The Perfect Listen: What Station Best Suits your Needs?

Visualize yourself on a Sunday morning, sitting by an open window which lets into the room a cool, refreshing draft. You content yourself with tea and fixings of eggs and baked apple popovers. Outside, the ground is covered with acorns. A proliferation of redly hued leaves deck the oaks bordering your yard. With the cat on your lap, you skim over the sports highlights to the soft tunes of Tommy Dorsey and Fats Waller. Later on you go to the gym for a cardio workout. On the treadmill, you not only crank out six miles, but you also crank up the volume for your Amon Amarth, Periphery, and Judas Priest albums. At six o’clock that evening you arrive at a friend’s birthday party. After a few cups of fruit punch, you dance to disco classics, tell practical jokes, and theorize about what flavor the cake is going to be (meaning that it ought to contain some form of chocolate). Checking the time, you resolve to take the freeway home. Stanley Clarke keeps you awake when driving down the road. (Unfortunately), the evening comes to a close with your effort to finish a long-term assignment. Classical composers motivate you to complete the conclusion paragraph of your persuasive essay. You sleep to Tibetan singing bowls to make peace with your mind before transitioning into a busy school week.

Music has found its niche in practically everything we do. People have come to rely on music as a stimulant, as a friend, as a therapist. What we listen to has transformed into an essential part of our identities.

Thanks to technology, streaming music has grown immense popularity. Listening to your favorite artists is no harder than pressing the play button. Ratting out your least favorite songs has become as convenient as giving them pause or thumbing them down. Streaming stations allows you to customize what is played (to a certain degree) in order for you to have optimal listening experiences 99.9 percent of the time.

A plethora of stations exist to suit the needs of everyday listeners. Parallels and variations do appear, however, in some of the most competitive stations. Hence, this article is written to provide brief summaries of Pandora Radio, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Pandora Radio is available in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, and holds up to 1.5 million songs. Stations can be created out of a particular genre or artist. The listener can personalize their stations by utilizing the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” device, which affects how the logarithmic Music Genome Project streams a station’s songs. If the listener likes a track, they can give it a thumbs up; this causes the Music Genome Project to select songs similar to the one of which the listener approved. The thumbs down button removes the track from that station. Other content includes song lyrics, band biographies, and lists of artists a listener may like based on their “thumb history”. Users can share stations via social media sites and further their musical explorations with people with whom they are friendly. (Otherwise, users can privatize their stations.) Settings include an alarm clock, optional audio qualities, and the enablement or censorship of explicit tracks. A news feed notifies listeners of any artists releasing new material, touring in the general area, or streaming a live concert. One setback of Pandora Radio is its low audio quality: 64 kbps (kilobytes per second), for the free station and 192 kbps for Pandora One. The number of songs is extremely limited compared to its featured competitors. Listeners cannot rewind or repeat a song; skipping songs is also limited. A subscription to Pandora One ($4.99 per month) allows more skips and no disruptive advertisements. If a listener desires to explore a genre or discover artists suited to their tastes, Pandora is a favorable option.

With over 30 million songs in its library, Spotify is accessible to over three dozen countries worldwide. A listener can create their own playlists or listen to playlists already made. A “Genres and Moods” section supplies listeners with stations to help promote (or demote) different emotions. Spotify, like Pandora, recommends artists to a listener according to their preferences. Unlike Pandora, however, a listener possesses more control over what songs they want to hear. A Spotify user can save favorite songs or albums to their library and listen to them as they please. If you are a lover of albums, Spotify is an optimal choice. Free listening involves occasional advertisements; Spotify Premium costs $9.99 per month. Despite its expenses, if you are an ardent music lover, the upgrade may be worth the investment. The station’s audio quality, when free, is 160 kbps, and when upgraded to Spotify Premium, the quality is improved to 320 kbps (for certain tracks). One can also skip, rewind, or repeat songs without ado on the free program. Listeners have the ability to control the types of notifications they can receive (some of the many include new album releases, friend activity, coming concerts, and recommendations). A user can make public their stations or keep them private. If a listener knows what music they enjoy, then Spotify is a recommended device.

Apple Music, designed to supersede iTunes Radio and Beats 1, offers about 30 million songs to over one hundred countries. Connect is a device which allows listeners to acquire new material, interviews, and/or messages from their favorite artists. New or unsigned artists can also use Connect to share their music with others. The sound quality of Apple Music is 256 kbps. Siri is integrated into Apple Music (depending on the device on which the program is used); Siri can be referred to for the purpose of answering questions about artist biographies and chart statistics. Like Pandora and Spotify, a user can construct playlists and make a station based on a genre or artist. Apple Music boasts that, rather than using logarithmic methods to determine the next song, the songs are hand-selected. Subscribers to Apple Music can enjoy stations played worldwide. In order to get access to the program’s entire library, a listener must pay and subscribe. (A single membership is $9.99 per month, while a family membership is $14.99 per month). Another common complaint about Apple Music is the way it responds to “likes” and “dislikes”. A disliked artist may periodically appear, much to the frustration of listeners. Apple Music would be preferable if someone wants to have more access to helpful devices like Siri and Connect as well as worldwide radio stations.