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Personalized stations are ad-free on Pandora Plus since they don’t require active curation on the listener’s part. The ads can be anywhere between 15-45 seconds but can be skipped after 15 seconds. After every couple of songs, you’ll get a prompt to “Get More Skips” by watching an ad or upgrading to Premium. They also sometimes completely replace the album art on the mobile app’s Now Playing screen. Banner ads feature prominently on the web player.
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Right off the bat, when you first open the app, a fullscreen ad appears with a button to “Skip to Pandora”. Pandora’s free plan is very much ad-driven, and it doesn’t try to be subtle about it. Let’s take a closer look at some of them:Īd-supported playback Ads on the Pandora mobile app. There are several ways that Pandora’s free and paid plans differ. It not only offers a free plan but also offers the mid-tier Plus plan, which is perfect for those who want some ad-free listening but are on a budget. The advantage of Pandora is its subscription flexibility. For example, they don’t offer additional services similar to Spotify’s tie-up with Hulu and SHOWTIME, or Apple Music’s 6-in-1 Apple One offering. However, the inclusions of each plan are pretty basic. Pandora’s pricing is the same as most streaming apps, making it competitive and affordable. However, Apple Music and Amazon Music supersedes them all with a 3-month free trial. This is markedly better than Spotify and Youtube Music’s complimentary 1-month trials. Subscribers for Pandora Plus can avail of a 30-day free trial, while subscribers of Pandora Premium and all its variations get 60 days free.
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It currently has about 55.9 million monthly users and 6.4 million paying subscribers. As such, the app is only available in the US. Today, Pandora operates under its parent company, Sirius XM Holdings, an American satellite radio broadcasting company. It offers basic app features for free and gives users an option to avail of premium features by upgrading to a paid subscription. Pandora Premium, like its competitors, is a freemium service. It was poised to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music.
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Pandora started as an ad-supported internet radio service that offered personalized stations based on songs and artists.Īfter the 2015 acquisition of Rdio, a San Francisco-based music streaming service, the launch of a new Pandora Premium service was announced.
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