Streaming Music - Best Free Service?

Just got a text from my phone service provider that they are upping my data to 8GB/month. How much data does streaming for 6-8 hours per day use? Considering this as a way to get music at work. Looking for a free service that is easy to either create playlists or create a "channel" based on an artist you choose and isn't too invasive with wanting to access every piece of data on your phone. What free service does the hive recommend?

Pandora is arguably better free, bit I prefer spotify, and I pay for that one.

My only complaint with Pandora is that I have to login on my laptop to change the stations that are used in shuffle mode.

I sent you an email about Pandora for android if your interested in ad free and no skip limit.

In reply to RevRico:

Me or mndsm?

I got one of them non-PM friendly yahoo emails...

In reply to secretariata:

You.

Well if you have an Android device, drop me a line esseeno at gmail.com and ill send you the apk file. I've been using it for years with no problems.

If you have Amazon Prime, check out Amazon Music.

I only ever use Pandora at home. Spotify plays real nice my phone and has a dedicated play button from my home screen. It's worth the 100 bucks a year. I'd spend 10x that on owned copies of music, if discs were still gettable easily.

If you like to listen to broadcast radio stations but through the internet I've been enjoying Tunein. It lets me combine stations from a few different regions that I can't listen to where I live now.

I used Pandora for a while, but I've been almost exclusively using Slacker as my only streaming music source for about 3 years now.

I like it better, their algorithm, or monkey pushing a button, or whatever it is they use, has done a much better job of playing music I like based on what songs I've told them I like or dislike better than Pandora ever did.

I really like some of their "stations" too. Artist DNA is great, they highlight an artist, play music from that artist, music that inspired that artist, and music inspired by that artist.

I've got Prime too, I've tried to use their streaming, forced myself to for a few days, but wound up back at Slacker.

Slacker's free version gives you something like 6 skips per hour, and about 1 minute of ads ever 7-8 songs.

In reply to RevRico:

Sent you an email. Thanks!

So how much data does streaming use?

I broke up with Pandora about a year ago. It started mixing my stations. Playing punk on classic country stations, playing country on Tango, etcetera. I had used it for like 8 years and had the maximum amount of stations and ten thousand or so thumb up/downs and I think it confused their algorithm.

Then I started with spotify. It lacked a lot of my, I guess we will call them "more obscure" tastes and gets really repetitive. It also can't differentiate between bands that have the same names so for instance if I wanted a 60's garage R&B station I would seed it with the remains but it didn't know the difference between the 60's band and a hip hop band or a metal band with that name so I switched to Google play music which has exactly the same issues.

So I started using my wife's apple music account which does the same thing. For instance last week I wanted to feel like a moody teenager so I tried to start an 80's goth station based on the sisters of mercy and it gave me a ton of religious choral music and Christmas carols along with Bauhaus.

The Pandora algorithms are the best IMO but their rates got too high.

Turns out YouTube music mixes are top notch when it comes to mixing up different but similar music, but you can't turn off the screen and continue to play them.

I guess I will try YouTube red next.

What I LOVE about streaming is being introduced to new to me music that I hadn't heard before. YouTube is winning at that right now strangely enough.

secretariata wrote: So how much data does streaming use?

I was also hoping someone had an answer for this, ive been listening to a lot of pandora while working on my sister in laws house.

I prefer Pandora over Spotify. Spotify seems to have more variety but I got tired of screaming "HOW MANY berkeleyING TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU I berkeleyING HATE METALLICA!?!?"

secretariata wrote: So how much data does streaming use?

You will use far more data if your phone decided it wants to update am app while your out.

Google says said: The free edition of Pandora can stream music over the Web at a bitrate of 128 Kpbs or 57.6MB per hour. This could mount up to a significant usage each month. For example, if you listed to Pandora for one hour each weekday while commuting, you would use at least 1.1GB over a month containing 20 workdays

So that says 1gb equals about 20 hours... 40 hours a week, 4 weeks a month, will put you at around 8 gb.

I've had unlimited data since pre smartphone days, so I never worried about it. Some of my friends have started using Amazon music to store music on their phones to not use data, but I'd rather have the storage space.

I'm testing a new Pandora file this week, I'll let you and everyone else know how it works once I get some hours on it.

I use Iheart, no commercials

In the garage it's a toss-up between Pandora (free + ad-blocked) or Spotify (currently subscribed).

At work, if I remember to download a Spotify playlist to my phone before leaving the house, I'll do that to save on data. But since I sit at a desk and our network blocks Spotify and Pandora, it's usually Amazon music (free with my Prime but sucky selection) or YouTube.

As far as streaming goes, I habe no idea how much data it uses. I clear 50gb a month in data used. T mobile puts me in the punishment group regularly.