And how does it compare to Spotify?
Spotify may still be the reigning champ when it comes to music streaming, but there’s no shortage of reasons to switch to a different service. In 2026, people have the choice between Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal or Deezer, but my switch to Pandora was a result of wanting to prioritize music discovery.
Even though Spotify has a comprehensive music library, it often feels like it creates an echo chamber of music recommendations meant to keep me on the platform for longer. New playlists often felt like they were being automatically populated with liked songs, even if they barely felt like the same genre. In an effort to mix things up for the sake of experiencing new music, I put the Pandora Plus ad-free subscription to the test to see if it was worth it.
An emphasis on music discovery
Pandora is known for its Music Genome Project, which is its grand undertaking to understand someone’s musical taste by offering “old favorites and new discoveries.” After spending a few weeks using only Pandora, the emphasis on music discovery is still the main highlight of the streaming service. I’ve discovered several new songs and artists, as compared to the similar “Go to song radio” option on Spotify. Pandora even offers a way to “Tune Your Station,” where you get more control over your preferences, with options including “Discovery,” “Deep Cuts” or “Newly Released.”
Unlike other streaming services, the interface promotes interacting with its algorithm through thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. I tweaked a Norah Jones station into a more jazz singer vibe with Melody Gardot and Diana Krall and trimmed out all the songs that leaned toward pop, like Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat. Using a more hands-off approach, I was still able to discover some new similar artists off a station based on a Flipturn song, even after having listened to it for months on repeat on Spotify.
Some hard-to-ignore drawbacks
With all that in mind, there are still some glaring downsides. First off, Pandora is much more involved than other music streaming services since it works best when you are constantly tuning your stations with thumbs up or down. On top of that, if you’re looking for more deep cuts and obscure songs, you may run into error messages that say, “This song isn’t currently available for station listening.” For instance, looking for similar music to Ilusion De Amor by Jensine Benitez was brickwalled with the error and defeated the entire purpose of using Pandora to find similar music.
To top it all off, Pandora’s UI is rough. While it was fine on an iPhone, using the app on my MacBook showed some cracks, like not being able to display what song was playing when minimized or not working with the Now Playing widget on the Menu Bar. If you’re able to get past all of these things and want to start expanding your music library without ads every two or three songs, Pandora Plus might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Correction, July 31, 2026, 4:47PM ET: This story mistakenly referenced Pandora Premium, which is an on-demand streaming service similar to Spotify, Apple Music and many other music subscription services. It was meant to refer to Pandora Plus, the $5/month ad-free Pandora option.
