Apples and oranges. With pandora you have the free app which you can enjoy, then if you choose to, like many other apps, you can step up to the paid, premium, donate, or whatever version to enjoy added benefits or content. There is no option to pay verizon a little more money to get your phone without any of the bloat on it, so the only option is to use one of the custom ROMs or root your phone and remove the bloat yourself. If you enjoy the service provided by the free app, I don't think it's too much to ask to pay a few bucks to support the company, developer, etc. You can't get everything for free. Would you like it if one day you were told, "you are not going to get paid for the work you are doing today because these people here figured out a way to enjoy the services provided by you without paying for it. You will get paid for the work you do tomorrow, but for today you don't get paid." And you will still do the same amount of work on both days because you don't actually get told you are not being paid for that one day, it just seems like any other work day to you.
I understand Pandora may be a minor example as it's not like you are getting music for free you should be paying for, but the concept is still the same.