Pandora announces Premium service to start in January
Pandora continues to expand its offerings and grow its business to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. Its most recent offering is an on-demand streaming service called Pandora Premium. It’s a $10-per-month service with an extensive library of songs, offered ad-free, with the ability to save your playlist offline.
Pandora Premium will start rolling out in January 2017.
This is the third major announcement by the online radio company in the last few months. In October, Pandora announced a big rebranding, changing its signature block P to a more graphically interesting one, and adding multiple colors to its design language. In September, the company announced a more basic ad-free option, Pandora Plus, offered for $4.99 a month, shortly after it signed a direct licensing agreement with Universal Music, Merlin Network and Sony Music. There is also TicketFly, the ticketing service it acquired to compete with StubHub and Ticketmaster.
Pandora acquired Rdio just over a year ago and it appears that it is using some of the intuitive features that Rdio inspired, according to a report by The Verge. The new Pandora Premium app also features a new, sleek design, and the color and artwork of the app will apparently change based on the music the user plays. It will also have personalized search with results based on listening history. What won’t change is the thumbs up or down that users have become familiar with over the years. Premium will also include a playlist of every song a listener has given the thumbs up, including going back in listening history over the years.
Another feature is AutoPlay, which will allow users to create a radio station based on the playlist a listener has just finished hearing.
Pandora hopes to convert its free, Plus and One users to its Premium service, which would raise revenue and keep listeners loyal.