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Both services seem like great ideas that have largely gone extinct. Radio that you never lose reception with... streaming music with a user-seeded playlist... j

by crummy 8y ago

Both services seem like great ideas that have largely gone extinct. Radio that you never lose reception with... streaming music with a user-seeded playlist... just hard to get excited about in 2018. Or 2008 really.

StudentStuff 8y ago
Pandora was a first mover, and they have 70 million monthly users, they are the elephant in the room. As a teen I rather enjoyed certain SirusXM channels while driving in friends cars, and if there was a reasonably priced SirusXM/Pandora bundle, I may be tempted to subscribe. Combined these two companies have 100 million users. Pandora user count: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/11/03/pandora-is-losing-850000-listeners-every-month/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/11/03/pandora... SirusXM User Count: http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/SiriusXM-Beats-2017-Subscriber-Guidance-Issues-2018-Subscriber-and-Financial-Guidance/default.aspx http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-release...
- foota 8y ago
  (a nontrivial number of users might be subscribed to both though)
- xenomachina 8y ago
  > if there was a reasonably priced SirusXM/Pandora bundle... The fact that SirusXM wants you to pay extra for their streaming service after you're already spending ~$16/month/radio makes me think that any kind of "reasonably priced" bundle is very unlikely.
- ntsplnkv2 8y ago
  How many of those Users are just trials with new car purchases? My car came with 3 years of sirius xm...3 years. Free.
Johnny555 8y ago
I like Pandora - I don't feel like creating my own playlists and Pandora does a pretty good job of playing music I like after a few thumbs up/downs. Sometimes though I really want to listen to a particular artist and I use Amazon Music Unlimited for that, but their playlists are not as good (to me) as Pandora.
- settsu 8y ago
  Pandora has an on-demand library for paid users but the catalog has inexcusable gaps for a music service in 2018 and isn’t s pleasure to use. Frankly the user experience for their app has needed help for at least a couple years.
romwell 8y ago
>streaming music with a user-seeded playlist... just hard to get excited about in 2018. Or 2008 really. The only reason why I think that may be the case is because Pandora has been doing it so well for a long time. I've never managed to get that out of other services. Am I doing things wrong? I'm all ears for suggestions, especially now that Pandora might go through some changes due to acquisition.
- nightfly 8y ago
  Youtube music has done a decent job for me, better than anything Spotify has suggested, but still nowhere as good as Pandora.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    Spotify often suggests me songs I already like but haven't listened to on the platform, which is a good sign to me. The suggestions are also just diverse enough for me to discover new stuff. I don't know Pandora or Youtube (though I have generally bad experience with its suggestions), but am pretty happy with Spotify.
    - romwell 8y ago
      >Spotify often suggests me songs I already like but haven't listened to on the platform This is exactly why I like Pandora, to the point of it being eerie at times. Like that one time when I was listening to a Trans Am[1] CD in my car, and thought - well, I've listened to that disk enough times already; let's listen to something new on Pandora -- and it gave me that exact track, while the band never popped up on any of my stations before! The band was not a station seed, and it's not a band with a huge presence either - I got their CD randomly somewhere. I know it's a coincidence, but just goes to show how well their algorithms are tuned. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Am_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Am_(band)
  - romwell 8y ago
    Yes. The thing with Youtube is that it only can use one song as a seed, whereas with a Pandora station, you use multiple positive and negative seeds to trim the station to your taste. It's like comparing weeds growing in your backyard to a carefully trimmed bonsai tree. However, I'd go to Youtube for hand-picked playlists. There's always a place for that.
compcoffee 8y ago
>Radio that you never lose reception with And sadly this isn't even the case. I recently purchased a new car that came with the SiriusXM 3-month trial. We drop reception in the country and in town (among tall buildings). In fact, it drops more often than mobile internet (why doesn't XM have 10s buffer?). The subscription is also more expensive than Apple Music or Google Play Music and the car comes with Android Auto and CarPlay. How they expect to compete is beyond me. I guess that's why they bought Pandora.
- cschmidt 8y ago
  I lose reception every time I drive under a bridge, for a couple of seconds. It does seem odd they can't do better.
- josefresco 8y ago
  > why doesn't XM have 10s buffer? It's odd because some of the first generation Sirius radios touted "DVR" like functionality, which makes it clear that buffering is possible. I would imagine they started to phase out that element of the hardware because of cost (especially since most are bundled with the vehicle) In the same line of thinking, my navigation apps (Google Maps and Waze) also glitch out when driving through extended length tunnels (under Boston for example). I find this odd given that the app knows my route, and these tunnels are used by millions each year.
  - joezydeco 8y ago
    I worked on some of those XM radios with the DVR/buffering capability, before the merger. Really, it was just limited to the amount of storage you had. I think the one I did allowed up to 30 minutes but of course you lost it when you switched channels. The music is so insanely compressed (the best channels were 32 kbit AAC+) and RAM/Flash is so much cheaper now, it could really be anything you wanted these days. The satellite signal itself has a bit of time diversity in it (in case one of the birds disappears), like about 1500 mSec worth, as well as terrestrial backup transmitters in most cities (SXM's dirty little secret), so if you really have loss of signal you must be underground for a while.

