In the wake of news that Apple is launching its own online music service in Q1, Pandora says its mobile app for both iOS and Android smartphones has undergone its biggest redesign since launching on the two major platforms.
Pandora 4.0 offers listeners a better music experience with expanded listening functionality, a detailed personal music profile, diverse social sharing capabilities and other innovative features that are available on mobile for the first time. Pandora 4.0, which marks the first time a uniform interface exists across both iOS and Android smartphone platforms, provides listeners an ideal environment for music discovery, exploration and sharing.
Said Pandora Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joe Kennedy: “Pandora has now surpassed 175 million registered users and more than 115 million have accessed Pandora on a smartphone. Our listeners’ extraordinary embrace of personalized radio on their smartphones has enabled Pandora to reach massive scale in mobile and over 1 in 3 smartphone users in the US have listened to Pandora in the past month. With Pandora 4.0 we have combined years of innovation and learning into one cross-platform app that sets a new standard for mobile personalized radio.”
Featuring a completely redesigned listener interface, Pandora 4.0 on both iOS and Android smartphones includes:
–Expanded Listening Functionality – Significantly upgraded core features of the app create an even better listening experience and include prominent placement of controls to easily add variety, shuffle specific stations, rename stations and view station details. Simplified navigation to browse genre stations on mobile for the first time makes the more than 400 genres of music on Pandora more easily accessible.
–Robust Artist Pages – Designed for listeners to easily explore and learn more about the artist, album, track and station that is playing; includes improved artist biographies, album discographies, genome traits of the current track spinning and lyrics.
–Personal Music Profile – Brand new music profile serves as a detailed timeline of Pandora listening for each user, capturing their personal musical preferences such as stations created, bookmarked tracks and thumb history. Listeners can choose to share their profile or keep it private.
–Music Feed – New music activity feed offers a centralized place for listeners to find and follow friends and explore what listeners with similar musical tastes are discovering and enjoying on Pandora.
–Instant Sharing Capabilities – Social sharing features are available on mobile for the first time with listeners able to easily share links to favorite stations and tracks with friends and followers on Pandora, Facebook and Twitter.
To help listeners better discover and take advantage of the new features, the company has partnered with four major advertisers to sponsor tips and information inside the app. The exclusive launch partner lineup features McDonald’s, Nike, Sony Pictures and State Farm; each of these brands will also launch mobile campaigns that will appear in highlighted new social features of Pandora 4.0 in the coming weeks.
In related mobile news, Microsoft announced that Pandora is coming to Windows Phone in early Q1 with one year of ad-free music.
