Ideas: Adjustable playback speed, slow and fast

[Ghostgirrl]

We love pandora but we would really love pandora if you had an adjustable playback speed, so we could slow our music down and still sound good and not be distorted. I know some like to speed the music up too so I included them into my request. Thank you 

[Spooky13]

Ya man, if we can slow down or speed up the tracks, pandora would be the best

[TannerPandora]

Thanks for your post, @Ghostgirrl 

We’re always looking to improve, and getting feedback like this definitely helps with that.

Thanks for being a part of our Community!

[bridoty24]

Hey - just checking for an update on this! I love the podcasts on pandora, but I want to listen to them in faster speed.

[Ghostgirrl]

I want to listen to my music slowed down!! I wish pandora would add that
feature as no one else has it and I would gladly pay for a family plan if
they do.

[jobiewan]

This is an absolute must for podcast playback.  I was hoping to transfer my podcasts to Pandora once Google Podcasts shuts down but will have to go somewhere else if playback speed is not going to be a feature.  Will probably dump my pandora plus account and go to YouTube music premium since they have playback speed functionality.

[squeakyboots]

I'm another user in jobiewan's boat: get the playback speed feature added ASAP or I'll be going to YouTube as well.

[skankin_it_easy]

I've had a pandora account for well over 10 years.  I'm not sure how long I've had this specific one, but I've had at least two, this will be the one I keep, as I've had this one for so long.

In the past few maybe five years or so, I've learned how to slow down music on a computer, just as if you were to slow down a record or a tape speed.  Most programs (for good reason) re-adjust the sound so that when for instance, a podcast is played faster, the voice doesn't go to chipmunk mode, where it is more difficult to hear what it said.

On the other side of the coin, slowing down music (or any sound) using this special, very complex effect, creates a choppy sound, on ANY music program developed at the turn of the century, because they all added this effect.  Now way back in the 1990s, most programs didn't do this reprocessing.  So when you'd slow down a song, the notes got deeper, and it stays a smooth sound.

It may seem odd, but I would love to be able to slow down music as it plays, and be able to change it on-the-fly, at any time.  You may not think that's a good idea, or give two rat turds about it, but I think if you really give it a months time of testing, with at least 100-150 different songs, you invariably WILL find songs that sound better slowed down a little bit.

It is a niche feature, but what is not niche is speeding up a podcast (with the fancy effect to avoid chipmunk sound) and I'm shocked it's not an option.  It's not something I do, but is very common

Also, completely unrelated, but could you re-covert your MASSIVE music library from un-compressed sources, into OGG (quality 0, 65-75 kbps average) instead of the horrendously garbage 64 kbps MP3?  MP3 is trash, and 192 is the only when it starts to work very well, any lower than 160 is not at all acceptable.  So consider this, and you may save storage space as well.  Seriously, you could offer 160 OGG Vorbis, instead of 192 kbps MP3, improving sound quality AND supporting open-formats, while saving a bit of space.  Even OPUS might be an option at 128k at constrained-variable bitrate.

I made some edits to my post.  In addition, I figured out how to do this in the desktop browser.  I hope that's O.K. who says I HAVE to listen to 1x speed or not at all?  I'm still listening to the music, so I don't see how this would be an issue.  I can set speed manually, through the website code, or through an addon that changes this with an easier way to change the setting.

If anyone is interested, I can share that here.  Also, to be clear, the way I do it, or prefer to change speed, is to allow pitch to drop, normally, so sound is smooth, and bass notes are even deeper.

[jobiewan]

@skankin_it_easy - I give at least 1 rat turd 😂...  if it makes ya happy...

[skankin_it_easy]

@Ghostgirrl @jobiewan @Spooky13 @TannerPandora @bridoty24 @squeakyboots 

Hey all, I wanted to let you all know (I'm not a pandora developer or PR etc) that if you are on a laptop / desktop web browser, you can add an addon to Mozilla Firefox Web browser, open-source since 1994, and still open-source to this day.  The addon is called "Global Speed" and is open-source as well with a github public source-code page so you can verify it's not doing anything funky or unwanted.

Also, if you go into it's options, you can allow the pitch to shift which I recommend--this allows bass notes to get even deeper, so they will be stronger, and the audio will not be choppy sounding.  You can't do it with the app, so just use a podcast player that allows regular podcast archiving, like Antennapod.  I realized Spotify has a enigma of a storage structure, so if I want to back them up to my pc, I have to play them, and record to line- or mic-input.  And I probably will, because there are some good ones.  Then, I'll stop using Spotify for podcasts, because that's just anti-user, anti-freedom, trying to force app or service lock-in, and i'm not down with that.  So make sure the podcast app you use makes it possible to backup your podcasts easily to a PC for backup.  I mean, if your podcast selections aren't good enough or interesting or informative enough to warrant a backup, then you aren't doing it right!  Find better podcasts!

[squeakyboots]

Thanks, the problem is I generally listen from my phone via the app =\