[Artemis68]

Is there anyway to stop Pandora from timing out and stopping the music?

I'm asking because I usually listen to it as I go to sleep, with a small speaker under my pillow. I've been having some sleep problems and keep waking up repeatedly and when I find that the music has stopped, it's harder to go back to sleep...so is there a way to stop it from timing out?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[digitalb0y]

Do you mean the normal timeout for inactivity? You can extend this timeout to 5 hours by purchasing a Pandora One account. It costs $36 a year. Here's the info:

Pandora One

[Laura Knotek]

The free version will time out after 1 hour if you do not indicate that you are still listening. If you upgrade to Pandora One, which costs $36, you can listen for up to 5 hours. FAQ

[Artemis68]

Interesting! Yeah I have the free version...I'll have to get the paid version. It will be nice to have unlimited skips too!

[digitalb0y]

Interesting! Yeah I have the free version...I'll have to get the paid version. It will be nice to have unlimited skips too!

Yeah, I think I'm going to break down and buy it for the next year. Pandora's where a huge chunk of the music I listen to comes from. Might as well enhance the experience. I think I can handle $36 a year.

[Laura Knotek]

Slacker Radio Plus allows unlimited skips and has no commercials. Slacker Personal Radio - Radio Plus
It is $47.88/year.

The difference is that there is no hourly skip limit with Slacker. Pandora One has no daily skip limit, but you are still limited to 6 skips per hour.

[Artemis68]

I tend to favor Pandora over Slacker any day. I find that Slacker takes too long to buffer on my Curve. Also, I listen to a lot of weird stuff (Renaissance music, Gregorian chants) and Slacker just doesn't seem to have a lot of that kind of music.

I just got the subscription for Pandora this afternoon and so far, so good.

[Laura Knotek]

I tend to favor Pandora over Slacker any day. I find that Slacker takes too long to buffer on my Curve. Also, I listen to a lot of weird stuff (Renaissance music, Gregorian chants) and Slacker just doesn't seem to have a lot of that kind of music.

I just got the subscription for Pandora this afternoon and so far, so good.

Cool! Hope you like it.

I tried Pandora on my PC but didn't like it, since I found it too repetitious in the genres I listen to. I never installed it on my BB.

Slacker seemed to have a bigger library of alt-country, indie rock, jazz, blues, and folk. I purchased the Slacker Plus. I have no issues with buffering, but I have a 3G BB and good 3G coverage.

[digitalb0y]

I tried Pandora on my PC but didn't like it, since I found it too repetitious in the genres I listen to. I never installed it on my BB.

See, this is actually intentional behavior, for better or for worse. Pandora generates the start of each session with a track you've recently given a thumbs-up, it plays stuff you've given a thumbs-up to more often, if you give a track a thumbs-down, it starts a new stream based on stuff you've given a thumbs-up to, etc. Basically, it knows some tracks you like and it plays them, unless you specifically tell it to diversify. I'm simplifying, but if you're interested in how to tune a Pandora station well, read this:

FAQ

For this reason, Pandora takes a little more diligence. I will fully agree that Pandora is not a perfect out-of-the-box solution. It requires that you spend time building stations by giving it a lot of feedback, and then it becomes better and better at selecting music you're likely to enjoy. Slacker doesn't need all the feedback, but it's also not nearly as intelligent. Slacker can't determine that you typically like songs in a minor key for a certain tempo range, or notice patterns in "vamping" or chromatic harmony in your musical tastes. For a lot of people, just being told "other people who like what you like also like this, do you?" is enough. But if you take a more active roll in determining what you're likely to hear, and like a musical library that's a bit less mainstream, Pandora's Music Genome Project is definitely where it's at.

[MarcPandora]

Just to clarify some issues about timeouts in the Pandora BlackBerry app - it used to be the case that it would stop playing after about 4 hours (more for technical reasons than anything). However, we just released a new version today that has no session timeout - so it will just keep playing and playing (well - until your battery dies!). NOTE: the web version of Pandora still has the standard 1 hour timeout for free listeners and 5 hour timeout for Pandora One subscribers

Keep in mind that if your data connection isn't fast enough to stream at the quality you have configured in "Options" (32kbit/sec for Normal or 64kbit/sec for High) then the audio may pause for buffering. Unfortunately there's not much we can do about this! I imagine sleeping with your phone under your pillow may impact signal strength a little bit... who knows!

[John Tardy]

Yes of course. Solve literally every problem by throwing some money at it. Want to read the WSJ article? Subscribe and pay. Want to listen to Pandora longer than an hour? Subscribe and pay. Want to park at the grocery store feed the meter. It's funny but my radio plays songs, pays for it with commercials, and never times out. No incessent reminders that if I just pay money I'll get better service. Want better law enforcement? Subscribe to Police One and get unlimited access to 911. Want fairer elections and less voter fraud? Subscribe to Elections One and get unlimited access to your local polling place. Want access to the air outside your home? Subscribe to Atmosphere One and get unlimited access to semi-fresh air with only trace smog and 1 part per million combined toxic carcinogens. If the solution starts with "get out your wallet" then it seems like the problem is too many chumps.