Pandora was one of the first companies to really launch a successful streaming music business. For more than a decade the company has allowed you to listen to custom internet radio stations tailored to your preferences. Pay nothing and you get ad-supported streams. Pay a little and you can go ad-free.

But the music streaming landscape has changed in recent years thanks to the rise of on-demand services like Spotify and Apple Music, which let you pay $10 per month to stream nearly any song you want at nearly any time.

Now Pandora is getting on the action with the launch of its own $10/month plan called Pandora Premium.

Pandora says invites for a free trial will go out to some listeners starting March 15th, with a wider rollout in the coming months.

For the most part, Pandora Premium looks a lot like all the other $10 music services. You can play any song from Pandora’s library on-demand. You can download songs, albums, playlists, or stations for offline listening. And there are personalized suggestions.

If there’s one thing that sets Pandora Premium apart, it’s the fact that plenty of people have been using Pandora for years… so all of the songs you’ve already given a thumbs up are noted by the service and you can access a “My Thumbs Up” playlist.

But if you’re already paying Apple, Google, Microsoft, Spotify, Tidal, or Napster for an on-demand service, it’s not clear if Pandora’s new offering will really offer enough to get you to switch.

If you want to take the service for a spin though, you can sign up for an invite at the Pandora Premium website.

press release

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

3 replies on “Pandora Premium goes live: on-demand music streaming for $10 per month”

  1. I may just pony up. I use Pandora for music discovery and generating “randomish” playlists. I use Google as a standard and really only pay for it because of Youtube Red. Google replaced Spotify for me and became the music source which tends to have any music I wanted to listen to. However, not a single service (and yes, I have tried all of them) seems to have Pandoras ability to truly match similar music or the “tone” of the list you’re trying to generate. I thought Apple might do it but, nah.

    So if I want a playlist filled with say, Disney music, I start with Disney music and before you know it, that’s what the “station” becomes for me, a Disney Playlist with a bunch of new songs every now and again without my having to add. This is why Pandora is important to me and why I pay for it on top of Google Play Music, which also has smart lists, just not as smart as Pandora. With the $10 I’m assuming I’ll be able to skip as much as I want and also replay music and that makes it better, so we’ll see. I’m hoping that I get to try it out, so I know exactly what the service entails before I sub.

  2. I am one of those people who have been paying for years to listen ad-free. Paying more so I can listen to specific songs really doesn’t interest me. I hope others find it useful and sign up. I like Pandora and hope they stay around. I could never go back to listening to FM radio again.

    1. I agree. Choosing the songs actually makes things a lot more complicated for me. I have hundreds of songs on my computer and absolutely hate trying to figure out what to listen to. Having a stream based on artist/genre just makes it easier to relax and enjoy the music.

Comments are closed.