Pandora offering on-demand streaming to better compete with Spotify, Apple Music

By Danette Chavez | December 7, 2016 | 4:47pm

Aux Features Music

Over the summer, Pandora announced its intentions to move in on Spotify and Apple Music’s territory with its own on-demand streaming service. The company will make good on that plan early next year, perhaps as part of its 2017 resolutions, The Verge reports. Pandora Premium features “an extensive library featuring millions of songs available on-demand, ad-free streaming, and the ability to save your music offline.” The Premium app is reportedly modeled after the defunct Rdio, and will arrive some time next year.

Sounds good, you say, but how does it differ from Spotify and Apple Music? Well, it’s not in price, as Pandora Premium will also set you back $10 a month—for ad-free streaming—to keep music in your ears. But what Pandora’s best known for will also presumably be one of its streaming service’s biggest selling points: personalization. Premium offers “smart playlists” that “allow users to automatically add similar songs to a playlist at the tap of a button.” And the personalized search function will look into your listening history to better help you find songs you’re predisposed to like, so you can keep avoiding the stuff you don’t.