Filed under: Audio, Business, Web services
Pandora announces premium features and new desktop app
Since pundits started speculating last year that expensive royalty fees for streaming music would kill Pandora, it seems the company has consistently rolled out more creative, money-making features. Now premium subscribers can get access to better stream quality, the new Pandora One desktop app, and an ad-free experience for $36/year. That fee will also get rid of one of the most annoying restraints on the free version of Pandora, the limit of 12 skips per day.
Pandora One looks like a pretty cool app, with a mini version of the player to save screen real estate, and 8 different skins to choose from. It also doesn't require you to interact with it as often as the free version does to keep the music going. Instead, you only have to click over once every five hours.
All of this sounds like a pretty good deal for what comes out to be about $3/mo, but it's not clear how far it will go toward keeping Pandora up and running.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hochler said 4:07PM on 5-20-2009
Does the desktop app have hotkey support yet? I know there are AutoHotkey scripts, but I'm on Linux.
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Matteran said 8:27PM on 5-20-2009
I upgraded the second I saw this. Not even for the features, I'm running Linux and it doesn't look like the desktop app is supported on Linux, I just feel they deserve some of my money based on how often I use their service.
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Mike said 2:49AM on 5-21-2009
Still no support for non-Americans? Is our money not valid?
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crstffr said 10:28AM on 5-21-2009
I use pandora almost all day, every day while at work, so I upgraded right away for the ad-free desktop app and higher audio quality. Only $36 a year seems like a steal to me for the amount of amazing music I listen to every day.
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Dan said 12:40PM on 5-21-2009
I REAAAALY hope Pandora doesn't go under. I don't wanna pay, but then again, I don't mind getting bombarded with side-banner ads if it means a free service for me. Plus, sometimes the ads are actually something I'd wanna check out so I click and they (hopefully) get some cash from the advertisers. :)
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