Pandora has launched a brand new paid tier to its streaming service that will allow users to enjoy listening to music. Users could listen to music anyways, however, Pandora Premium offers a few extra incentives, including the ability to search for and play any track and create your own playlists.
This is an improvement over the previous, free tier that allowed you to experience something like an improved radio. However, all these facilities require you to shell out $9.99 per month.
Pandora has been working on introducing a slew of new services since the past year or so. The company initially went with a “recommendations” approach that saw the company offer song choices based upon the song you played the first time around. However, with a shift to on-demand services, Pandora decided to follow the trend and shift its attention to providing music as per the preference of its customers as well.
This is not the company’s first tryst with paid subscriptions. Last year, the company launched Pandora Plus, a service that allowed you to skip more songs, offered more replays and supported offline listening. For $5 a month, you got ad-free music streaming with around 2 million tracks in the catalog. The company had announced Pandora Premium at that time, stating that the new service will arrive by the year end.
Coming back to Pandora Premium, the service seems to have derived some inspiration from Rdio, an app it acquired in 2015. The new interface offers cool things like a background that changes color to match the album art, replay button and new menus with functions like collecting, downloading and sharing.
Apart from interface, the company has also devoted significant attention to its recommendation engine. Instead of songs from new releases and popular tracks, you will be more likely to be shown new albums from your favorite genre. The company is also laying greater stress upon curation with human and machine learning assistance. The company is also using the Music Genome Project to offer you suggestions that will allow you to quickly build up a play list.
Other features, that are slated to make their merry way to the platform soon, include AutoPlay. As the name implies, the feature will continue playing more music after your playlist ends — letting you discover new music in the process.
Here are some other, cool new features:
- Playlists, not worklists: Start a playlist with one or two songs of your choice, tap “Add Similar Songs” and put the power of Pandora’s Music Genome Project to work to create the perfect playlist for any activity, mood or party.
- All your thumbs up: Every song you’ve thumbed up on Pandora is immediately available in your “My Thumbs Up” playlist.
- New music for you… and only you: Browse is stocked with personalized suggestions for the latest releases from current and soon-to-be favorites.
- Offline mode: Download albums, songs stations or playlists you want and bring an end to those moments of deafening silence when you lose a signal.
- Search that knows you: Pandora’s team of curators, music analysts and data scientists have sifted through tens of millions of tracks to help you quickly find what you really want.
Meanwhile, Pandora will be taking upon the likes of Apple Music and Spotify with its new service. The company is going for a limited launch at present and Pandora Premium is being made available this week, solely through invitation
