If you began using the Pandora streaming service after my big raves about it both when it started late 2012 and the following year when Bose used it to launch its SoundTouch music players, this may not be of much comfort to you; I'm seriously sorry. You have now doubtless discovered that Pandora has closed its Australian operation. By the look of things it may never be back.

Maybe it will also be of some comfort to know that it's not just you. Among others, I also persuaded my sister and brother to sign up. They're pretty shirty and lay the blame squarely with their little brother (it was ever thus). Mind you, they both took the free service with its occasional ads while I was a paying subscriber, getting music without ads and higher download quality. Even with bank charges it was a bargain, working out at less than six bucks a month, or half a Spotify subscription. So I view its demise as their fault, not mine. There were too many people using it for free and not enough subscribers. My sister's comment will have all the local folk who have just been laid off by Pandora crying into their beers: "If I'd known they were in trouble I would have started paying," she said.

The attraction of Pandora was that simply by logging on, or with SoundTouch by pressing a button, there was music just as you wanted it. My brother, my sister and me always had music in our houses.

I suspect another reason Pandora found the going too tough was the growth of Spotify , by far the biggest streaming service in the world, with more than 50 million paying subscribers. Spotify has more music than Pandora and, like Pandora, once you get a bit of history with it, it starts suggesting music for you with mixes tailored to your tastes. Use it for just a few minutes and you'll regard Pandora as music streaming's equivalent of the T-model Ford – it hooked everyone into the idea, and then we all moved on.

I suggested Spotify to my sister (a Sonos user) and said she could get it free or pay $12 a month for the vastly superior premium service. "I might try the free one first," she ventured, reverting to type. Come to think of it, I only signed up when they offered three months of premium for 99 cents.

My brother, a SoundTouch user, wanted alternatives, and I said his SoundTouch handles both Spotify and Deezer ,which seems pretty popular. Apple Music is a safe bet. It ties in with iTunes. If you have a music collection there you can tap into it and play anything else you like, and load music into a library for playing offline (Spotify does this too). It also costs $12 a month, but he might need a cable from his computer to his SoundTouch.

I Heart Radio is worth investigating although a couple of times I've been there the screen has locked while an ad is running. It collects radio stations from around the world (including here) and streams them at no cost to the user. Stations are catalogued by genre; there are also podcasts and you can search artists.

By the way, Pandora is far from the first music streaming service to fall over; it's just the one that has left the most people casting around for a replacement. Other failures in this business include Rdio, Beats Music, MOG, LastFM, Ghost Tunes and even Sony's toe-in-the-water, Sony Music Unlimited.