In a world with Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services serve up an endless buffet of tunes, Pandora has needed to become more than just Internet radio. Today’s update brings new capabilities for personalization and content discovery.
Pandora’s mobile apps on iOS and Android are being revamped with a new “For You” tab that provides a continually updated feed of content that includes music and podcast recommendations. The items listed in this tab are tailored to you and selected by Pandora based on your listening history, what the software predicts about your mood, as well as factors such as what time of day it is, what day of the week and so on.
Another feature called “Modes” lets you customize how a station curates content, giving preference to the specific types of music that Pandora plays. For instance, you can have Pandora focus on playing music that is newly released, or hidden gems, or songs that are crowd favorites.
Between “For You,” “Modes,” and Pandora’s other recommendation modules, the service is equipped to deliver the ideal audio for any situation, whether it’s a rainy day or happy hour. The company said it will be rolling out more than 35 different modules over the coming months. Folks who listen to Pandora for free and don’t have a subscription can still access to the For You section without paying, but only for a single session after watching a video ad.
“Our listeners have told us that they love the utility of Pandora — it’s drop-dead easy, it works, it knows me, It’s really simple,” said Pandora’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Phillips. “But what they haven’t been able to understand and have easy enough access to is all the content and programming that we have available on Pandora—the new content, new programming, and the unique content that you can’t get other places.”
The improved personalization options are rolling out in an update that should be available to all users within the next few weeks. In a separate reveal, Pandora has announced the availability of a Dark Mode feature for iPhone and iPad owners running iOS 13, as well as new voice commands courtesy of SiriKit for Audio. Apple users can simply tell Siri what they want to hear on Pandora and the app will take things from there.
Source: How-To Geek
