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How Pandora and Spotify Work

The Pandora music streaming service is the best at predicting which songs the user would enjoy hearing. Unlike services which have rudimentary recommendation algorithms, Pandora uses over 400 selection attributes that are combined to form over 2,000 focus traits including rhythm syncopation, key tonality, harmonies, and instrumental proficiency. Just like Spotify Unlimited, Pandora Premium will cost $9.99 per month with a 60-day free trial. Existing Pandora Plus subscribers received a longer 6-month trial. Spotify offers a 30-day free. You can skip certain songs, but you are limited to a certain amount of skips per hour. Pandora's created playlists do become more personalized in time, as your listening history becomes more apparent. Pandora has a music library of around 1 million songs. You can access Pandora with ads for free or you can pay $4 a month for ad-free service.

When a user visits Pandora and creates a radio station based on, for example, his or her favorite artist, Pandora searches for similar artists and songs using the complex algorithms of the Music Genome Project, a music database that Pandora has patented. The Music Genome Project compiles information on songs, first categorizing each one by genre. A musician then analyzes every song for up to 30 minutes at a time, finding unique characteristics with which to further categorize the music by (e.g., types of instruments used, gender of lead vocalist, rhythm, tonality, etc.). Most songs have hundreds of attributes that help Pandora determine the similarities and differences between one song and another.

Pandora users can further customize their personal radio stations by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to songs that are recommended to them. They can also share their stations with friends; however, linking to specific songs directly is impossible due to licensing restrictions.

Spotify is less about new music discovery than it is about replacing traditional music players, like iTunes or Windows Media Player, with streamable music. Spotify depends on a large catalogue of roughly 20 million songs to accomplish this—a sticking point in some countries when major record labels have not wanted to make deals with the company. In theory, users should be able to create an account on Spotify, search for any song or artist that they like, and begin streaming that music with Spotify's online player.

Playlists

On Pandora, radio stations are really just playlists (and vice versa) and come with the same limitations that all Pandora stations come with. Users can build their own stations/playlists based on their favorite music, use friends' shared playlists, or take advantage of one of many public Pandora stations that are based on genre. However, manually adding individual songs or albums is not supported.

Playlists on Spotify work in the same way that playlists in traditional media players work. Music is manually added or removed by the user. The only difference between Spotify's playlists and traditional media players' playlists is that Spotify's can be easily shared (and even co-edited). This has made Spotify a popular choice among those searching for a free or cheap and legal way to share their favorite artists and songs. It has even led to the creation of full websites (e.g., Playlists.net) dedicated to sharing and rating spotify playlists.

Pandora allows users to create up to 100 unique stations/playlists, while Spotify puts no limit on the number of playlists a user can create.

Phone Apps

Pandora has mobile phone apps for Android and iOS, as well as some limited support among Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries. On the iPhone, the Pandora app can only be installed using a U.S., Australian, or New Zealand iTunes account.

Spotify has apps available on a wide variety of mobile devices around the globe. Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile and Windows Phone are all supported.

Free vs Paid Subscriptions

Relatively few restrictions are placed on non-paying Pandora and Spotify members. The most jarring difference between free and paid memberships on both services is the presence of ads; paying members experience no audio ads on Pandora or Spotify.

Pandora's premium membership is known as Pandora One and costs $4.99 a month. Spotify's subscription is known as Spotify Premium; at $9.99 a month, it is more expensive than Pandora One.

As of 2014, students can subscribe to Spotify Premium for $4.99 a month provided they have a .edu email address from an accredited college or university in the U.S. that they can prove they are enrolled in. This reduced pricing is available to students for three years.

Restrictions on Free Membership

Both Pandora and Spotify put restrictions on non-paying users. The restrictions have changed numerous times over the years as both companies have tried out different pricing models and been affected by changing licensing fees or laws.

At present, Pandora's restrictions on its free members are as follows:

• Audio advertisements that last for 15 to 30 seconds periodically interrupt music. The number of ads served up in an hour varies depending on the operating device (i.e., whether listening to Pandora via computer, mobile, or car).

• Restrictions on how many songs can be skipped in a day. Six skips are allowed, per hour and per station; only 30 skips are permitted across all stations in a 24-hour period. Clicking the 'next' play button, selecting 'I'm tired of this track,' or downvoting (giving a thumbs down to) a song while it plays all count as a skip.

• Reduced audio quality. Music for free members plays at 64 kilobits per second in an AAC+ format. Built-in apps for televisions and other non-mobile devices, like Roku, may receive a slightly higher quality of 128 kbps.

• Timeouts. To avoid paying royalties on songs that users might not be listening to, Pandora periodically times out if the player has not been used in a while.

Spotify places similar restrictions on its free members:

• 15- to 30-second audio ads.

• Reduced audio quality. However, at 160 kbps in the Ogg format Spotify's free version offers a higher quality sound than Pandora does.

Premium Membership Benefits

Pandora One's benefits include the following:

• No ads.

• Higher audio quality of 192 kbps.

• Downloadable desktop application. Users are no longer limited to using Pandora on their mobile devices or in the browser.

• Custom skins for the web application.

• Fewer timeouts, allowing users to listen for longer periods of time without having to interact with the player.

Spotify Premium benefits include the following:

• No ads.

Transfer Pandora Playlist To Spotify

• Ability to download music for offline listening.

• Higher audio quality of 320 kbps for some songs.

• Use of Spotify Connect, which allows users to hook up other hardware to Spotify's mobile app.

Library Size

In 2011, Tim Westergren, a founder of Pandora, stated that the service had over 900,000 songs in its library catalogue at the time. More recent statistics are difficult to find, but it is likely Pandora has well over a million songs in its database as of 2014. Pandora has a good track record of finding and adding obscure independent artists, which aids users in discovering new music.

