[twylight]

I love spotify (premium, free had some horrid ads) and I love pandora...why cant I have both?  Is there no "mix" or categories in Spotify?
 
I am exploring artists I lost track of in Spotify and I love it, but I also just like the exploration of Pandora left on for too long...
 
One of my biggest annoyances with Pandora was when I wanted to explore an artist I kept getting random crap, so Spotify is awesome for this.
 
 
 

 

[Rainbow Randy]

They make a great combo. I think Spotify offers the Pandora feature overseas but not here (Obama!). Is the Music DNA thing exclusive to Pandora? It performs quite impressively at times. 

 

[darkmess]

Most use Last.fm to help the radio / discovery processes, since it tends to be more accurate than Pandora. This is mostly because A: there are only 800,000 songs on Pandora, compared to Spotify's 15 million tracks,as well as Last.fm's 7 million tracks. That means you can actually have a selection to really discover from. There is also Last.fm integration with Spotify, making music discovery even more accurate. Essentially, all you need is the desktop application for Spotify and Last.fm, and you got a superior, on-demand, accurate Pandora.

 

[scompton]

I don't know about Spotify, but last.fm pads it's number of tracks with a lot of stuff that's no name bands that are really crappy and not available elsewhere.  I know this because when I first got it and it hadn't tracked any of my listening habits, it only played the crappy stuff.  Now that it's scrobbled 70,000 plays, it's a lot more accurate, however, it doesn't have a lot of the bands Iisten to, and Pandora does. 
 
I also like how I can set up a station in Pandora based on a group or genre.  It's a great way to explore new music.  I recently discovered the band Earth.  I never heard anything quite like it before and set up a station based on the band and everything it played was new to me and I liked it.  I've done the same with some genres that I'm not that familiar with. I don't see how to do this in the last.fm app on my iPhone. Is that something you have to set up first in the desktop app or web app?
 
The one problem I do have with Pandora is that it can be incredibly repetitive, not only playing the same groups, but the same songs.
 
I have one question about Spotify premium.  Can you search and download music to an iPhone, or does everything have to go though the desktop app.  If I got Spotify, it would be to replace MOG.  I use MOG only from my phone.  I can't see Spotify's desktop app as something that would be useful for me.  I'm usually nowhere near my computer when I decide to download an album.

 

[Coltrane]

Spotify has a fantastic iPhone app, plus you can store up to 3,333 songs for offline play.

 

[scompton]

But does the iPhone app allow search and download to the phone?  Everything I've read talks about syncing with the Spotify PC app like I would with iTunes if I wanted to put my music on my phone.  If I can search and download from the phone, it'll be worth checking out to compare with MOG.

 

[Coltrane]

You can search and 'download' from the phone. To download, you just create a playlist of anything you want, and then you can have the playlist set to 'available offline' mode.
 
You can also use spotify to sync your itunes music to your phone. It does this wirelessly as well, although I have never used the feature.