[he.pennypacker]

I am not happy.

I use pandora as my sole audio entertainment in my car as an alternative to my ipod and repetitive FM radio. I just noticed today while driving home that Pandora is now implementing audio ads between a couple of songs now. How lame is that? What is the point of choosing Pandora now over Slacker radio? At least slacker has better audio quality

[digitalb0y]

First of all, Pandora's had audio ads for a long time through the website, they're pretty easy to ignore. Secondly, I can think of lots of advantages Pandora has over Slacker. Smaller app size, smarter algorithms for learning your tastes, and better selection of non-mainstream music are a few of them. But you can use whichever you prefer, plenty people sit on each side of that fence.

They both offer an ad-free subscription service, though. Pandora's is cheaper than Slacker's too. If it's your "sole audio entertainment in your car," maybe it's worth the measly $3 per month? Just a thought.

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[adamlau]

Pandora for BB always had ads.

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[he.pennypacker]

Yes, Pandora for BB always had TEXT ads...

NEVER had audio ads before, this was my main reason for choosing Pandora over Slacker.

Just another way for them to get us to pay for a service that has always been free in the first place. Even though this is my main audio source in my car, I still never go over 30 hours--it was not worth it for me to pay the "measly" 3 dollars in the first place. I already pay enough for the BB service, thank you very much.

I guess I am the only one who is frustrated by this in the BB community?

[Morpheus]

yeah...just got my first ad...i was like WTF!?! its turning into slacker!?!

[papped]

The problem with their paid service is that it doesn't offer caching... If it did then they would be better off than Slacker since their application is lighter and they have a much better matching algorithm

[digitalb0y]

Just another way for them to get us to pay for a service that has always been free in the first place.

It's not some sinister plot. Pandora offers quite a lot and in order to keep it free they obviously have to find other ways to pay for it. If I were an advertiser I sure wouldn't pay for a text ad on Pandora. I wouldn't give them a dime until they offered something I knew users would be made aware of.

I guess I am the only one who is frustrated by this in the BB community?

I suppose it's frustrating to some degree, but the commercial interruptions are very brief and FAR less frequent than real radio, which is also funded by advertising. I guess I consider a short commercial or $3 a month a very, very small price to pay for what Pandora offers. I sincerely don't mean to be rude, but I rarely sympathize with people who expect companies to hand extremely large scale services over for free and do nothing to make it a sustainable business. I trust Pandora to know what they need to do to cover their bills, and hope they're able to continue to do so, so that I can continue to use their service.

[digitalb0y]

The problem with their paid service is that it doesn't offer caching... If it did then they would be better off than Slacker since their application is lighter and they have a much better matching algorithm

I agree, caching is a nice feature. I'd love to see Pandora implement it. But I just can't find enough music I genuinely like on Slacker to make it even a contender. Pandora learns my picky tastes extremely well if I put forth some effort on their site. Last I checked, I think an annual subscription was $10 cheaper with Pandora, too, but I'll admit I'm not fact checking myself right this moment.

[motoroid7]

I agree, caching is a nice feature. I'd love to see Pandora implement it. But I just can't find enough music I genuinely like on Slacker to make it even a contender. Pandora learns my picky tastes extremely well if I put forth some effort on their site. Last I checked, I think an annual subscription was $10 cheaper with Pandora, too, but I'll admit I'm not fact checking myself right this moment.

I agree, pandora does have more music for my tastes.

Also, I believe Slacker uses Audio Advertisements as well.

[CharredPC]

I never understand the complaints like this. "WTF?! The free service I've been enjoying for ages CHANGED slightly!! I'm mad! How DARE they??"

It's free. You pay nothing. Are you going to write to your congressman because the sun isn't shining enough today? Sorry, but I hope no one jumps on this bandwagon. If the guys at Pandora realized that they need to play (sparse) audio ads to stay in business, then they should do so. According to your line of thinking, they should give up making money and run their service out of the goodness of their hearts... of course, once that happens, Pandora would be shut down for good, since they couldn't even pay for bandwidth fees.

Are commercials annoying? Sure. Would I rather have an occasional commercial than not have Pandora at all? Uhh... yeah. As digitalb0y said, what's our alternative? Real radio? 10X the ads, and cr@p music. No thanks.

