Pandora and Spotify have been at publicity war with each other for a while now. They’re both great music programs, but I’m going to leave out the mobile app versions because they just don’t compare to the computer versions. It’s like watching a movie on an iPod, versus watching a movie on a 70 inch flat screen TV.

Pandora was developed in 2000, and it’s successes have been going up since then. If you mention Pandora to somebody, odds they have heard of it. It’s a successful company having a total of 250 million plus users, and having almost 750 million dollars in annual  revenue. With Pandora, you can search for a certain genre, artist or top trending selection and listen to it like radio. Thus, you can’t listen to the same song over and over, unless you purchase a paid subscription. The songs are randomly played, like any radio is. A lot of people use Pandora at home, work, etc. on a computer or on their phones. Pandora is a good website radio, but it doesn’t give you the flexibility that Spotify has.

Spotify was developed in 2006, and it’s unknown to a lot of people. Having only about 60 million users, If you asked someone if they’ve heard of Spotify, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t know what you were talking about. Spotify makes about 1 billion in annual revenue, but a big chunk of that money goes to paying off music rights. Spotify has more friendly capabilities than Pandora. It also has a radio option, but unlike Pandora, you can look for any individual song, artist or album you want, and add those to a playlist if you like. Spotify has currently 25 million songs to choose from. Users have also told me there are things other than songs on Spotify, like comedy sound clips. Spotify is like iTunes when you get down to comparing the two, but the problems with Spotify are you still need to download the software, you need internet to listen, and ads still pop up. You need internet to listen to Pandora, but it’s a website and not a downloadable software program like Spotify.

Overall, Both programs work very well as radios or music players, but I believe Spotify has better qualities than Pandora. Pandora continues to be more popular, but Spotify is still making more money. I think people like the simplicity of Pandora, and being a website, which is why I think it is more popular than Spotify. If you wanted to use Spotify, you would have to download it. I guess people just don’t have the time for that. If you don’t like needing internet and not having much choice, just get an iTunes account.

If you would like to see the statistics yourself visit www.statisticbrain.com and look for Spotify, and Pandora.