Pandora's own entry into the on-demand streaming music market, called Pandora Premium, is officially launching this week to a select group of invitees who sign up for a chance to gain access on the company's website. Pandora Premium is the result of the company's acquisition of "key assets" and employees from Rdio back in 2015. Late last year, Pandora finally detailed what its new Premium service would look like at a special event.

Unlike in the base Pandora app, Pandora Premium allows its subscribers full, on-demand control of what they listen to thanks to the inclusion of playlists and a personalized search feature, which surfaces unique items based on each user's own listening history instead of what's most popular at the time. The service includes learning algorithms that can auto-fill playlists after adding a few songs to match the previous tracks' genre of music.

pandora premium

Image via Engadget

Users will also be able to download songs to listen offline, browse content they've previously thumbed up, and view Pandora Premium's Browse section to see curated artists aimed specifically at their own music tastes. Those with Pandora Plus will get six months of Pandora Premium for free, and following the small launch of invite-only users, Pandora Premium will open up for all users in the next few weeks.

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. Thumb up a few tracks on any Pandora radio station and Premium will automatically create a new playlist of these songs too.
New music for you… and only you: Browse is stocked with personalized suggestions for the latest releases from current and soon-to-be favorites whether you listen to classical, metal, jazz, hip hop, country, and everything in between.
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. No more wading through covers, karaoke versions or tribute tracks to get to your favorite tune.

A few members of the press have had the chance to use Pandora Premium and shared their thoughts online today. Wired said that the new service offers features expected of modern paid streaming services, but "there’s really no reason for a Spotify or Apple Music user to switch to Pandora Premium." In an interview with The Verge, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren said that he wants Pandora Premium to be the number one streaming service -- above Spotify and Apple Music -- within five years.

“We have very grand ambitions for what this can be,” Westergren said. “If we look around at the space right now, we just don’t think that there’s a product that’s done it right. No one has solved the ease of use and personalization part of the on-demand world. I don’t think there’s really a true premium product out there yet… we think we’re bringing something really different here.”

In an update last December, Apple Music topped 20 million subscribers after 18 months on the market. Apple's and Pandora's rival, Spotify, announced that it reached 50 million paid subscribers earlier this month.

To get on the invite list for Pandora Premium's free trial, visit the company's website here. Invites will be sent out on March 15.

Top Rated Comments

jacobh101 Avatar
105 months ago
Pandora fails to understand that they need a bigger song library...I always think to myself "I just heard that song like 20 minutes ago"...
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Alexlfm Avatar
105 months ago
I'm not sure Pandora Premium will be worth it. For $20 more than I already pay for Pandora Plus and iTunes Match I could get a year of Apple Music. I wanted to keep Pandora because it streams with my Amazon Echos, but their library is so limited. I discovered more music using Apple Radio.
For me, nothing beats Pandora for radio. I've tried Apple music, I've tried Amazon's Stations, all of them, in my opinion fall short. The problem is, for me at least, they others are human generated
(or at least not very advanced algorithms), which is fine, but makes them too non-specific meaning if I want a station based on James Taylor's Fire and Rain, I don't suddenly want a more upbeat song popping up (I haven't tried youtube red, but based upon up next recommendations it would do a better job then Apple/Amazon although once again it's based on millions of users playlists, selections, etc.) None of the other services have solved this problem which is why I still use Pandora even though I have iTunes match, and prime music (well that and I pay the $4 a month price).
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
erinsarah Avatar
105 months ago
This product space is maturing fast. I see why Apple is going with the Radio angle instead of just offering music downloads.
Remember the first ten minutes of Beats1, when everyone thought, "hey, this is pretty cool" only to quickly realize you had to really, REALLY like hip-hop in order to listen to it for more than eight minutes? Why have they not come up with other Beats1 stations that cater to the rest of us?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dwaltwhit Avatar
105 months ago
Customers win with competition. Customers lose when the competition shifts to "how many exclusives can we get?"
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
FelixDerKater Avatar
105 months ago
Pandora fails to understand that they need a bigger song library...I always think to myself "I just heard that song like 20 minutes ago"...
Precisely!
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bfChris2 Avatar
105 months ago
Of course the price point will be important to Pandora Premium's success. However, I think this is going to be an EXCELLENT PRODUCT. I have evaluated Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Music. They let me choose to listen to specific songs, but they're hopeless at giving me a consistent playlist. IOW, if I don't want to spend the time to curate my own playlist, they're no good. I used to pay for premium access to di.fm (Digital Imports). DI used to play excellent curated playlists of various types of techno and electronic music, but beginning in Aug-Sep 2016, the playlists began to include more lyrics. More and more of their streams began to be infected with lyrics, until in January 2017, it seemed all style streams in which I was interested had vocalists distracting me from my activities.
Apple Music will not allow the user to "seed" a list, and no service is able to do what Pandora's Music Genome Project can do. I resurrected Pandora from the dustbin a month ago, and after several weeks of consistent music which never tossed in a wrong-genre tune, I subscribed to Pandora Plus. Music Genome Project is a tremendous asset; no other service is able to keep playlists on target song after song. I'm fed up with starting out listening to quiet piano, and 30 minutes later finding myself being screamed at by some hiphop-influenced pop track; this does not happen with Pandora.
The only thing Pandora lacks (other than bench depth) is on-demand song selection. Hooray for Pandora Premium!
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Magic Mouse Green

