As an avid listener to Pandora, I am anxious to see how Pandora’s team improved upon one of my daily apps. It is playing in the background as I write and is my constant companion everyday…it is truly the best $40 a YEAR I can spend for ad-free music. Pandora announced today that about 3-percent of users (iOS and Android) are receiving a new beta version for testing that will allow users to “further customize their Pandora experience.” The update should rollout to all Pandora mobile and tablet users over the next few months.
Pandora Chief Technology Officer, Chris Martin said. “For more than a decade our engineering team has worked tirelessly to perfect the personalized radio listening experience and unleash the infinite power of music, for our more than 76 million monthly listeners. And with our users logging more than 1.65 billion listening hours in September alone, we were extremely mindful in the way we made adjustments to the UI so as to enhance and simplify the experience.”
The revamp of the Pandora mobile app was done using “deep insights” from listeners’ suggestions and includes improvements in three main areas. The first is a redesign interface that emphasizes station personalization. It sticks to Pandora’s principals of an easy and clear design, while built with the intention of adding future updates via user suggestions. They have also transitioned the main display from the ‘Station List’ to the ‘Now Playing’ screen, much as you find in music player apps. The new Pandora mobile app is designed for ‘enhanced station personalization capabilities’. This is achieved through the new Personalization Icon that allows the user to see their “thumb history,” you know where we give a song the ‘thumbs up’ or the ‘thumbs down’ to determine if it will be on our list of songs. This new feature will show you your “comprehensive thumb history” and will give us the option for an “un-thumbing” capability to allow songs back onto your listing. The third area Pandora tacked was the ‘improved artist discovery’ area where the user can “swipe and tap” to instantly see more information about the artist and song details.
Please hook up with us on our Google+ Page and let us know if you use Pandora. What you think about the new update and whether you are one of the lucky ones that received the beta version. If so, give us your thoughts on the app’s differences…as always, we would love to hear from you.