Introducing Pandora Premium: Pandora’s Answer To Spotify, Apple Music

Pandora has recently announced its newest offering, Pandora Premium, and it is looking to give Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music a run for their money. A year ago, Pandora had completed its acquisition of Rdio, but has since shut down the service permanently before the start of 2016. From what was left of Rdio’s resources, Pandora then fashioned a new package, one that delivers a massive library of on demand tracks, plus an interface that banks on the Pandora brand’s extensive experience in recommending music via its online radio service.

Here is how the Pandora Premium’s track recommendation system works -- existing listening data compiled by Pandora will be integrated into the interface, thereby allowing users to browse playlists of every track they have given a thumbs up. What makes Pandora Premium different from other Pandora offerings is its added focus on letting people discover more new tracks. Indeed, a new music section has been set up to display new release records based on the user’s genre preferences. When the user is done listening to an album or a playlist, Pandora Premium will then proceed to playing tracks of similar genre.

To date, nearly 80 million people across the whole globe already have accessed the ad supported version of Pandora. Now if the company can just convert about a quarter of that volume of users into paying subscribers, it would certainly rank among the biggest in terms of streaming on demand music. 

Pandora Premium is expected to go live within the first three months of 2017. Pandora is yet to disclose local pricing for the service, but based on the prevailing rate among similar services, there is some likelihood that the newest offering from Pandora will be priced at $10 a month. Note that this is the same pricing structure as Spotify Premium, Apple Music, and Google Play Music.

Pandora has certainly been busy the last few months. About a couple of months ago, it launched a new tier called Pandora Plus. Around the same time, the company also introduced a new brand logo design. First unveiled back in September earlier this year, Pandora Plus is 100 percent ad free, and offers listeners the ability to skip more tracks, enjoy more replay opportunities, and even offline access. The service is priced at $4.99 a month. Previously, the company’s paid service was Pandora One, but with Pandora Plus now in place, subscribers under Pandora One will be shifted automatically to the newer option.