By the way, Slacker is $47.88 per year, while Pandora is $36.

[papped]

^^ Not really true...

You **** people off by offering something as free then removing it later. You are better off not having it be free in the first place, just charge reasonably from the start.

Slacker is a great example of this with the stunt they pulled with caching recently.

Adding new functionality to encourage subscriptions is great. Taking away from the free version (fairly significantly) to do the same is lame at best...

Had they done the previous I would still be using Slacker and supporting it. Since they didn't, I no longer do.

[UrbanBounca]

Slacker user here, and although I'm on the "other team", Slacker, much like Pandora, has to have someway of supporting their free members.

To the OP, you may be paying for your BlackBerry package, but Pandora doesn't receive any of it. Pandora is a service in its own, much like RIM and their BlackBerry package.

[croldan72]

Yes, Slacker does have ads, but if you use the caching option you barely hear one. I choose not to stream, instead to listen to the cached version of the station and their aren't that many ads. Most of them are from Slacker asking you to upgrade.

I tried the new Slacker version, but now that they want to charge you to cache (via wireless), I went back to the older version 2.0.91.

[CharredPC]

You **** people off by offering something as free then removing it later. You are better off not having it be free in the first place, just charge reasonably from the start.

Seriously? So.. let me get this straight. They started out trying their best to please you, by having no audio ads. When that model didn't work (after quite a while of you and others enjoying it), they are apparently forced to add some advertisement. You get upset about it and post here. When I point out that they had to do this to survive, your reply is that they never should have given you uninterrupted music in the first place?

Good lord... so by your logic, if you're given $20 every week by some rich philanthropist for a year, you'll yell at him once he's too broke to give you anymore, complaining "You never should have given me anything at all, if you couldn't give it to me forever!!" ..? Wow. You're tough as heck to please. Maybe you should ditch all your free apps just in case they change too, and only use pay ones

[elavum]

Ads in Pandora .
Yes , Its inconvenient but it would be ok if that's needed to keep the service free. I would rather stay with Pandora which streams music to my taste, than to move to any other service.

[Guatiao]

I don't see people complaining about ads in cable TV, regular TV or satellite TV, all of these services YOU have to pay for, and YOU cannot control getting ads or not.

If ads, audio or otherwise, help Pandora, or any other app, to be such a great program, let there be ads...

[dpizzo]

Good for them. If it helps them produce revenue which enables them to continue to provide a FREE service option to users, then great. Do i like adds, no, but they have to make money somehow. I don't have an entitlement complex. If i want pandor wothout adds, i'll pay for it. If i don't want to pay, i'll deal with the adds. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

[bow40]

Or we could always go back to dependable terestrial radio. By dependable I mean tons of adds and the same sone every 45 min

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[otbexige]

Seriously? So.. let me get this straight. They started out trying their best to please you, by having no audio ads. When that model didn't work (after quite a while of you and others enjoying it), they are apparently forced to add some advertisement. You get upset about it and post here. When I point out that they had to do this to survive, your reply is that they never should have given you uninterrupted music in the first place?

Good lord... so by your logic, if you're given $20 every week by some rich philanthropist for a year, you'll yell at him once he's too broke to give you anymore, complaining "You never should have given me anything at all, if you couldn't give it to me forever!!" ..? Wow. You're tough as heck to please. Maybe you should ditch all your free apps just in case they change too, and only use pay ones

ROFL. You are absolutely correct. I just love how you say it.

[duddy23b]

I just started w/Pandora, it seems to be very intuitive to my personal taste in songs more so than Slacker and as said smaller footprint on memeory as well.

[NIKSTORM]

I just realized that my car radio plays commercials on fm stations....wtf?....now what? oh wait I have sirius also known as "the best thing ever".

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[cbosdell]

I just realized that my car radio plays commercials on fm stations....wtf?....now what? oh wait I have sirius also known as "the best thing ever".

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Satellite Radio (XM at least...) has some audio ads and really annoying DJ's as well as "morning shows" on the supposedly music stations. The fact that I'm paying money for that (and it's gotten worse in the last year) really bothers me.

At least with Pandora/Slacker if you pay for it there are no ads and if you don't it's way, way better than the comparably free FM radio.