Because Spotify depends on having songs available on demand, the company has been more aggressive about making deals with major labels as well as well known independent labels. In 2012, its catalogue was said to hold about 20 million songs; however, the size of the catalogue varies by region due to licensing restrictions.

Transfer Pandora To Spotify

Social Features

Pandora and Spotify provide users with several ways to share music, but Spotify has more widespread, general sharing capabilities than Pandora does.

On Pandora, users can share links to stations via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Users can also share links to individual tracks, but the web address points to general song information—lyrics, purchase info, and a link to create a station based on the song, not listen to it directly (see an example).

With Spotify, users can share individual songs, full albums, and playlists. This is done via special links that target the Spotify application itself. This flexibility has led many third-party websites to adopt Spotify links as a method to legally share music. And as of 2014, Spotify has teamed up with Last.fm, an online music statistics and recommendation service, to try to compete with Pandora.

Parental Controls

For parents who are concerned about the music their children might listen to, Pandora is the better option, as it offers parental control options that will play censored versions of songs and exclude others entirely. Because every song is analyzed by real people, Pandora's parental controls are very reliable and do not simply rely on 'Parental Advisory' labels.

In contrast to Pandora's rigorous parental control system, Spotify offers no such capabilities. This means that explicit, uncensored music is available to anyone who signs up to Spotify.

Other Features

While Spotify's flexibility may make it more universal on the web in some respects, Pandora is found a lot more frequently beyond computers and mobile devices. Not only do many audio-video receives, media players, and HDTVs carry default support for Pandora, but so too do many modern automobiles that have digital radio systems.

Spotify can be found on or downloaded for many mobile devices and media players, but it is rarer on HDTVs and is not built in to any vehicle's digital radio systems by default. In some cases, Spotify Connect can be used to join Spotify with a device or set of speakers, which are controlled via the Spotify mobile app, but Connect requires a premium membership.

Availability and Popularity

Pandora has more users than Spotify does, but Spotify's service is available to more users around the world. Whereas Pandora only serves users in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, due to licensing issues, Spotify reaches dozens of countries and territories (click here for a full list). This has made Spotify popular outside of the U.S., but Americans remain loyal to Pandora according to statistics.

In 2014, Pandora reached 200 million users, with nearly 70 million active each month. By comparison, Spotify has about 40 million users as of 2014, 10 million of them premium subscribers.

Both Pandora and Spotify depend on banner advertisements, music-interrupting ads, and premium member subscriptions for funding. However, as of 2014, both companies operate at a net loss.

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References

‘Spotify,’ the name itself is widespread, and undoubtedly, it’s the most favorite platform for listening to music. Spotify has millions of users, and it’s available on PC, Android & iOS. The platform offers a long-range of Music with various Genre’s. You can create playlists genre-wise and let the music play according to the mood. Some of the top features of Spotify are:

• Unlimited songs
• Classification of songs genre and artist wise
• Playlist feature
• Spotify radio
• Great app to download the latest music and podcasts
• Filters to pinpoint your favorite songs
• Offers private music sessions

Transfer Spotify Playlist To Pandora

With all the cool features, you can create lots of playlists having all your favorite’s under one roof and can be played according to your mood.

Well, the ‘Playlists‘ are essential, and there are many users who use ‘Spotify’ & “Apple Music’ platform for hearing songs. Indeed, both the platform offers a variety of features, but to manage different Playlists on different stations is quite a headache. If you are suffering from the same, then you might be looking to shift the same Spotify Playlist to your Apple music. So, here are some applications that will help transfer Spotify Playlist to Apple Music in 2019. Without any further delay, let’s jump into the important steps.

How to Transfer Spotify Playlist to Apple Music in 2020

Below are the two most popular applications which will be helping in transferring all your playlists to Apple Music.

#1 SongShift

SongShift is a free application available in Appstore, and by using it, you can easily transfer your Spotify playlist to Apple music. The plus point of using the shift is that it supports many platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Pandora, and Napster.

• Download the free app from Appstore.
• Open the application and give access to move the files between the Spotify account and Appstore.
• Select the playlist that you want to transfer.
• Select the destination folder as Apple music.
• You can always make a new playlist where you want the Spotify songs to be added, or you can just add the songs to your current playlist. It is really that easy.

The free version works perfectly well if you are not bugged by the occasional ads, and you are connected with a maximum of two music streams. If you want to up the notch and toggle between more than two music platforms, then you can always go for the paid version of SongShift. It will cost you a mere 3.99 dollars. One important thing is that SongShift lets you transfer the playlists that are added to the library.

#2 Workflow

If you are looking to transfer the songs that are not in your music library, then the better option will be to use the Workflow application. Setting the application might take some time, but after the initial struggle, the rest of the process is smooth as pie. So, let’s jump into the steps to transfer your favorite music.

• Download the application from Appstore, and if you are running iOS 12 on your device, then just use Shortcuts app.
• Get these two workflow’s Spotify API Token and Spotify Playlist to Apple Music.
• Now type the following site in your browser to access the developer mode.
• Developer.spotify.com
• From there, you will see the client ID and client secret. Enter both in Spotify API Token.
• Open the Spotify app, and choose the playlist that you want to copy to your Apple Music.
• Execute the playlist in Apple Music Flow.

You will see that the playlist is copied to your apple music in no time. Just like the SongShift, you can either receive the songs in the current playlist, or you can create a new playlist. Both processes are amazingly simple and get the job done, and if you want to move the playlist from your Apple Music to Spotify, you can use the method mentioned above. However, in the case of Workflow, get the Apple link to Spotify instead of Spotify playlist to Apple Music.