Quote from Lucias:
I don't know about the stocks. I'm just talking about the service. And my point is that Spotify is competing with basically WinAMP, every mp3 that one can rip, buy, or obtain otherwise. Spotify has chosen to compete in this way. And, I can't see any value-added service to use it over WinAMP.
Pandora offers something unique. It brings music to me. It doesn't have to have offer everything that I want because it does something different.
This is just my take. Again, spotify could easily be made better and its really appalling how bad it is in terms of bringing me what I want. It doesn't do anything to help bring me what I want. It does find a good portion of what I specifically know to look for but it didn't offer everything I looked for. Granted, it is interesting service that I'll keep an eye on and continue to explore.
The lack of web interface is also pretty bad for a service that costs $10/month. Pandora really benefits from that and I'm sure a lot of people use it at work where they may not be able or want to install something on their desktop.
Pandora has enough benefits to keep it competitive at this time.
As a test, I punched in Avi Buffalo into Pandora and it came up with What's In It For me? A great tune that I like.
Honestly, I just like the ease and simplicity of Pandora and how it finds music that I haven't heard. No real wow factor but it does a good job at decent and many companies, like Taco Bell, have built billions on being just consistently decent.
Spotify is interesting too. If it had found all the music I searched for then I'd probably have purchased it but it didn't. If it had brought me new music I hadn't heard then I would have been impressed. As is, I'll give the free trial a spin.