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Add to SafariWhen comparing Pandora vs TIDAL, the Slant community recommends TIDAL for most people. In the question“What are the best music streaming services?” TIDAL is ranked 7th while Pandora is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose TIDAL is:
The Tidal music streaming service has a maximum streaming quality of 1,411Kbps bit rate with FLAC-formatted lossless files. This is quite an upgrade compared to most music streaming services, which go at about 320Kbps bit rate.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Most personalized radio experience
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.
Not only does Pandora use this plethora of conditions to determine each song's inclusion in your station, but it also displays the specific reason that each song was played, as well as its relation to your input criteria.
Pro Easily learns what you like and dislike
The Pandora music streaming service allows you to rate each song played with a "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" to signal your opinion of the song that is played. The station incorporates every single rating to intelligently learn your preferences over time, resulting in an extremely tailored station based on your input.
Pro Extremely versatile stations
Unlike other music streaming services, Pandora allows you to create a station from a single song, artist, album, or genre, and the service has a huge library of over 800,000 tracks from 80,000 artists.
More importantly, Pandora lets you mix and match an unlimited number of input criteria to create a station for any mood/style/occasion.
Pro Available on mobile and in vehicles
Pandora has an application on all major mobile platforms, including iOS, Android, and WP7. In addition, it is available in numerous vehicles as an add-on, many with voice commands.
Pro Predicts what you like with great accuracy
Pandora's music genome algorithms are eerily accurate to the point where it can be considered a personal DJ.
Pro Free
Being available for free means anyone can try the service in order to see if it appeals.
Pro It's the digital version of that friend that knows music better than you and also knows what you will like
A go to source when you want to hear something new that you will like.
Pro Premium Streaming
Premium is just like any other paid streaming service for the same amount. It does the same things and has a a comparable library. With the personalized radio it makes it a force that is often overlooked.
Pro Amazing quality
The Tidal music streaming service has a maximum streaming quality of 1,411Kbps bit rate with FLAC-formatted lossless files. This is quite an upgrade compared to most music streaming services, which go at about 320Kbps bit rate.
Pro Pays artists more
As of March 2018, TIDAL pays the artists 2/3 more than Apple Music and 3 times more than Spotify, for an equivalent catalog and subscription price. (40M songs on TIDAL and Apple Music vs. 30M on Spotify, $9.99/mo for all 3). Napster is the only service that pays the artists more than TIDAL.
Pro Discounted student subscription
Tidal offers a 50% discount on monthly subscriptions for students with a valid university email account.
Pro Awsome desktop app
Pro Built-in audio search
The Tidal music streaming service mobile app has a built-in audio search, similar to Shazaam and Soundhound.
Pro Military/veteran discount a BIG plus
Pro Get one-month free Hi-Fi (FLAC, 24-bit music)
Almost all if not most songs are 24-bit FLAC files, "Master" is an ever higher quality
Cons
Con Not available outside the US
For those that live outside the US, the service is not available to them, which greatly limits users from around the globe.
Con Limited bitrate
Most songs played on Pandora Radio are 128 kpbs bitrate. That being said, the paid version of the service offers songs with a bitrate of 192 kbps.
Con Limited skips
Pandora makes it very difficult by limiting your playlist to only a specific song or artist. The player also does not allow you to rewind or repeat any songs.
You are only granted six skips per station per hour, and even this is limited to 72 skips per user per day. This is often frustrating if you are trying to focus your playlist on a very specific music selection.
Con Rips artists off
Only Youtube pays artists less than Pandora. Spotify has been under fire for not paying artists enough, at $0.0044 / play (as of march 2018). Well, Pandora pays less than 3 times that! ($0.0013). Tidal pays artists roughly 10 times more ($0.0125).
Con Frequent advertisements
The free version of Pandora has frequent audio advertisements that are injected every few songs, making the service impossible to use in a party-type setting. However, these can be avoided by paying for the premium edition or by using other ad-blocking software.
Con Limited artists
There are only 1 million songs on the service. This means there are a lot of artists missing.
Con Songs may take some time to load
the Tidal music streaming service may take up to 10 seconds of buffering to load and play a song, sometimes even stopping a song mid-way to buffer.
Con No free tier
The Tidal music streaming service has no free tier available. Only a 7-day trial. While the trial is helpful for learning what the service has to offer, it may not allow for a complete picture due to the time limit.
Con Offline isn’t offline and mobile data is consumed in one song
Con Hi-FI Can be expensive for some
