Pandora Media Inc. acquired Ticketfly Inc. to fight against big music competitors. (Photo : Facebook)
Pandora has recently launched their new $5-a-month Pandora Plus music streaming service which is essentially just an improved version of their ad-free offering.
Users can already use Pandora's streaming service with the ad-supported offering. While some may just ignore the ads, others still want a straight listening experience without any interruptions.
The new and improved $5 service will help Pandora compete with the slightly obscured Apple Music and the still going strong Spotify. Pandora Plus allows users to listen without ads and to use high quality audio streams for those who have fast data or Wi-Fi connections and high-quality headphones to boot.
Users who opt for Pandora Plus will have unlimited skips and replays compared to the Pandora One offering from the company, The Verge has learned. It will even allow users to listen to songs offline which is also similar to how Spotify Premium allows downloading.
The difference between the service is that Pandora Plus has the "predictive offline mode" which detects whether the signal or connection is bad. Spotify Premium downloads the song directly to the phone's storage for easier access even without an active Internet connection.
Pandora is also in talks with Warner Music Group to get the company to sign a deal for more songs that can be streamed through the music streaming service, Recode reported. Radio stations are also automatically determined by the app depending on the recent listened music.
Once the connection is detected to be a bit wobbly, Pandora's app will notify the user that it will switch to an offline station in order to keep the songs playing through the speaker or through the earphones. It is a nifty feature for Pandora Plus customers who commute a lot and risk losing Internet connections due to some places not having any network coverage.
Pandora Plus will go live but not for all of their users across the globe as the company said that only about one percent of their customers will be able to acquire the service. The company might be testing the new service first to see if there are any bugs or problems that may arise.
