New features from Spotify, Pandora

As the streaming wars intensify, Spotify and Pandora have announced new features.

Spotify has introduced The Game Plan, a 10-part educational video series for artists.

The series covers Getting Your Music Up; What Is Spotify for Artists?; Releasing Music; Building Your Artist Profile; Understanding Your Audience; How to Read Your Data; Engaging Your Audience; The Follow Button, Promoting Your Work, and Building Your Team.

It interviews artists as Rick Ross, Little Dragon, Mike Posner and Vérité as well as music industry and Spotify execs as Troy Carter on additional tips as to when to put content up for streaming and using listener data to shape future plans.

These are questions that Spotify is most asked by its user community.

Spotify’s head of creator marketplace, Charlie Hellman, explains, “From successful musicians to employees who are industry experts, the Spotify community has a wealth of music industry knowledge.

“We want to equip artists at all stages of their career with that powerful knowledge, and make it as accessible as possible.”

More episodes will be added down the track, depending on user feedback.

In the meantime, Pandora has sped up its roll-out and announced that all Premium tier subscribers can access their own personalised music playlists.

It initially began it as a trial in Mach with just a few selected listeners.

Like Spotify and Apple Music, Pandora curates playlists based on past listening patterns or suggestions from the platform’s in-house curation team Music Genome.

But it focuses on moods, activities and genres.

The lists include Your Energy Soundtrack, Your Happy Soundtrack, Your Rainy Day Soundtrack and Your R&B Soundtrack with 25 tracks in each.

Pandora Premium subscribers can send links to friends who are not on the tier.

The whole strategy is to encourage Pandora users to start paying $9.99 to join the year-old Premium tier.

Pandora CPO Chris Phillips detailed in a blog: “We’re taking the guesswork out of the age-old question, ‘What do I want to listen to?’ by catering to your genre-bending music personalities and giving you access to the best soundtrack tuned to the moment you’re in.

“If you regularly avoid distractions at work with soothing instrumental music, we’ll serve you Focus Soundtrack.

“If you find yourself rocking out to lively high-tempo music at the gym, you’ll likely get a Your Energy Soundtrack.”