Last week, Pandora announced no more music with ads for the rest of the month. So I went with my backup . . . full time and like it better! Pandora channels had grown as boring as 'ClearChannel'. Had there been even a hint of variety . . . something not so brain-dead, maybe. This same lack of imagination and variety killed XM for me. If others enjoy their 'service' good on them but there is more to life than being a one-trick pony. Bob Wilson
As long as I had to deal with ads, it was a fair tradeoff. But they turned it off last week until the end of this month. So I tried my fall-back app, tunein, and found it has a better mix than Pandora. If Pandora had just put in more ads, I would have left it alone. But their turning off the service . . . well I don't need it that badly. Bob Wilson
I've been a new user of TuneIn on a Roku channel trying to get smooth jazz/jazz radio stations. It's partially successful. I like a real station where you get some discussion of the music, rather than just endless automated music.
For some reason, I haven't been using the Pandora app on my phone lately. I do use the Pandora web site on my PC though but I've held off lately because I currently have a free month with Slacker Radio. You could also try Songza. I've been using that on/off for awhile.
BTW, I got my free month trial of Slacker Radio because of an email (I had a free trial w/them long ago). It was to enter a drawing (via their FB page), for which you'd also receive a free trial. Not sure if it's still going on. You might be able to dig around for similar deals by Googling for free month slacker radio slickdeals.