Pandora Premium is the music app’s new on-demand streaming service, and it is set to take Spotify head-on.
Pandora bought out Rdio last year, and since then has been working on this particular project. Engadget reported on a closed event held in New York where detailed of the service were revealed.
While we don’t have images available (it was all pretty hush-hush), strap your imaginations on while we tell you the basics, AKA what we know so far:
It will utilise your Pandora history
All those thumbs up you’ve given songs over the years? Pandora will use them to give you personalised recommendations for new music and suggest (sometimes automatically adding) songs to add to playlists you’re building – which you can listen to offline.
It looks like, well, Pandora
The home screen is the same as what you’re used to seeing now, with the “my music” section containing all your stations. You can filter by artist, album, station or playlist.
“Now Playing” looks fancy, though
The background screen will change depending on the artwork of the song’s album you’re currently playing.
Thumbs up/down isn’t going anywhere
Arguably the cornerstone of what makes Pandora, Pandora – the thumbs up/down options will stick around, with those songs you love being added to an automatically generated giant playlist featuring every single song you have ever given a thumbs up to.
You can automatically “flesh out” your lonely playlists
If you’ve got a playlist with a couple of songs that don’t really fit elsewhere, Pandora will let you automatically populate said playlist with similar music.
Search has been re-designed, too
Rather than basing search on popularity, Pandora is going for a more personalised approach – considering what kinds of things you’ve serached for in the past, and what it knows you already like.
Other fancy new features include…
- A New Music section on the Browse screen with albums based on your listening history
- An Autoplay feature that automatically loads up a new album when you’re finished with the current one
There’s no exact price or release date for Pandora Premium as yet, but a Q1 2017 launch is expected. We will keep you updated as we learn more.