Review: PandoraJam's where it's at

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Review: PandoraJam’s where it’s at

11 June 2010 3,470 views 5 Comments

My Musicality review generated an interesting back-and-forth on the merits of that app, as well as Pandora Air, an official app that runs on Adobe’s Air middleware. However, in searching for Pandora Air, which I tried and came to the same conclusions as Jason, I came across another app that’s polished, feature-rich and, depending on you use it, completely free.

PandoraJam (3.7MB, shareware) that offers system-wide keyboard shortcuts, Growl notifications, a polished/attractive interface, can stream audio to an Airport Express and the ability to record songs directly to iTunes. Unlike either Musicality or Pandora Air, this app takes up a lot less screen real estate — it’s not a reproduction of the Pandora player webpage.

Additionally, whereas thumbing up or down a song in Pandora Air kicks you out to a browser, PandoraJam (and Musicality) can handle the event without a browser.

That said, PandoraJam distinguishes itself is by offering recording and Airport Express streaming. And, this is where free separates from shareware ($15), when you running this app unregistered, recording and streaming just stop after a few songs (but can be restarted with a click of the mouse).

Once you register, recording and streaming just work.

Conclusion

With Musicality, it’s pretty easy to see where Jason’s going and the finished product’s gonna be sweet. However, until that happy day arrives, PandoraJam’s got the features, polish and, again depending on how you want to use it, that ever attractive “free” price.

I want to check back in with Musicality and I hope Jason holds me to that. For the time being, PandoraJam’s the one that’s earned a spot in my Dock…

What’s your take?

5 Comments »

Tweets that mention Review: PandoraJam's where it's at | FairerPlatform -- Topsy.com said:

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by rocr69, rocr69. rocr69 said: "Review: PandoraJam's where it's at | FairerPlatform" ( http://bit.ly/ceL5vo ) [...]

# 11 June 2010 at 10:08 am

Happy 5th birthday, Pandora! | FairerPlatform said:

[...] also: — Review: PandoraJam’s where it’s at — Top 10 free radio apps for iPhone, iPad — Musicality 1.1: Addresses ClickToFlash [...]

# 29 August 2010 at 7:06 pm

Musicality 1.1: Addresses ClickToFlash bug | FairerPlatform said:

[...] Get your 21-day fully functional demo of Musicality 1.1 here (2MB). See also: Review: PandoraJam’s where it’s at [...]

# 2 March 2011 at 9:24 pm

Hands on with Rdio for Mac | FairerPlatform said:

[...] current favorite streamed audio service is Pandora and I prefer to play using PandoraJam (free). The beautiful thing about this service is that it’s free and it plays seamlessly on [...]

# 8 March 2011 at 12:02 am

Hands on with Pandora HTML5 | FairerPlatform said:

[...] hoping the third-party app guys (See > Review: PandoraJam’s where it’s at) upgrade their players really soon — maybe they can kill a little more of the Flash. [...]

# 21 September 2011 at 1:19 pm