At least in the US, music streaming is now more popular than digital downloads. Premium music services like Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer are also growing in popularity. This upward trend should continue, especially now that another household name has introduced its own music streaming service, Pandora launches a premium music streaming service. Pandora launches a premium music streaming service. Pandora is launching an on-demand music streaming service to rival Spotify and Apple Music. The question is, can Pandora Premium stand out from the competition? Read more . Pandora Premium comes a few months after the company bought key assets of the now-defunct Rdio Pandora Buys Rdio, Google Answers Questions, the $10 Android… [Digest] Pandora Buys Rdio, Google Answers Questions, the $10 Android. .. [Digest] Pandora picks On the bones of Rdio, Google gains intelligence, Walmart sells a cheap Android phone, Tears of Joy emoji wins word of the year, and how to build a time machine, theoretically speaking. Read more.
It remains an open question whether Pandora Premium will succeed. However, the company has 81 million reasons to be optimistic. That is, if you haven't already guessed, the number of active users listening to Pandora each month. By comparison, there are 50 million Spotify Premium subscribers and 20 million paying Apple Music customers.
If Pandora can convert just 10 percent of listeners into paying customers, Pandora Premium would become the third most popular streaming music service, ahead of Deezer, which has 6.9 million users. /P>
In general, Pandora Premium is very similar to other subscription-based music streaming services. For $9.99 a month, you have unlimited access to millions of songs that you can listen to or download for offline use on multiple platforms.
So why try it? As a long time Spotify Premium subscriber, is Spotify Premium worth it and should I upgrade? Is Spotify Premium worth it and should you upgrade? Is Spotify Premium worth it? In this article, find out what Premium offers and whether you should upgrade from Spotify Free. Read More After testing the new music subscription service for a couple of weeks, we've found six reasons why it's worth giving it a spin.
One of the things I've always appreciated about Spotify Premium is its many curation tools that help you find new music to enjoy. Healing is also a part of Pandora Premium, but not to the same extent. Instead, the focus here is to provide easy access to the songs and albums you already love.
Under the “My Music” tab, you'll find recently played songs, albums, and stations. Better yet, Pandora Premium sorts this content in reverse chronological order, pushing things you listen to the most on Pandora Best Mac Apps to Listen to Pandora Best Mac Apps to Listen to Pandora Love Pandora, but not in your browser? These are the best Mac apps for work, regardless of whether you're a Pandora One subscriber. Read More right to the top.
I'll never get tired of finding new music through Spotify Premium, but I can admit that not everyone likes to get lost in new music. For those people, Pandora Premium might be a better solution.
Even though it takes a toned-down approach, Pandora Premium still offers a selection of healing tools. Underneath “Sneak Peek,” you'll find new music tailored to you every week, including recommendations based on the albums and genres your story says you like.
You'll also find sections that include the best songs and albums enjoyed by other Pandora Premium users.
Pandora Premium has 40 million songs in its library, which compares very well with other services. What you won't find here, however, are things like karaoke tracks, imitation tributes, and duplicate tracks, which Pandora says slows down other services when it comes to searching.
In terms of the time it takes to perform a search, I haven't noticed much of a difference between Pandora Premium and other similar services, like the new Napster The New Napster:Even better than Old Napster? The new Napster:Even better than the old Napster? Did you know that Napster still exists today, although it is a completely different service than Napster before it? Let's see how the new Napster compares to the old Napster. Read more . However, I have noticed that the results seem less cluttered on Pandora Premium, even though the actual content is essentially the same.
Now that I know that Pandora Premium doesn't include weird-sounding cover tracks, I'll take a closer look at them in the future.
Playing thumbnail songs up and down has always been an important part of listening to Pandora Radio. The premium service retains this feature, but with additional ringtones.
First off, from the get-go, Pandora has tracked every song you've listened to across all of your stations and added them to a "My Thumbs Up" Playlist on Pandora Premium. Yes, every song.
Also, every time you give a radio station a thumbs up, the song is automatically added to a playlist for that station. To do it again just add another song. You can enjoy this playlist or forget about it. In any case, now you have another place to find music you already love. You can manually remove these tracks from the playlist or download them to your device.
You want more content to enjoy in a playlist. This clever trick keeps your Pandora stations. New. This clever trick keeps your Pandora stations. Fresh Pandora is a great music service, but sometimes your stations get a little behind. Here is an easy way to improve them without any effort. Read more ? Just click “Add Similar Songs” and Pandora will use a special algorithm to insert new content based on what's already there.
For example, I uploaded five songs from the Classic Rock Radio station, which automatically created a new playlist. These songs include "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, "Lucky Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Hotel California" by the Eagles, "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield, and "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals.
After clicking “Add Similar Songs,” Pandora added five additional tracks from groups like The Mamas &The Papas and Lynyrd Skynyrd. A good game, right?
There is a similar solution for when you want to create a manual playlist. After adding a few songs and with the help of the Music Genome Project, Pandora Premium will add similar songs with the click of a button. That way, you'll always have music.
While some services like to pack a lot of information into one screen, Pandora Premium takes a different approach. Their main pages are intuitive and accessible, while their “Now Playing” page is beautiful, as you can see here:
Throughout, you'll find menus and controls that seem to make sense.
Pandora Premium has recognized that explicit music is not for everyone. Because of this, it allows you to remove this content from Pandora Premium radio stations and search. Just toggle “Allow explicit content” to the off position in your account settings.
There are two things you won't see in Pandora Premium.
The first is exclusive to albums and content. As Pandora CEO Tim Westergren told The Verge:
The second is the unique autoplay feature that made Rdio great. With autoplay, you can keep your music playing by automatically starting a station based on what's been played recently. That way, the music would never end unless and until you hit Pause. Fortunately, autoplay is scheduled to arrive in a future Pandora Premium update.
I am pleasantly surprised by Pandora Premium and plan to continue using it through my 60-day free trial. It offers a refreshing new way to listen to music legally 7 Sites Where You Can Download Music for Free (Legally!) 7 Sites Where You Can Download Music for Free (Legally) If you're the type of person who loves to cater to a great music collection, there are still ways to get free music Here are seven websites to get you started... Read More .
For long-time Pandora Radio users, I would highly recommend Pandora Premium. It provides a familiar setup with many new features. Subscribers to other premium services should also take Pandora's new service out for a test drive. It may not provide the perfect fit, but depending on your preferences, it may still be worth your time and consideration.
Pandora Premium is gradually being released. To get an invite, be sure to visit the official Pandora Premium website. Current Pandora Plus users will be offered six months of Pandora Premium for free. Non-Pandora Plus users will receive a two-month free trial.
Are you planning to try Pandora Premium? Please let us know in the comments below.