Why is there no Pandora for Windows Phone?

[straitda]

There's no Pandora app for WP7 because Pandora hasn't developed one. An independant WP developer built a working Pandora app as a proof of concept. It just didn't have all the features such as up/down voting a song. He claimed he was going to develop a full Pandora app for WP7. I haven't seen anything from him yet.

IMHO, the blame for the lack of a Pandora app lies squarely on Pandora. I think they have it in for the WP7 platform. MS announced them as a development partner in the early days before WP7 was released. Not sure if that was a mistake on the part of MS or if plans fell through for the app.

It could be that Pandora did not want to build an app for WP7 prior to Mango because of the lack of the ability for third party apps to stream audio in the background. With Mango on a large percentage of handsets, this is no longer an excuse.

If you plan to stay with WP7 and are looking for a music service like Pandora, I suggest you find another service for now, and let Pandora know you love their service but not enough to drop your phone OS for them. If enough of us do this, they'll get the message.

Third party Pandora app coming to Windows Phone
http://www.windowscentral.com/third-party-pandora-app-coming-windows-phone

 

[jeremyshaw]

this could very well be possible, I know Sony used to pay for games to not be on the original Xbox.

To be fair, Sony owns a lot of their development talent. Sort of like how Bungie used to never make anything but xbox games, but now they are hiring skilled PS3 software engineers since they are under the emply of Activision (who is totally not going to IW-esque use and discard of them).

 

[sin_nombre773]

To be fair, Sony owns a lot of their development talent. Sort of like how Bungie used to never make anything but xbox games, but now they are hiring skilled PS3 software engineers since they are under the emply of Activision (who is totally not going to IW-esque use and discard of them).

because they cheated and bought them out.

 

[Rhody#WP]

I much prefer Pandora to the other options. I like that you can start in a Smart DJ fashion but then rename the station and add more artists and songs to the original seed. That alone makes it much more useful than the competition, especially Zune Smart DJ, which is too simple for a paid service. I wish Zune allowed me to fully customize my own station the way Pandora does.

 

[jfa1]

You can make that suggestion in the voting list of customer wants for the next version of WP os

 

[FriendOrDafoe]

Justin Angel has a homebrew pandora app to satisfy you for the meantime. Go dev unlock your phone ASAP.

 

[pseudoware]

http://pandora.com now supports HTML5. If you have Mango, go there w/IE on your phone. Pin to your home screen. Enjoy!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[psyry]

Slacker is Better

Trust me, Slacker Radio is better...ps pay the extra 3.99 / month to get the plus service.

 

[btbam91]

who needs pandora when u have last.fm?

THIS. Last.fm destroys Pandora.

 

[Verkunder]

Justin Angel has a homebrew pandora app to satisfy you for the meantime. Go dev unlock your phone ASAP.

Have unlocked phone, where's the .xap?

 

[pseudoware]

Have unlocked phone, where's the .xap?

right here

 

[N8ter]

Trust me, Slacker Radio is better...ps pay the extra 3.99 / month to get the plus service.

Slacker is terrible compared to Pandora. I got 3 months of Plus from Bing Rewards, used it for an hour or so and uninstalled the App (sadly it's baked into my Vibrant's ROM), never so be seen again. Free Pandora is miles better than that.

Slacker does have a much larger library of songs than Pandora, but their algorithms are TERRIBAD making that large library pretty much not matter.

The lack of a Pandora App is due to Pandora not wanting to develop one.

The HTML5 website is a terrible user experience compared to their Native Apps.

I do like Slacker's Offline Station Caching, though

 

[N8ter]

THIS. Last.fm destroys Pandora.

Slacker Destroys Last.FM, so how can Last.FM destroy Pandora - Pandora destroys Slacker...

Also, the Volume of the Last.FM app on my HD7 is too low to be intelligible. It's basically unusable. Pretty low bitrate, too.. (noisy audio).

 

[sin_nombre773]

Slacker Destroys Last.FM, so how can Last.FM destroy Pandora - Pandora destroys Slacker...

Also, the Volume of the Last.FM app on my HD7 is too low to be intelligible. It's basically unusable. Pretty low bitrate, too.. (noisy audio).

sounds great on mine. Something must be wrong with ur device.

 

[jdd77]

Complaining to the wrong place about the lack of Pandora. I don't get y people are so stuck on this anyway when there are so many alternatives such as Spotify, Last.Fm ,slacker radio AND Zune smartDJ (which is built in by the way and not on any other platform).

The first app I looked for when I got my trophy was Pandora. Since then, Ive been forced to use zune.

 

[sin_nombre773]

The first app I looked for when I got my trophy was Pandora. Since then, Ive been forced to use zune.

there's nothing wrong with using Zune and u are not "forced" to use it. Y can't u understand that?

 

[theefman]

Funny thing about Zune, I always avoided tapping the Smart DJ option as I dont have a Zune pass, yesterday I decided to try it and it made a mix of my downloaded music. Wasnt expecting that and it picked a good mix from what I had on the phone so now rather than just a few playlists I'm going to put all my music on my phone and use the Smart DJ for when I want to listen to tracks I havent heard in a while. Not a bad option to have.

 

[Rhody#WP]

I'm playing with Slacker now. It's every bit as good as Pandora as far as I'm concerned. I didn't realize it had the "Create a Station" option where you can add multiple artists. I also like that you can fine tune it as far as popularity, date, favorites, etc. Now I can create a station for my girlfriend and one with current pop music for the kids. Excellent!

I even pinned it to my start screen right next to Music and Video.

 

[N8ter]

I'm playing with Slacker now. It's every bit as good as Pandora as far as I'm concerned. I didn't realize it had the "Create a Station" option where you can add multiple artists. I also like that you can fine tune it as far as popularity, date, favorites, etc. Now I can create a station for my girlfriend and one with current pop music for the kids. Excellent!

I even pinned it to my start screen right next to Music and Video.

The issue with slacker isn't the stations, the capabilities of the app, the UI of the app, or the size of the library (which is probably twice as big as Pandora's).

It's that their algorithm is sloppy and seems to just pick music of a certain genre and lump it together, that's it. Pandora does a little more work. You spend less time downrating songs you didn't want in Pandora than you do in Last.FM or Slacker. That's why people prefer Pandora.

Slacker is decent, it's just not as good as Pandora.

Last.FM is better on devices where it supports scrobbling third party music players, that way it gains accuracy even when you're not using the actual app (which works well for people who tend to prefer a specific genre and play a couple dozen songs or few albums a LOT). On WP7 it doesn't Scrobble the Zune Player, so you end up downrating a ton of songs like in Slacker trying to get it level out.

Another thing I noticed in Slacker and Last.FM is that they repeat songs way too much.

 

[N8ter]

sounds great on mine. Something must be wrong with ur device.

The HD7 only has Mono Sound out of the external speaker, that doesn't help, either...



But it's lower than Slacker even through headsets, and the bitrate makes for harsh, noisy sound...