Pandora Premium Details Spill: Smart Playlists And On-Demand Music

Pandora has officially detailed its upcoming Pandora Premium service before it goes live early next year. As with other on-demand music services, users will be able to search for and choose specific music to play. Pandora plans to use its massive quantity of data to help with that process, though, providing things like smart playlists and a personalized search, among other features. Premium will cost ten dollars per month.

Unlike regular Pandora, which plays music based on 'radio stations,' Pandora Premium will make millions of songs available on-demand. You can find them by searching, and you can create playlists. Premium will expand those playlists using smart tech, adding other songs that are similar to it. This and personalization features like it are designed to help with music discovery.

According to Billboard, Pandora collects about a billion data points from its users every single day, giving it access to a massive trove of personalization and smart suggestion data. Users will still be able to 'thumb' songs to influence what music is presented, and their own feedback in that form will be matched with the machine learning tech for future suggestions.

Much like Apple's Music app, the Pandora Premium app will change colors to match the artwork of whatever playlist or album you're listening to. The most important part, though, is how well the Premium service may already know you. Pandora has been around for a long time, and anyone who has used it over past years has likely fed ample data into it, making it an attractive option for getting music you truly want to hear.