Skip to main content

Pandora Premium joins Alexa’s Amazon dance party today

For $10 a month, you can now enjoy the soothing sounds of Michael Bublé or the heartwarming nightmare that is Wham’s Last Christmas and make all your friends lose Whamageddon by playing Pandora Premium on your Amazon Alexa-powered device. The premium, ad-free service is joining Amazon’s entire lineup of devices for the first time, including the Echo, Echo Dot, and new Echo Show.

The upgrade will also work on all third-party Alexa devices that currently support Pandora. The upgrade is a big one for Amazon as users continue to pivot toward playing their favorite songs, albums, and playlists using voice commands. It’s a nifty ability to be able to play carols or catch up on the news even if you’re elbows-deep in turkey or covered in cranberry sauce.

Recommended Videos

There are other features on Pandora Premium that are designed to enhance everyday moments and make time at home more enjoyable. Listeners can keep Pandora on AutoPlay for continuous jams or set Pandora as their default music streaming service on Alexa if they are heavily invested in playlists or even the upcoming podcast feature. Pandora features its own curated playlists and the company says support for unique personalized soundtracks will be coming soon.

Previously, Echo owners could only stream music from Pandora’s online radio service, which doesn’t allow you to play full albums or use the playlist feature unless you were a Premium subscriber already.

The popular music streaming service joins Amazon Music Unlimited, Spotify, Deezer, and Tidal as the major music streaming services on Amazon’s smart speakers. Where are Apple Music and YouTube Music and Google Play Music you might ask? They’re casualties of the smart speaker war, banished back to their own digital ecosystem, although Pandora Premium recently made its way past the front lines to appear on Google Assistant-powered devices like the Google Home. Maybe there is hope for peace in our time after all.

There’s still no love lost in the competition between streaming services, though. At the end of the second quarter of 2018, Pandora added about 350,000 new subscribers for a total of about 6 million subscribers. It’s big business but still pales in comparison to Spotify’s 80-million-plus paid subscribers. It should be interesting to see how the Amazon Alexa integration moves those numbers next year.

The voice controls are absurdly easy, although we still point them out every time. To start listening, users just have to say things like, “Alexa, play Christmas music,” or “Alexa, play William Shatner and Henry Rollins’ duet on Jingle Bells.” It’s a real thing. Go figure.

Rock n’ rollers who aren’t too sure about Pandora’s groovy new service can sign up for a 60-day free trial of Pandora Premium or Pandora Premium Family today by visiting Pandora.

Clayton Moore
Contributor
Clayton Moore’s interest in technology is deeply rooted in the work of writers like Warren Ellis, Cory Doctorow and Neal…
The best smart home devices for 2025
The X2 Omni dock up against a wall.

With hundreds of incredible products available, it can be intimidating to piece together a smart home. From smart displays and thermostats to smart light bulbs and video doorbells, not only are there tons of categories to browse, but each category is filled with highly reviewed products that can be difficult to distinguish from one another. If you’re in the market for a new smart home gadget or are just starting your smart home journey, there are tons of factors to consider.

If you need help navigating all the products, here’s a look at the best smart home devices of 2025 across a wide variety of categories. It’s hard to go wrong with products from big names like Ring, Arlo, Amazon, and Google, but if you need a bit more guidance, here are some of our top picks.
Voice assistant

Read more
Alexa adds new features to help with your holiday shopping
An Amazon smart display on a kitchen counter.

Alexa is one of the most popular smart assistants, and this month it's becoming even more useful. Just in time for the holidays, Amazon has rolled out three new features to assist with your trips to the grocery store.

One of the coolest new features allows you to scan your handwritten shopping list and instantaneously convert it to an Amazon Shopping list. After opening the Alexa app and heading to the Shopping List menu, simply press the Scan button to start the process.

Read more
The best Alexa skills to use on your Amazon Echo in 2023
Amazon Echo Show 15 Smart Display on a wall.

Alexa-enabled devices give you an easy way to interact with the rest of your smart home. Security cameras, smart locks, video doorbells, and other gadgets can all be controlled using voice commands given through Alexa -- but your device can be further augmented using skills.

Alexa skills are apps that can be downloaded to your device to give it additional functionality. Most of these are free, though a few do require payment. Alexa skills can do everything from giving you movie recommendations to launching an interactive gaming adventure, making them a powerful way to improve your smart speaker or smart display.

Read more