If streaming services were represented by real musicians Tidal might be Kanye West (polarizing, but definitely unique), Spotify would be someone like Beyonce (adored by all) and Pandora, the streaming service that started it all, would be Miles Davis.
Despite being one of the first kids on the block – and similar to a real musician – the service has changed to adapt to the times.
This week that change is taking the form of Pandora Plus, a replacement for the service's Pandora One subscription that costs $5 per month.
New changes include unlimited "skips" and an intelligent offline mode that senses when you're about to lose signal and will automatically switch you from the station you're listening to to one of your prefered stations – Pandora says it will save your Thumbprint radio station along with the three previous stations you've been listening to so you can access them in offline mode.
Like Pandora One, Pandora Plus will offer higher quality audio streams (192Kbps MP3s), zero ads and unlimited replays, and will still cost $5 per month.
The news comes ahead of a larger revamp that Pandora CEO Tim Westergren says will come out "later this year". Westergren says the company has plans to release an on-demand streaming service to rival Apple Music, Tidal and Spotify:
"Whether a listener wants to take advantage of our enhanced ad-supported experience, our ground-breaking subscription radio service, or our fully interactive on-demand option coming later this year, we have a solution tailored for you at a price point you can afford," Westergren said in a statement to The Verge.
The last bit of news is that the free version of Pandora, the one 80 million subscribers use, will also get a few new features including the ability to watch an advertisement to replenish the amount of skips they have for that day.
Pandora Plus launches today for new users and existing One subscribers will be migrated to the service in the coming months. The service hits the US first and will then likely roll out to Australia and New Zealand – that company did not mention if Pandora will return to the UK anytime soon.
