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Chris Graham: Slacker 1, Pandora 0

slackerI was all excited. I don’t know why. It was an ad.

Upgrade to Pandora One.

That was it, and apparently was all I needed. I had this idea in my mind that upgrading from the free Pandora Internet radio service to the paid Pandora One would give me what I wanted most: unlimited skips.

I was wrong, which I found out the first time I tried to skip two songs.

Uh, so what am I paying for?

I searched online, and found others who were similarly flummoxed.

Indeed, what are you paying for? The answer: no commercial interruptions. As if that’s the biggest issue with Pandora. Not setting a channel for, say, Public Enemy, and listening to songs from several artists including the occasional one from Public Enemy, and that being your PE experience.

Additional web searching led me to another Internet music service, Slacker, which is like Pandora in that it provides access via free and on paid-subscription plans to a large library of music, and is otherwise unlike Pandora in every other way imaginable.

For starters, right now I’m listening to a channel that I created featuring music by the Presidents of the United States of America. I’ve been on the channel for two hours now, and I’ve not listened to a single song by an artist not named Presidents of the United States of America.

So that’s a big plus. Another: yep, unlimited skips.

I pay for the unlimited skips. I would have paid for it on Pandora had Pandora offered. I’m glad it didn’t. I found a much, much better alternative in Slacker as a result.

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