Pandora and Spotify might seem like two music apps that accomplish the same goal. However, they each offer a different type of service, and they each have advantages and disadvantages, depending on what the user is looking for.

Pandora works as a personalized radio. Users can create “stations” based on a certain genre, a certain artist or even a specific song, and the app will then pick similar songs.

Pandora also has a like/dislike system and will choose songs based on what the user has liked or disliked.

These features help the app decide what types of songs the user is likely to enjoy, and the more the user likes/dislikes songs, the more his station will become adapted to his music tastes.

“With Pandora you get a wider selection of music, not just songs from one artist or a certain album,” Dorian Coleman, junior, said. “You get to hear similar genres of music.”

Users can create up to 100 unique stations as well as share their station with other users.

One of the disadvantages of Pandora is that users are only allowed to skip six songs per hour, and they only get 30 skips per day.

Spotify gives its users more freedom to choose what they want to listen to.

Spotify lets users create playlists with specific songs or albums, and the app will then shuffle songs from those playlists.

Both Pandora and Spotify offer paid services to enhance the user’s experience.

Pandora’s paid service, “Pandora One,” gives users more skips per day and removes ads entirely for $4.99 a month.

Spotify’s paid service, “Spotify Premium,” gives users high quality audio and removes ads for $10 a month. It also lets users listen to any song they save to their playlist, in any order they want.

“You get what you pay for,” Logan Hards, senior, said. “The app also uses less data with the paid service.”

Users are also allowed to download songs and listen to them while offline.

“I use Spotify because I like to pick my songs,” Hards said. “Unlike Pandora, which works like a radio, Spotify lets me listen to whatever I want, whenever I want.”

People should also know that there are other options for streaming music. Services like YouTube let users listen to music while having other benefits.

Brandon Woolworth, senior, likes to use YouTube Red (YouTube’s $5.99 a month service) to stream music.

“I like that you don’t have to deal with ads, it supports content creators in YouTube, and lets me stream new movie releases,” Woolworth said. “I think it’s better than Pandora or Spotify because it gives me access to movies and adds other bonus capabilities to YouTube.”

Those looking to find new music and explore genres they think they might like should download Pandora, while those who know exactly what they want to listen to should stick to Spotify.

“Pandora is more of a mix of music,” Skye Wood, junior, said. “Spotify is more personalized, you get more of a choice.”

While Spotify’s paid service might seem like a better deal than Pandora’s, both are essential apps for anyone who loves music, and great tools to discover new music.