by crummy 8y ago

StudentStuff 8y ago

Pandora was a first mover, and they have 70 million monthly users, they are the elephant in the room. As a teen I rather enjoyed certain SirusXM channels while driving in friends cars, and if there was a reasonably priced SirusXM/Pandora bundle, I may be tempted to subscribe. Combined these two companies have 100 million users. Pandora user count: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/11/03/pandora-is-losing-850000-listeners-every-month/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/11/03/pandora... SirusXM User Count: http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/SiriusXM-Beats-2017-Subscriber-Guidance-Issues-2018-Subscriber-and-Financial-Guidance/default.aspx http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-release...

foota 8y ago
(a nontrivial number of users might be subscribed to both though)
xenomachina 8y ago
> if there was a reasonably priced SirusXM/Pandora bundle... The fact that SirusXM wants you to pay extra for their streaming service after you're already spending ~$16/month/radio makes me think that any kind of "reasonably priced" bundle is very unlikely.
ntsplnkv2 8y ago
How many of those Users are just trials with new car purchases? My car came with 3 years of sirius xm...3 years. Free.

Johnny555 8y ago

I like Pandora - I don't feel like creating my own playlists and Pandora does a pretty good job of playing music I like after a few thumbs up/downs. Sometimes though I really want to listen to a particular artist and I use Amazon Music Unlimited for that, but their playlists are not as good (to me) as Pandora.

settsu 8y ago
Pandora has an on-demand library for paid users but the catalog has inexcusable gaps for a music service in 2018 and isn’t s pleasure to use. Frankly the user experience for their app has needed help for at least a couple years.

romwell 8y ago

>streaming music with a user-seeded playlist... just hard to get excited about in 2018. Or 2008 really. The only reason why I think that may be the case is because Pandora has been doing it so well for a long time. I've never managed to get that out of other services. Am I doing things wrong? I'm all ears for suggestions, especially now that Pandora might go through some changes due to acquisition.

nightfly 8y ago
Youtube music has done a decent job for me, better than anything Spotify has suggested, but still nowhere as good as Pandora.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Spotify often suggests me songs I already like but haven't listened to on the platform, which is a good sign to me. The suggestions are also just diverse enough for me to discover new stuff. I don't know Pandora or Youtube (though I have generally bad experience with its suggestions), but am pretty happy with Spotify.
  - romwell 8y ago
    >Spotify often suggests me songs I already like but haven't listened to on the platform This is exactly why I like Pandora, to the point of it being eerie at times. Like that one time when I was listening to a Trans Am[1] CD in my car, and thought - well, I've listened to that disk enough times already; let's listen to something new on Pandora -- and it gave me that exact track, while the band never popped up on any of my stations before! The band was not a station seed, and it's not a band with a huge presence either - I got their CD randomly somewhere. I know it's a coincidence, but just goes to show how well their algorithms are tuned. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Am_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Am_(band)
- romwell 8y ago
  Yes. The thing with Youtube is that it only can use one song as a seed, whereas with a Pandora station, you use multiple positive and negative seeds to trim the station to your taste. It's like comparing weeds growing in your backyard to a carefully trimmed bonsai tree. However, I'd go to Youtube for hand-picked playlists. There's always a place for that.

compcoffee 8y ago

>Radio that you never lose reception with And sadly this isn't even the case. I recently purchased a new car that came with the SiriusXM 3-month trial. We drop reception in the country and in town (among tall buildings). In fact, it drops more often than mobile internet (why doesn't XM have 10s buffer?). The subscription is also more expensive than Apple Music or Google Play Music and the car comes with Android Auto and CarPlay. How they expect to compete is beyond me. I guess that's why they bought Pandora.

cschmidt 8y ago
I lose reception every time I drive under a bridge, for a couple of seconds. It does seem odd they can't do better.
josefresco 8y ago
> why doesn't XM have 10s buffer? It's odd because some of the first generation Sirius radios touted "DVR" like functionality, which makes it clear that buffering is possible. I would imagine they started to phase out that element of the hardware because of cost (especially since most are bundled with the vehicle) In the same line of thinking, my navigation apps (Google Maps and Waze) also glitch out when driving through extended length tunnels (under Boston for example). I find this odd given that the app knows my route, and these tunnels are used by millions each year.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  I worked on some of those XM radios with the DVR/buffering capability, before the merger. Really, it was just limited to the amount of storage you had. I think the one I did allowed up to 30 minutes but of course you lost it when you switched channels. The music is so insanely compressed (the best channels were 32 kbit AAC+) and RAM/Flash is so much cheaper now, it could really be anything you wanted these days. The satellite signal itself has a bit of time diversity in it (in case one of the birds disappears), like about 1500 mSec worth, as well as terrestrial backup transmitters in most cities (SXM's dirty little secret), so if you really have loss of signal you must be underground for a while.