How will Pandora’s new Premium service find a market?

The debate on the newly unwrapped and long-awaited Pandora Premium centres on two things: do its features stand out, and if so, are they enough to poach users away from Spotify and Apple Music?

Pandora Premium ticks many of the right boxes. It’s visually appealing. It costs $9.99 a month. It combines Pandora radio with the ability to search and play any track or album. Its set of playlists is tailored to their preferences and moods. It works offline.

Pandora explains, “When we set out to build a premium music experience – one that would set the new standard for what a music service could be – we knew it had to be truly personal, be thoughtfully designed and take the work out of managing your world of music.

“To do this, we took advantage of two of our core strengths: Our unrivaled understanding of music via the Music Genome Project and the massive amount of data we have from 81 million listeners just like you – things like station adds, thumbs (we have more than 75 billion!), searches and skips.”

An upcoming addition for Pandora Premium is AutoPlay, which keeps music playing after a queue or selection has ended, with songs in a similar vein. The feature was available on Rdio, which Pandora bought 15 months ago, though Spotify has already adopted it before Pandora offered it.

But Pandora is working on other aspects, such as hi-fidelity and video, that will expand its base.

The company also says that in Premium, they’ve “filtered out karaoke tracks, knock-off covers and pet sounds that slow down other services”.

Musicians and producers can upload their content to Pandora Premium for free via RouteNote. This, of course, is nothing new. But Pandora also exclusively offers musicians impressive analytics features such as showing who is playing their music and where. It also offers tips on how they can market their content and expand their followings.

Is this launch too late?

Some say that the streaming wars are over. New services could draw in newcomers to the 100 million people who currently subscribe to streaming services – but once in, will they head to Spotify and Apple Music where all their friends go? While Spotify has recently ditched its messaging inbox feature due to lack of engagement, indicating social networking is not a priority on the platform, these services do have popular features, including family plans.

However, Pandora was already ranked the most popular streaming service last year, with about 28% of listening on streaming services coming from Pandora.

With such a huge base to build on, Pandora is relying on the fact that it may have the same features as the others, but its Rdio-inspired interface is easier to use (especially for novices) and can offer a higher level of personalisation through the enormous amount of data provided by its long-running Music Genome Project.

The other question is: are existing and potential Pandora listeners wanting to search for music that is completely new, or just a wider selection of what they already like?

A criticism levelled at Pandora Premium is that it does not come with pre-generated playlists, so users have to create their own. But it’s simple to get started – clicking on a genre or subgenre name will launch radio stations playing that style of music, and the company insists their song sequencing is superior.

“Sequencing is such an important part,” Pandora’s CPO Chris Phillips told The Verge. “It’s not just grabbing the right music to put into a playlist for you, it’s also organizing it and sequencing it so it flows.

“Those are really important qualities when you want to have a listening experience that just works.

“Just grabbing a bunch of recommendations of songs and throwing it in front of you still requires you as the user to do work. Our whole aim was to do it for you.”