Premium subscribers can now access Pandora’s personalized playlists

Nearly a couple of months ago, Pandora had revealed that it was planning to introduce major improvements to the way it delivers personalized playlists. True enough, the music streaming service provider then proceeded to take full advantage of its Music Genome database (more on this later) to launch various playlists according to music genres, listening moods, and even the user’s activity, over the ensuing weeks. 

Fast forwarding to today, the company is eager to announce that the playlist roll out is done, and that every subscriber who signed up for a Pandora Premium membership now can enjoy access to these playlists. For those not familiar with the tier, a Pandora Premium account is priced at ten bucks each month, and already comes with features such as on-demand listening, the ability to compile playlists, download tunes for offline access, unlimited skips and replays, better quality sound, and zero ads.

It goes without saying that the presence of personalized playlists should be a welcome development for all Pandora Premium users. Additionally, the fact that they are now able to share their personalized playlists with members of their family or their friends (who are free users) should be (added) music to their ears. They can achieve this by simply providing a link. 

As for free users, they can gain temporary access to Pandora Premium by watching a video as a means for trying out what the tier can offer, and then listen to the personalized playlist shared to them. Pandora had actually introduced this feature back in December of last year, and as expected, the option has already gained some traction.

Making full use of the Music Genome database is a wise decision for Pandora, especially in its quest to provide a personalized playlist for every listener of any age and walk of life. The vast ocean of song related data in Music Genome is then combined with a number of machine learning models that analyze and eventually recommend tracks that should fit a listener’s preferences. Of course, Pandora also understands that the process music enjoyment can never be made entirely mechanical -- this is why it also has human curators that not only review the personalized playlists being generated, but also update them if they feel it necessary.

Looking ahead, Pandora is planning to introduce more categories to its personalized playlists, and perhaps even incorporate new soundtrack themes, as recently revealed by Chris Phillips, the CPO of the company.