Pandora introduces Pandora Premium, intended for music listeners and to compete with Spotify. Pandora's release of its Premium version follows after it bought the well-liked streaming service Rdio for $75 million and launching a mid-tier subscription service in September. The new service is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2017 at $10 per month.
Earlier this month, guests waited to see the presentation of Pandora Premium. People wondered if the new product is one Pandora's CEO Tim Westergren teased in September.
"If you think about the solutions that have been offered to date, they've essentially been on-demand," Billboard quoted Westergren as saying before the small crowd. "We really don't believe that's the right answer -- you see all the symptoms of a product that's not meeting peoples' needs yet."
Pandora Premium relies on the data from Music Genome and via its collected information. Other things are as they are, between mid-tier subscription like Premium and Pulse, as well as offline listening.
When one searches for music , the music service returns specific artists and albums. When creating playlists, it gives suggestions based on the saved user tastes of music.
The browse section is designed to the user's tastes including the new release section. The app comes in a sleek design, intuitive and Rdio-inspired, The Verge reported.
Converting the nearly 80 million users of Pandora's ad-supported version will become the firm's top priority. If it can convert 20 percent of its free users to Premium subscribers, it could become a serious player in the streaming music space. Spotify was able to convert 25 percent of its users.
After rebuilding the most streamlined pieces of Rdio, Westergren ousted Brian McAndrews over some philosophy differences. He gave time trying to repair industry relationships, following years of legal fights, as well as clever and aggressive attempts to lower royalty responsibilities. The company signed deals in December 2015 with former rivals like BMI and ASCAP.
The music tech company got into partnership with Music Reports to provide more transparency around the royalties it pays. It likewise struck direct deals with big labels and the world's biggest independent label organization.
Pandora is now one of the most diversified music-only tech firms with an advertising business and a ticketing company that has information about its listeners. It has a music profiling tech as well as a streaming product and a radio product.
Here is the introduction of Pandora Premium:
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