Pandora's mobile app gets better personalization and discovery features
Users can tweak radio stations to better match their interests.
Music service Pandora has struggled to keep up with competitors like Spotify and Apple Music since it moved away from its radio-like format and into general music streaming. The company fought back with a recently launched desktop app, and now a major update to its mobile app hopes to win over music fans.
The new app features are focused on personalization and discovery, helping users to find the music or podcasts that they want to listen to. The new "For You" section will be a dynamically updating feed of new music and podcast recommendations, similar to Spotify's popular Discover Weekly playlist. It will recommend "modules" or collections of tracks based around a theme such as mood or decade.
Users on Pandora's free ad-supported tier will be able to listen to tracks from the For You section using the "Premium Access" feature, in which they can listen for free for one session after watching a video ad.
Another new feature is "Pandora Modes," in which users can customize the listening experience of their favorite stations. Users can select from options like "Crowd Faves" to hear songs most liked by other listeners, "Artist Only" to hear tracks just from the original artist they selected and "Discovery" to hear a more broad selection of artists on the station.
There's also a new design for the app, with navigation now located at the bottom. The new version of the app starts rolling out on iOS and Android today, and should be available to all users within the next few weeks.
