Pandora Launches New Feature For Premium Tier Members

How do you listen to music? If your answer is Pandora, you can prepare to experience a brand new feature! Available for its premium tier, the company will now be able to sidestep exclusive album deals. This means that they’ll be able to play music that was previously only available on specific platforms, like Tidal or Apple Music.

AutoPlay on Pandora

This new feature is called AutoPlay and will also allow users to transition right to a personalized radio feed as soon as the particular album or playlist is finished. This means that users don’t have to fiddle with settings or change music manually—the music can just keep playing with no effort on the user’s part, thereby keeping them on Pandora that much longer.

It’s this automatic change from one album to radio stream that allows Pandora to properly utilize it’s new feature. This transition creates a licensing change, allowing Pandora to play any song, with no regards for whether or not they have the on demand rights for the work itself.

The premium tier was launched in March and was initially created to compete with streaming giant Spotify. This updated included a brand new app for iOS and Android users, with a focus on simplicity. Pandora VP of Product Chris Becherer was critical of other streaming services, saying “Most music apps still feel fairly complex. They are all more or less the same: 30 million songs and a search box.”

Though at the time Pandora had a smaller library than other apps, it did boast that it had the most hits, with curation being a big focus of the Pandora brand. Pandora is still primarily a radio service, and was founded in 2000. The average user engages with Pandora 6 days of the week, with listening time up 30% for trial users.