atoyota

I heard my first one on Tuesday morning. Just as I was turning off the ignition I heard "Taco Bell...." I stopped for a second and wondered if I heard correctly. Didn't hear any on the drive home but typically my commute is just under 20 minutes. Then yesterday in a traffic jam, I heard a commercial after about 20-25 minutes or so and again today.

I remember from a few months ago the Enform was now free, I guess Pandora has caught up.

I haven't updated the app on my phone or in my car so i don't think that has anything to do with it.

Not lovin' Pandora thru Enform so much now.

Kansas

Sucks doesn't it? I will be paying the $36 per year to get rid of the ads. I have wondered how long the free ride would last.

atoyota

@Kansas, I wouldn't mind paying for Pandora subscription, but I wonder if that would stop the playing of commercials when listening thru Enform. I like the Pandora app in Enform and you don't seem to have any control over the playback when you listen to Pandora thru BT. If you do get the subscription, please post back whether it still plays commercials or not.

LisaES350

I got a commercial today too.

Kansas

Pandora will stop playing ads if you subscribe. You already have a Pandora account that allows you to stream through Enform. Pandora will recognize that you have converted your Pandora account from a free access account to a paid/no ad account.

Lexus Enform, Toyota Entune and similar Pandora access systems like the one in the aftermarket Kenwood in my LS400 are just front ends for an existing Pandora account.

I really have to hand it to Pandora management on how they worked with Toyota and other car and audio system manufacturers to get users hooked on the ad-free service before they started "reeling them in" to get them to pay to go back to ad-free. I might balk if the price got higher but for now $36/year is trivial compared to the pleasure I get from Pandora.

At least we aren't seeing Pandora's video advertisements on Enform/Entune - at least not yet - like you do when streaming Pandora directly from the Pandora app on a phone. I would certainly hope that video ads wouldn't start popping up on the nav screen! Surely they wouldn't do that if only due to DOT and state regulations prohibiting video viewable by drivers.

Canesguy

I guess I wasn't bummed cause I never expected it to be commercial free.

Nismo

That would be a ticketable offense--a video stream playing in view of the driver--and would quickly make its way to every news station in the country. Therefore, I don't think you have to worry about video ads in your in-car apps.

Kansas

I paid the $36 yesterday morning for a one-year subscription to Pandora One and the advertisements stopped on the four platforms and devices I used yesterday - Toyota Entune in our Prius wagon, Kenwood DDX470 in my LS400; and Pandora streaming directly from my Samsung GS3 phone and Samsung tablet through ear buds. I was notified by email within a few seconds after subscribing that my account had been converted.

I spent at least three hours yesterday listening to Pandora One after I subscribed - not a single advertisement. When streaming directly from my phone and tablet, "Pandora One" is now momentarily displayed.

The Pandora app on our Samsung "smart TV" updated this morning when I started it but I don't know if it was because I had subscribed or because I had not used it in the past couple of weeks. I assume it will now also be ad-free since the Pandora smart TV app displays the same email address that I used to subscribe to Pandora One.

My understanding is that subscription Pandora One uses the same 64k AAC+ bit-rate on mobile devices as free Pandora but it seemed to sound better after I subscribed - maybe it was just the relief from getting rid of the ads.

I can't find information on how many additional "skips" you get with Pandora One. All I can find on the Pandora website is "More skips per day".

Canesguy

Kansas, thanks for the info. $36/yr. sounds like a lot more "bang for the buck" than satellite radio, and you can listen on multiple devices. Do you rack up data charges on your carrier when listening?

Kansas

To me $36/year is huge bang for the buck. I've tried a number of streaming audio services and I like Pandora the most. We've got XM too but only check it once a month or so to verify that it still works.

Yes, Pandora uses a portion of my phones data allocation. I'm 22 days into my current 31 day (It's January) billing cycle and so far Pandora has used 370MB of my 3GB plan. I use Pandora a lot while in our cars and sometimes streaming from my phone while I work but it is hard to say how many minutes on average per day. My techie colleagues have a running discussion about how much data the various audio streaming services use and the consensus has been that Pandora uses less than some of the others - particularly "tunein".

My phone sometimes streams Pandora via WiFi even while I am in one of our cars. I've connected to so many WiFi hotspots that my phone automatically switches to WiFi whenever I am near one. This morning I took discarded glass to a recycling bin at a shopping center while listening to Pandora. As soon as I got near the shopping center, my phone switched to the Panera Bread Company WiFi network without a hiccup from Pandora.

It's the same when I turn on to my street - my phone switches to the long-range WiFi router in my house and Pandora never skips a beat. And while waiting in the car at the airport each week for my wife, I listen to Pandora while connected to the airport's free WiFi.

atoyota

@Kansas. Thanks for the info.

atoyota

I upgraded Pandora today.