Pandora guns for Spotify with 'Premium' subscription service
Pandora's done forking its lunch over to Spotify. The popular internet radio service is going on-demand with a new "Premium" subscription service announced Monday.
Users will be able to pay $9.99 a month to search for and play whatever they want, whenever they want -- and the service has a bit of Pandora's secret sauce mixed in.
When you create a new playlist using the Premium service, you can ask Pandora to fill in any gaps using the same technology behind its radio service.
The so-called "Music Genome Project" analyzes songs according to 450 attributes and uses this data -- combined with what you tell Pandora you like or dislike -- to play music tailored to your individual taste. Premium users can make a playlist, add two songs -- "Blood and Thunder" and "Angel of Death," say -- tap "Add Similar" and get a bunch of other, uh, feel-good songs.
Pandora promises that everything you've already given a "thumbs up" to on its internet radio service will carry over into a Premium playlist, and it'll offer a "Browse" feature that offers personalized suggestions. The Premium services will launch for some users on a trial basis this Thursday and to everyone else in the "coming weeks."
People like Pandora, but nobody wants to pay for it.
All of this sounds great, but Pandora's fighting an uphill battle against Spotify, which has 50 million subscribers to its paid service and over 100 million users overall. Pandora reported last month that it had 81 million "active listeners" at the end of 2016, but only 4.39 million subscribers to "Pandora Plus" -- a $4.99 upgrade to its radio service that lets users skip advertisements.
In other words, people like Pandora, but nobody wants to pay for it.
While on-demand listening may tempt them, Pandora's late to the party. Worse, Spotify's already edged in on its greatest selling point: personalized recommendations.
In 2015, Spotify introduced "Discover Weekly," which delivers two hours of personalized music in a playlist every week. And in September, it launched "Daily Mixes," a series of individual playlists that include music you already listen to mixed with new tracks.
Spotify's "Home" pane also offers tailor-made suggestions, much as Pandora's "Browse" feature will.
Of course, there are a few other elephants in the room -- Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Prime Music and Google Play.
No one needs a new way to stream music in 2017. For a new service to stand a chance, it needs inertia. Take Apple Music, for example: It still lags behind Spotify, but it's amassed 20 million paid subscribers in less than two years. Apple is able to bundle the app with iOS and sign exclusive deals with artists like Chance the Rapper -- a couple of solid ways to steer customers toward their service rather than a competitor's.
The trick will be whether Pandora, which announced it would fire 7 percent of its U.S. employees in January, can convert a chunk of its 81 million radio listeners into streaming subscribers -- or more likely, figure out how to coax people down the mountain of other music services and into their dusty pastures.
Topics Music
Damon Beres is an Executive Editor at Mashable, overseeing tech and science coverage. Previously, he was Senior Tech Editor at The Huffington Post. His work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Esquire.com, the New York Daily News and other fine outlets.
