Review of Pandora's "Pandora One" Service
I've been a fan a Pandora's service in general. I recently heard about Pandora's Pandora One service (currently priced at $36 per year). I've been a longtime supporter of XM (now Sirius XM). After the merger, it seems like the various genre channels can't seem to find themselves. This is a void that Pandora fills much better. A primary account on XM can range as high as $180 annually when billed monthly, an additional radio account can cost $84 annual when billed monthly. $36 annually doesn't seem like much in comparison, and certainly not for better refinement on the genre of music you may be looking for.
While researching the subscriptions features, and even after subscribing, I was confused on what exactly the subscription would offer. I think this is due to some unclear information on the main Pandora One page. Upgrading your account essentially removes you from the free, advertising-supported music to commercial free streaming. In addition, the "Pandora One" premium subscription allows for a five hour timeout of listening as opposed to the occasional "Are you still listening?" prompts with the free subscriptions. This of course allows for longer durations of trouble-free listening.
If I were Pandora, I'd make it clear that you're upgrading your account and not the web-based player only. If you review the Pandora One page, you'll notice there's no information that states that you'll receive the commercial-free benefits on your mobile (iPhone/iPod Touch) application. I don't believe the iPhone/iPod Touch incarnations play advertising at this point, and advertising on the web-based player is still somewhat rare. I'm sure this will change however, and it may make sense for Pandora to make this more obvious.
The mini-player feature was previously available as a feature on the free accounts that allowed all users to "undock" the Pandora flash-based web-player into a smaller web-browser window. This feature now resides only on the subscription based service.
The "Pandora One" subscription increases streamed audio quality from basic 128 kbps to 192 kbps. I'll be the first to admit that my ears aren't that great, but I can typically hear the difference between 128 kbps and 192 kbps. If the source media is encoded correctly, this should be a negligible upgrade. I would not call this a major benefit of upgrading, but some users who are craving better sound quality may appreciate the difference.
The subscription also allows for a download of a desktop application. This desktop application looks strikingly like the iPhone/iPod interface.
The usual elements for operating Pandora are present, though I found the web interface seemed to still be required for "adding variety" once a station is initially seeded with an artist or song.
You can also now "skin" the web-based player. This lets you change from the familiar blue-gradient styled web-based player to one of about fifteen available "skins".
Pandora states that upgrading to a subscription-based account does not allow you to bypass current licensing issues, which makes "fine tuning" a new station as easy or difficult as it has been. You are still capped at a total of six "thumbs down" or "skips" per hour, though there is no daily limit with the subscription account (aside from the theoretical 144 if you skip six songs in 24 hours).
If you're looking for some new revolutionary aspect of Pandora with the premium subscription, you won't find it. However, for me, I appreciate the commercial-free aspect and the uninterrupted five hours of play features of the subscription. I've been pretty good about "tuning" my Pandora stations, so when at home or at work - this means I have a set of stations with genres playing only music that I think should be played on a station of that genre.
Syndication
I have the free pandora account on my droid and it not only gives you the option to play 192kbps but also if you run out of skips you can restart it and you yet again have 6 skips.