go wrong with either streaming service.

Frequently asked questions about Spotify vs Pandora