Spotify or Pandora


A relative pointed out two music download websites: Spotify and Pandora. I don't know anything about music downloads. But I was hoping to stream hi-rez original artist oldies. I tried one selection on Spotify and it sounded like MP3 quality and didn't seem like original artists were singing.

Please advise. I would love to stream in hi-rez oldies from the 50s and 60s, but don't know if Spotify or Pandora are good sources.

Thanks
bifwynne
Pamdora does not allow you to pick a song and listen to it. You pick a song, it will create a playlist based on the dna of your choice and then maybe if you are lucky within the first 10 songs it decides to play, you might hear the actual song you chose.

Spotify premium allows you to choose and listen to any music you want any time. There is an enormous base of community built playlists to listen to. The downfall is that it pales in comparison to pandora in the context of being able to automatically set up playlists based on a single recommendation.

They are both very different services. I think both sound good, spotify 320kbps is damn close to tidal lossless in my opinion.
Search option. There is no such option in Pandora Radio app, which means that you can’t find a particular song of a particular artist. In Spotify, you can find an artist and listen to his album. In a free version you can listen only shuffle play, yet in premium this option is available.Replay a song. And again, in Pandora, you have to rely on the system because you simply can’t replay and listen again your favorite song. Spotify offers the feature in premium account.Number of songs. The Spotify has more than 16 millions songs, while Pandora the app only one million. The numbers are growing, yet the the difference is obvious.Offline mode. Only Spotify can boast with this feature, not Pandora.
(from Spotify vs Pandora
Music could be one of the most beautiful things of the whole humanity. So, people are looking for various ways of how to make the process of the search of their favorite compositions much more easier and comfortable.That is why we have such a thing as Pandora. However, lots of developers are thinking about the creation of something similar. So, in that article you may see an instruction on the creation of a similar application.
( Article: Making an App Like Pandora)
The difference between full redbook CD streams and spotify is not as big as calimed here. The redbook CD stream is in principle 1411 kbs. However, if it is compressed with FLAC (as is done by these streaming services) the necessary bitrate is only about half, or even less. The BBC recently did some experimental cd red book streaming of live classical concerts, and the bitrates they needed were even less than half. They also did some serious research on the audibility of lower bitrates, and their conclusion was that 320 kbs was indistinguishable from full redbook cd quality. There are a few websites with blind samples where you can test your own ability to distinguish different sample rates in a statistically convincing way, and few people if any can indeed distuinguish 320 kbs from the real deal. For internet radio stations this is also an important issue because higher bitrates demand far more bandwith, and better than perfect would be a waste of resources. But it is admittedly a borderline case.
I am curently using Spotify as that is what the children wanted. However, for classical music I find the interface not very convenient, and the plan is to switch to Qobuz once my son moves out. More generally, I think these streaming sevices are absolutely wonderful. It is the difference between having your own private library of books and a large university library with just about everything ever written.
As for the gear side of things, I think adding a Chromecast Audio, Apple Airport Express or Sonos Connect is the easiest way to add this facility. The inbuilt DACs are excellent, but if you feel the urge to spend more, they all have digital outputs for an external DAC. Personally, I am perfectly happy with the analogue output of a Chromecast Audio into my Quad amplifiers and Quad 2805 electrostats. However, when I replace my old Quad 33 pre amplifier I will get one with digital inputs like the Pioneer U-05 (I no longer use any analogue sources).
@willemj  I disagree with what you've posted entirely I can clearly hear the difference between 320kbps and higher bitrates. And when I stream my app, Aries Lightning DS, shows the bitrate for most flac its anyway from 700kbps to 1100 kbps so much higher than 320.