Defining Features

When it comes to free offerings Pandora does have a few advantages over Spotify. Pandora offers 40 hours of free music a month compared to 10 hours that Spotify will eventually limit free users to (Spotify said Thursday that users would have ).

Pandora is also slightly easier to get started with thanks to its web-interface. Spotify requires you to sign up with it service and then download the client on each computer you want to use Spotify on. Pandora's great set-it-and-forget-it service, but if you want the kind of control that you're used to out of your MP3 player then Spotify is the service for you.

Can Facebook and Spotify Harmonize?

If Spotify really wants to break into the American market it's going to need to find a way to distinguish itself not just from Pandora but from the rest of the competition in the streaming music market - not just Pandora. To that end Spotify has pinned hopes on a partnership with Facebook it hopes will blossom. Spotify has a Facebook module built-in to its user interface that allows you to easily share songs and playlists with Facebook friends. Right now social networks aren't really popular hubs for swapping music. But with 750 million Facebook users Spotify is hoping modes of sharing and listening will change.