Is Pandora Beating iTunes Radio?

Apple recently launched an addition to their popular iTunes that was intended to rival the existing Pandora Radio. Apple created a similar application entitled iTunes Radio that was supposed to provide a radio like experience where a user would input an artist or song and iTunes Radio would provide similar songs for listening.

Although the launch appeared somewhat successful, Pandora still proves to be the leader. According to an article written by Aaron Pressman of Yahoo! Finance, "Pandora listeners average 38.5 minutes per day" while iTunes Radio listeners "tuned in for about 9.5 minutes per day." Apple Radio is still behind compared to Pandora.

After the launch, I decided to try out iTunes Radio although I have been a Pandora user. Although the music selection seemed better than Pandora, offering a wider variety songs, the interface was not easy to use and rather cumbersome. Pandora's fun, attractive interface is much easier to use and more simplistic.

Another player in this space not mentioned is Spotify. I must say, Spotify is my personal favorite. I have more control, yet they can offer suggestions if I want them. In addition, I can have as much or as little music in one place. By far one of my favorite features is the automatic playlist Spotify creates from the radio portion called, "Liked from Radio." Then, I have all the songs I liked in one place in case I want to go back and listen to them.

All in all, the race between these three continues. Who will prevail? What do you think?

Thanks for reading!

-LC

Categories: Apple, iTunes, Pandora, Radio, Spotify