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Pandora Launches Unlimited Premium Family Plan For $15 Per Month (betanews.com)
Mark Wycislik-Wilson, writing for BetaNews: Looking to better compete with the likes of Apple Music and Spotify, Pandora has launched a new Premium Family package. The new package offers unlimited access to all of Pandora's premium features for up to six people. The price is just $15 per month, but there's a 60-day free trial available so you can try it out for size first. Pandora explains that the new package offers "all of the features of Pandora Premium to up to six unique Pandora accounts simultaneously" and costs $14.99 USD monthly or $164.89 annually. As noted by Phone Arena, there are no limits on the number of tracks that can be streamed, there are no ads, and subscribers are free to download music for offline listening.
anyway US$15 to listen to music? Apple music, Youtube music, Google Music, etc, don't want to pay $50/month for music, I'll switch to radio or other free options
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
What sort of brainless consumer cuck would you have to be to pay monthly for music.
Great job MODS! Selling ads around the world for a service not available outside of the USA! BRILLIANT!!
MODS = WHORES
VPN's are so hard. /s
As a long time user of Pandora, and as an American living outside of the US, connecting to a VPN in the States to use State-side services is a daily occurrence and is a brainless operation now. Stop whining.
Actually, after hooking up Alexa, she seems to be able to stream Pandora without a VPN to the States. Nice work around for now, but requires Alexa.
For $180/year I can buy like 90 used CDs that I own forever and can rip and listen to any time, anywhere with vastly superior quality.
anyway US$15 to listen to music? Apple music, Youtube music, Google Music, etc, don't want to pay $50/month for music, I'll switch to radio or other free options
Have you heard the radio lately? They're making damn sure you'll hate it and when the ratings drop so low stations "have to close", they'll buy up the radio spectrum (88Mhz-106Mhz.. give or take depending on your region).
One thing broadcast radio still has over streaming is lack of real time analytics. It's no ones business what I listen to.
How are you streaming your whole catalog away from home? I use Plex but most consumers are not even savvy enough to do that.
How do you get that to work? I used to love Pandora, but the app won't install from Canada through VPN. I used to get by it through side loading but they blocked VPNs right from the app for me.
He probably paid the premium for one of those phones with more than 32Gb of storage that are becoming so rare.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And you listen to recompressed music through Alexa... wow that's really high quality sound. Wouldn't do it for free.
Pandora launched in 2000. As a Canadian, I used the service in 2004-2006 on the website. It was great to discover new independent music similar to what I liked already. After 18 years, Pandora is still only available in the US. We have Spotify and other streaming services, but Pandora is the only one that has integration with my Pioneer headunit in my car. Give Spotify's recent troubles, I don't think that streaming services are profitable to the point where the businesses are robust. Does anyone still use Pandora?
And tell me how you get **reliable** VPN for free, Sherlock. Itâ(TM)s around 5$ per month for a reliable VPN. So add it to the cost.
The summary/advertisement could try explaining what it's selling, no? One would think that it would make it more effective.
He probably paid the premium for one of those phones with more than 32Gb of storage that are becoming so rare.
I recently put a 200GB SanDisk flash into my cheap Samsung (ATT) prepaid Go phone. There's no streaming needed, and I have all my music with me. I have about 50GB left free on the flash, so I've got a long ways to go yet before it's full. I also have SiriusXM with both a sat radio and the phone app, but streaming is sub-optimal.
I collect music and have done so since the late '80s. I have over a thousand CDs, all of which I've ripped to WAV files, and then converted to MP3s. I continue to purchase CDs at the many local thrift stores, maybe another 50 a year, plus purchase MP3s from Amazon.
When driving, it's just a cable to connect to the radio to play through the car's speakers.
This came in real handy when I had major surgery in mid Feb, and got stuck in the hospital for nine days. At least I had all my music on the phone, and the Kindle app on the tablet for entertainment.
Hmm, there are so many thousands of free internet radio stations. I use streamtuner/streamripper and then play the music advertisement free. I guess I'm just cheap.
I honestly didn't have to do anything.
I bought an Alexa in the States while visiting, then plugged it in, installed the Pandora skill, and it worked.
With Apple Music (or Spotify, or Pandora), I could listen to 10 new albums every single day for that $180/year - more than 3,500 albums. Or I can listen to any given specific song, anytime I want - new stuff, old stuff, obscure stuff. I don't feel like I need to own music anymore, given how many other places there are to listen.
I listen to Amazon Prime music and buy what few tracks or albums that really peak my interest. Lot of music today is not memorable and not worth the $15 a month to have access too. I think they should offer a plan with a pre defined limit of devices and tracks per month. That way a person with only a casual listener could justify the monthly costs. After all I only pay $11 a month for Netflix and Prime is only around that same price for all its services. Sorry, $15 a month for just music tracks is a bit much.
Services have started blacklisting VPN providers, enjoy it while it lasts.
I have several 128GB micro SD cards and numerous 128GB USB flash drives. My MP3 player is slightly larger than a quarter. I'm not dependant upon external services and subscriptions fees to listen to my music.
You won't be able to listen to much of the stuff I own though because Apple simple won't have it, nor will you be able to do it anywhere or any time. Try listening to your internet streaming music while flying over the pacific ocean, for example. Or while out camping. Try listening to it anywhere that there is poor or non-existent internet access, which is most of the world. You also have no control over the music and are forced to listen to what they stream. With my owned music, listen on any device I want, I can rewind, fast forward, pause, pitch bend, time stretch, mix and save anything that I want. You can't do any of that.
Maybe if you just sit around at home it's OK to be tethered to a service, but I travel far too much to be able to rent my music. It would never work for me.
Oh and the quality of your lossy compressed music is crap, while mine is lossless and flawless. But I'm guessing you use crap headphones since you've already demonstrated that you don't have a passion for music.
Apple's catalog is as big as any of the other services, and except for a few obscure comedy albums, there's never been something I've looked for and not found on the service.
As for access, I live in the suburbs. I commute to a bigger city nearby. 98% of my vacationing is to northern California, Nevada, and Arizona, and there's cell coverage/internet access everywhere but inside the national parks. Regardless, Apple lets you download music from its service to your device, and I do have a few thousand songs from my CD collection available as well for those rare off-the-grid times. I'm never lacking for music.
You're welcome to purchase and modify your few hundred songs if you have an issue with these services. I'll enjoy my 30,000,000+, whenever I want them.
Get a $5 VPS.
Tunnel through SSH.
Done.
Until it's not.
Yeah i fell for that already thanks. Pass.
Nice try, but YouTube has videos AND music.
What sorcery is this? You can play music without having to stream with a third party app full of DRM crap? Some one contact the authorities!
Is this now policy of Slashdot - to sell adds as news items for tech people?
E Proelio Veritas.
Yeah, that low dynamic range pop music played through a pringles can speaker into your kitchen really suffers because of the _compression_.
And before that we lived with radio, LPs, and -shiver- tape. Your assumptions about people's need for quality seem erroneous.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.