Satellite Radio vs. Pandora in the car

[Malloric]

I use Spotify/Audible.

[OpinionInOcala]

I have Sirius XM, but I also use either my mp3 player or phone when I want to hear specific songs. LastFM and Pandora are alright sometimes... it's all situational anymore.

[superseiyan]

The most surprising thing in this thread for me is how much of an issue data is. I thought unlimited data was common now....Ive not used mobile streaming on my phone, but I got mobile unlimited data and think I could.

Also I disagree that you can't differentiate sound quality in a car. The music on Electronic Area define has less kick than from my iPod.

[greg42]

Data is not really an issue. The typical trend with the larger carriers is to make voice and text unlimited with a block of fixed amount of data. Some still are on older plans that reverse this though. In my experience, you would have to be using Pandora or similar several hours per day in the car to be using enough data to matter. But my experience does include having a home connection that doesn't use the cellular data. And also, I get to use wifi at work on the occasion I stream while there.

The idea that you'd go over on data with typical use and typical data plans seems like a stretch to me. There are cases where you might but it should be the exception rather than commonplace.

[2tall]

Originally Posted by greg42

Data is not really an issue. The typical trend with the larger carriers is to make voice and text unlimited with a block of fixed amount of data. Some still are on older plans that reverse this though. In my experience, you would have to be using Pandora or similar several hours per day in the car to be using enough data to matter. But my experience does include having a home connection that doesn't use the cellular data. And also, I get to use wifi at work on the occasion I stream while there.

The idea that you'd go over on data with typical use and typical data plans seems like a stretch to me. There are cases where you might but it should be the exception rather than commonplace.

It adds up.. I use about 5 gigs a month of mobile data. That's my cap. Music alone isn't that bad, but any netflix/hulu eats it right up.

And yes, I have an 'unlimited' data plan. most have actual caps at 4g speeds, then it knocks you down to utter crap speeds.

[greg42]

Originally Posted by 2tall

It adds up.. I use about 5 gigs a month of mobile data. That's my cap. Music alone isn't that bad, but any netflix/hulu eats it right up.

Well yeah. Video is always what eats it up. But we weren't really talking about that.

Now I know this isn't everyone, but personally I don't find a need to watch much video over the cell data connection. I use video streaming at home all the time, but not on my phone very much.

It really is just video that eats it. I use plenty of photo data as well as the music streaming (anything with only text on it is near enough to zero that it takes a lot to add up to anything significant) and I haven't ever cracked 2GB in a month.

Here's another way of looking at it: if you're already using a fair bit of video, it isn't likely to be Pandora that puts you over unless you're playing it constantly all on the cell connection.