Pandora rolls out ‘personalized playlists’ to all Premium subscribers

Pandora is taking a leaf out of Spotify’s book today with the launch of personalized playlists for its Premium subscribers.

The music-streaming company first announced this feature back in March and has been trialing it with a “small number” of Premium users over the past couple of months. Now it’s ready for prime time.

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Spotify has built much of its reputation in recent years on its smart music recommendation tools. These are powered by its 2014 acquisition of the Echo Nest, a music data intelligence platform that maps out musical tastes to predict what it thinks you will like. Spotify has gone on to launch a bunch of popular playlists, including the Daily Mix and Discover Weekly.

Pandora is adopting a similar model, using a combination of its in-house music genome, machine learning, and human curators to figure out the best playlists for any situation.

Machine learning is very much the order of the day in the music-streaming realm. Earlier today, Gracenote announced a new system that uses AI to classify individual song styles, with the ultimate goal of helping streaming providers compile “perfect playlists” by analyzing the styles of millions of songs.

Pandora’s new feature builds on its previous playlists effort, except now it’s going all-in on the individual experience.

“We’re taking the guesswork out of the age-old question, ‘What do I want to listen to?’ by catering to your genre-bending music personalities and giving you access to the best soundtrack tuned to the moment you’re in,” said Pandora chief product officer Chris Phillips.

Though these playlists are limited to those on the ad-free subscription, Pandora said that you will still be able to share them with non-Premium users via a link.