Pandora's smart radio service gets a Google Glass app

While the majority of tech geeks don’t have access to Google’s smart eyewear Google Glass, it’s nice to know plenty of popular services are already jumping on board.

The latest example is a new Glasswear app from streaming music service Pandora, which made its debut today as the result of a company-wide three-day hackathon. What started out as a novelty project has now turned into a fully supported app, according to Pandora.

The Glasswear app accesses all of the customized smart radio stations saved on your personal profile. You navigate with voice controls, which is limited to switching between existing stations and creating new ones. The Glass’ touchpad, however, plays or pauses music as well as vote up/down on tracks as they play, which in turn improves the music experience via Pandora’s music discovery algorithm.

Glass wearers know there are three ways you can listen to Pandora using the Glass app: You can use the Glass’ built-in speaker (which uses bone conduction rather than headphones), the single earbud included with the Glass Explorer kit, or with a set of regular earbuds.

Of course, to use the new Pandora app, you’ll need to have Google Glass and be in Google’s Explorer program.

Although the main appeal of Glass is being able to get a visual, hands-free experience, I feel like music services are a natural fit as well. Most of the time I listen to music when I’m multitasking, and that means my hands are usually busy doing something else. Pandora’s decision to push a Glasswear app could prompt other music services to do the same.