Pandora has officially unveiled its long-awaited on-demand streaming service, Pandora Premium. The move has been a long time coming after statements by company executives stating they planned on rolling out a new service after buying Rdio during its bankruptcy.
The new Premium offering was unveiled yesterday at an event in New York City. It isn't going to shock anyone with the basic details. It will call upon Pandora's massive catalog for an on-demand streaming service that it hopes will be able to compete with the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer, Amazon Prime Music and other services in local markets around the world.
According to Endgaget, it looks a lot like Rdio, which shouldn't come as a surprise, since Pandora did buy Rdio and it would be easier to transfer as much of the useable defunct service into a new, working one.
One advantage Pandora will have as a new competitor into the marketplace is the massive amount of data it already has on its listeners. Most services have to build that data over months and years to create better-curated playlists and recommendations on what a user should listen to next. Pandora already has that with its regular users and even the irregular, free-tiered users who may be enticed to join the premium service.
Premium has a full array of music offerings like other services, sorting by albums, artists, stations and playlists. All of your music you can take offline.
The company says it has a different search function from its competitors. When searching, users will get results that are catered to their listening patterns, not just the most popular on the whole service.
There will be general curated playlists and a new music section.
Pandora Premium will likely cost $9.99 per month. It will arrive sometime in early 2017.
