Trying Slacker and Pandora
- Thread starter Brad Bishop
- Start date
From what I've read and from my experience there seems to be about 100 or so songs in each channel. Upon refresh it generally removes some and add some new ones, to keep the playlist fresh. I find that if I do this about once a week, though I have gone as long as a month. The playlist do stay pretty fresh. It isn't that you won't ever hear repeats, its just that it will play through those 100 songs before you do again. Which would take several hours.
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbet is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
I assume your talking about the paid version. Because I have the free version on my iPhone and it seems like it only caches maybe 15 songs as I start hearing repeats after only 2 hours. Granted I skip stuff so that is decreasing the playlist quicker but there is no way I've gone 7 hours between a repeat.
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbet is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
I am a Plus subscriber. I listen to a custom station so I don't skip that often. I haven't really got my watch out but when I start hearing familiar songs again, I refresh. I do it about every 3 days. I usually listen to about 2-3 hours a day most days.
My logic for 7 hours was 100 songs * 4 minute / song time = 400 minutes of music which is 6.67 hours of music (which I rounded to 7 since 4 minutes was only an aproximation anyways).
I cannot speak to the free version either because I am a plus subscriber. The subscription cost is so cheap I see no reason not to subscribe myself. None the less my user experience mirrors that of IRBS in that you should end up with about 7 hours of playback for being inundated with repeats.
I downloaded the two to my cell phone, and here's my thoughts:
Pandora's not bad, especially if you have a favorite band. I typed in "Nine Inch Nails" and every other song's from Trent, but I also heard other bands somewhat tied in to NIN like Marilyn Manson and Johnny Cash. However, I also heard John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" on my station. Huh?!?! Plus, what's with the obscure ambient crap like Zero 7 mixed in?
However, I like Slacker much, much better. It's more like Sirius since there's a variety of channels and artists, and their 80's alternative station's quite awesome. I've given the 80's and 90's alternative and the hard rock channels good listens and even though I got rid of a few artists from these stations, they're all good, IMO. I even like the fact that the hard rock channel does a great job with new music. They might be better than Octane, which has gotten stale with lame-o chick rock and obscure junk. However, hearing PSAs every three songs and watching an Olay ad because I changed the station can get old.
Pandora's not bad, especially if you have a favorite band. I typed in "Nine Inch Nails" and every other song's from Trent, but I also heard other bands somewhat tied in to NIN like Marilyn Manson and Johnny Cash. However, I also heard John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" on my station. Huh?!?! Plus, what's with the obscure ambient crap like Zero 7 mixed in?
However, I like Slacker much, much better. It's more like Sirius since there's a variety of channels and artists, and their 80's alternative station's quite awesome. I've given the 80's and 90's alternative and the hard rock channels good listens and even though I got rid of a few artists from these stations, they're all good, IMO. I even like the fact that the hard rock channel does a great job with new music. They might be better than Octane, which has gotten stale with lame-o chick rock and obscure junk. However, hearing PSAs every three songs and watching an Olay ad because I changed the station can get old.
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbet is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
One thing I like about Slacker and don't like about Pandora is that Slacker gives me a pretty decent list of predefined channels which I can then alter/fine tune.
Pandora is more like starting off with a blank slate. It left me thinking, "I want to listen to some general music I like and go from there, not start from scratch and have to start rating everything so that I can get that one channel of music I like.."
Perhaps I'm missing it on Pandora. It looks like it's sophisticated in that if you spent a good bit of time with it then you really could have nice streams/channels. I just don't want to put that much effort into it.
Pandora is more like starting off with a blank slate. It left me thinking, "I want to listen to some general music I like and go from there, not start from scratch and have to start rating everything so that I can get that one channel of music I like.."
Perhaps I'm missing it on Pandora. It looks like it's sophisticated in that if you spent a good bit of time with it then you really could have nice streams/channels. I just don't want to put that much effort into it.