For those considering moving to Spotify, the grass may not be greener there. I've been with Pandora since their very beginning. I have a "Plus" account for about $50/year. All my listening is done with a single custom station which is a list of a couple of hundred of my favorite recording artists. In the past Pandora has done a great job introducing me to new artists, many of which have become my favorites. For me, the CarPlay issue isn't a deal-breaker. If I start Pandora from my phone before starting the car, I can use the triangle in the upper right corner of the car's station select screen to get to its "now playing" screen. The only functionality I've lost is the ability to change stations, which I never use. On the other hand, I've become disenchanted with Pandora's music selections from my station. Even with "deep tracks" selected, it seems that most of the songs played are repeats of songs played in the past few days. Only a very small percentage of songs or artists are new to me, or are songs that haven't been recently played. My frustration with Pandora's song selections inspired me to give Spotify a try. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out a way to use Spotify the way I've been using Pandora. There is no automated way to import my Pandora station to Spotify - the various online import tools only work for individual songs, not for artists. On Spotify I had to manually create a "radio station" for each of my favorite artists, then copy the songs in each station to a single playlist. Using that playlist with "smart shuffle" comes close to the Pandora experience, but the items in my playlist don't automatically refresh like they would in a radio station. Spotify has some rough edges in its user interface. There are things that can only be done from a web browser, and other things can only be done from the app. Finally, Spotify Premium is double the price of my Pandora Plus plan (although it is cheaper than Pandora Premium). Look before you leap!
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