Skip to main content

No longer mobile-only, Pandora Premium features come to the web

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Last year, Pandora rolled out Pandora Premium, a $10 per month on-demand subscription meant to provide a more direct alternative to services like Spotify and Apple Music. The radio-like nature of the service is still there, but if you feel like paying extra, you can get a lot more control over exactly what you’re listening to at any given time. Unfortunately for computer-bound users, the service was only available on the Pandora mobile app. Now that has changed as Pandora has rolled out Premium on the web, complete with all the features offered in the mobile apps.

Pandora says that Premium on the web has been the number one feature requested by its users, who can start using the new features on the service’s website immediately. Now Premium features like Search and Play, which offers customized search based on your listening history, and My Music, which lets you easily collect and catalog your favorite albums and artists, are available in a larger format that the streaming service refers to as “beautifully immersive.”

Given Pandora’s roots as a personalized internet radio service, it’s no surprise that it’s smart playlist features are pretty, well, smart. You can start a new playlist with one or two songs, tap the “Add Similar Songs” button, and pretty soon, you’ll have a playlist full of either familiar music, or new songs that could end up becoming your favorites.

When Pandora Premium debuted in March 2017, only users who requested an invite were able to sign up for the service and its 40 million-song catalog. In April, the service rolled out to everyone, so if you haven’t tried the service yet, you can simply go to Pandora Premium site and sign up with your credit card or PayPal account as your payment method. For mobile devices, you can access the upgrade option on Pandora Premium by going to the settings section of the Pandora app.

If you sign up for Premium through the Pandora website you will get 60 days of Pandora Premium for free. Upgrading or signing up via the mobile app will only get you 30 days of Pandora Premium for free.

As of last year, Pandora had 81 million active listeners but has fewer than 5 million people paying monthly for Pandora Plus. Expanding Premium’s availability by letting users listen on the web could potentially help it catch up to the subscription streaming competition of Spotify and the rapidly growing Apple Music.

Updated on February 15: Added details of Pandora Premium for the web.

Editors' Recommendations

Keith Nelson Jr.
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Keith Nelson Jr is a music/tech journalist making big pictures by connecting dots. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY he…
iPod hack puts 50 million Spotify songs in your pocket
ipod hack puts 50 million spotify songs in your pocket streaming device

When the iPod music player launched in 2001, Apple went with the slogan, “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Skip forward 20 years and a brilliant bit of work by Massachusetts resident Guy Dupont puts 50 million songs in your pocket, streamable via Spotify.

Read more
The best music streaming services
Spotify

We all have opinions, right? From political leanings to how we take our coffee, humans aren't shy when it comes to forming, keeping, and sharing personal preferences -- especially when it comes to how we stream content. So, with music being about as universal as bread and wine, there's no shortage of opinions when it comes to how we listen to our favorite tunes in the home, on the go, and through our headphones.

If you ask our music experts, Spotify ranks supreme on our list of music streaming services. Compared with its user-friendly interface, affordable subscription, and wide library of music and podcasts, most of the competition can’t match up. However, we have spent a lot of time looking at some of the most popular music streaming services around, and we’ve made a list of the best ones for you to peruse.
At a glance

Read more
38 years ago, CDs rewrote our relationship with music and primed us for 2020
how cds prepared us for the future compactdiscs illustration 201009

 

The year was 1982. The U.S. was at the tail end of a bruising recession that had lasted for several years. Ronald Reagan was the president. First Blood and Halloween III: Season of the Witch were newly arrived in theaters. Dallas was America’s favorite TV show. The DeLorean Motor Company ceased production after its founder was arrested for selling cocaine to undercover FBI offices. And, in Japan, a new gadget from Sony called the CDP-101 -- the world’s first commercially available CD player -- went on sale for 168,000 yen, the equivalent of $1,966 in 2020 terms. The compact disc had arrived.

Read more