What to Expect From the Magic Mouse 3

Saturday March 29, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple is reportedly working on a new Magic Mouse. Below, we recap what to expect. The two key rumors for the Magic Mouse 3 so far include a relocated charging port, along with a more ergonomic design. It was briefly rumored that the Magic Mouse 3 would also feature voice control, but that was misinterpreted information. Relocated Charging Port While the Magic Mouse switched from...
maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 18.4 With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music, New Emoji and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:03 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates that came out last year. iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 come two months after Apple released iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to...
top stories 2025 03 29

Top Stories: WWDC 2025 Announced, iPhone 17 Pro and iOS 19 Rumors, and More

Saturday March 29, 2025 6:00 am PDT by
Apple's big developer event is a little over two months away, and rumors about what we can expect to see in Apple's next major operating system updates are becoming increasingly frequent. A public release of iOS 18.4 is also imminent with a number of updates and improvements, although we won't be getting the major Apple Intelligence Siri upgrades that had reportedly been planned for this...
iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Expected Next Week - Here Are the Release Notes

Friday March 28, 2025 2:01 pm PDT by
With the second release candidate of iOS 18.4 that Apple seeded out today, the company finally provided us with release notes that give a full rundown on what to expect. There's an Apple Vision Pro app, new Apple Intelligence features for notifications and additional language support, plus an Apple News Food feature for Apple News+ subscribers, and several updates that should improve the...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature Homescreen

Six Things to Know About Apple's Upcoming Foldable iPhone

Friday March 28, 2025 3:54 pm PDT by
We've been hearing rumors about a foldable iPhone for almost a decade now, but it looks like we might finally see the device come to fruition in 2026. We're going to be waiting many more months for the foldable iPhone, but so far we're hearing good things. Apple wants to make it creaseless. It's taken Apple multiple years to design a foldable iPhone that it's satisfied with because Apple ...
iOS 19 visionOS UI Elements

Apple Codename Provides Clue About iOS 19's Rumored New Design

Sunday March 30, 2025 6:40 am PDT by
Multiple sources have claimed that iOS 19 will introduce a new design with more translucent buttons, menus, notification banners, and more, and there is now another clue that points towards this glass-like appearance. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today said the new design project is codenamed "Solarium" internally. A solarium is a room with glass walls that allow in plenty of sunlight, so this...
ipad pro 2024

Gurman: New iPad Pro and MacBook Pro Models With M5 Chips to Launch Later This Year

Sunday March 30, 2025 6:06 am PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPad Pro models with the M5 chip will "launch this year," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the new iPad Pro models have progressed to an "advanced testing" stage, and he expects mass production of the devices to begin in the second half of this year. If that timeframe is met, the new iPad Pro models could launch...
macOS Sequoia Feature

Apple Releases macOS Sequoia 15.4 With Mail Categorization and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:04 am PDT by
Apple today released macOS Sequoia 15.4, the fourth major update to the macOS Sequoia operating system that launched in September. macOS Sequoia 15.4 comes two months after the launch of macOS Sequoia 15.3. Mac users can download the ‌‌macOS Sequoia‌‌ update through the Software Update section of System Settings. It is available for free on all Macs able to run macOS 15. With...