Submission 1: Pandora vs. Slacker

From generation to generation there's always a new trend of listening to music. From cassettes we went to CDs, then even the MiniDisc, then to mp3 players. Now having smartphones (iPhones, Androids,etc.) we can expand the spectrum and move to more mainstream, streaming internet radio. Right now, two of the most popular services are probably Pandora and Slacker Radio.

Internet Radios are an alternative way to listen the music just for you. Depending which one you use, the set up may be different, but generally they bundle up a plethora of songs and let you listen to whatever specific genre, artist, song, etc. you have put as your basis. 

I personally use Pandora for my calm escape and drown into the music, like fish in the sea. After an oral survey I took, asking my peers which internet radio they prefer most, more than half answered with Pandora. The ones who are strictly Pandora users have never even heard of Slacker until I surveyed them.  

Looking at their websites, they both have different layouts. As a first time Slacker user, I was impressed how extremely easy it was to customize my radio stations based on any range of musical artists. It also brought up recommendations for other artists in the same genre that you could choose to add to your station. Slacker had this feature called fine tuning where it lets you decide the levels of music discovery you want to include in you channel, as well as choosing how popular you prefer the songs to be, how often your personal favorites should be included, and what musical eras can be played. Sounds complex, but in reality the fine tuning function explodes the vast combinations and takes personalization to a whole new level. A positive about Slacker is there is no cap, meaning you can listen to unlimited music. The selection of songs in Slacker is much better than Pandora and the repetition of songs is a lot less.

With all that said, Pandora on the other hand, has a much cleaner site and straightforward. The best thing about Pandora is excluding the advertisements (which is understandable since it is offered gratis), there are little distractions and you can get right to you music escape. Pandora does take longer to buffer when music quality is set to high, but no significantly longer than Slacker. If you are a long term Pandora user, you get about 40 hours of streaming music a month for free. If 40 hours isn’t enough there is always the premium account. Unfortunately, with this is does not offer you unlimited skips and no ads. Pandora does a great job at selecting a song and building a station around that. 

When looking at the greater picture both radios are great and have their own unique style. I would recommend to check both sites if interested. Not to worry, if the computer is far away, a quick download can have both the apps on you phone in just minutes so you don't have to go anywhere.