Ideas: Higher Audio Quality

[pboser]

How about higher audio quality?  Amazon has introduced this feature, and others have been ahead of Pandora as well.  It would be great to have the Genome Project advantage with higher audio quality.  Do others agree?

Moderator Edit: Edited title for clarity

[Stereosonic]

@Married_Man

Yes it’s quite a shame about Pandora’s big lack of sound quality and seeing they are owned by SiriusXM who also lack in the sound quality department neither of which company has done anything to improve their services in any way whatsoever for at least a decade now if not more and are actually losing subscribers. The companies being to cheap to care will either wait until it’s too late to stay in business or will be the last ones to even try and offer better quality audio. If you haven’t heard of the music streaming service Qobuz you should also look into them as they have the best sound quality out of any of the music streaming services and are improving their feature set. Something that can’t be said about Tidal as of late. Deezer may be another one for you to look into but they don’t change much either but at least they offer better sound quality than Pandora. Pandora, YouTube Music and Spotify are the only major holdouts not offering full sound quality and it seems at least Spotify might finally be coming around to offer it maybe later this year if not next or longer as they are currently making new deals with the record companies as they want to offer new bundles. However Spotify thinks it can charge more for sound quality and get away with it. Whereas most other companies already offer it for roughly the same price as each other. This should force YouTube to maybe try and offer full fidelity however because they offer a lot of regular YouTube music content as well this might be harder for them to do if they are even willing. Although YouTube Music does have the largest catalog but of dubious sources often because anyone can upload something to YouTube. But the sheer amount of content available is undeniable.

[Married_Man]

I'd love to see something like Apple Music license the music gnome project and implement the great music stations Pandora has. Then Pandora can just close up shop, since they don't show any desire to improve.

[Married_Man]

@Stereosonic 

How good are music stations on Qobuz and Deezer?

While I enjoy cataloging music I like, I don't like that to be the only source. That's my experience so far with other streaming services. They're all just places to go collect songs you already know you like and build playlists of music you already know you like.

I might as well just play my CD or vinyl.

Give me a good radio station, too!

[Stereosonic]

@Married_Man 

The problem I have with Apple Music is it’s hard to properly get pure HiFi out of their service. Yes I agree Pandora’s genome is pretty nice, how is Deezer’s Flow compared to it? I’d rather Pandora improve itself or get purchased by someone else (Qobuz specifically) than to be bought out by Apple who would probably screw with it. 

[Married_Man]

Either would work for me. Just get a company interested in improving
quality, content, and experience to buy and implement the gnome.

[Stereosonic]

@Married_Man

I have never used Deezer so I can’t comment on their radio stations however I read many comments praising their flow which seems to be like it might be like Pandora’s genome. Qobuz does have radio but I don’t use it so I can’t say anything about it. They all have playlists but Spotify probably offers the most of those. I prefer making my own as usually the premarket playlists contain stuff I’ve already heard and while some songs I either like or don’t like I don’t want to waste my time with songs I don’t want to hear which’s also screws up my groove. Good for discovering music but their are other ways of doing that as well. The best solution so would prefer is to make my own giant playlist/radio but let something like Pandora’s genome serve up new to me songs/artists from time to time that I might like in order to discover new to me music I can add to my collection.

[Voodoomagnetman]

Feel the same way. I really love being able to discover new music with
Pandora and I love being able to put on a genre that fits my mood and just
listen to the radio. Just want better streaming quality and don't get why
Pandora just won't get with the times. I'd even take just 320kbps
44khz/16bit streaming. 192kbps just isn't great in 2025

[whowasat]

I just had a 'live chat' with Pandora and got this response:



"We are constantly testing and evaluating what the right rates are for each
setting level and do plan to migrate our high audio quality to 320kbps AAC
over time."

[EmperorJJ1]

one big downside that **ahem** is apple and google via youtube music have not only a much larger base of customers (more people are going to use the default option vs finding and downloading something new) but also an uncompetitive advantage of not having to pay a 30% fee to themselves. 

Pandora or really any other streaming service (spotify etc) cant really compete earning 70 cents on the dollar. Is that a good excuse no but it is what it is. Id love for them to offer the higher quality and just make it on a paywall. seems like an easy win win

[freddiep7]

@whowasat I doubt it because it's been tooooooo long and they haven't upgraded anything