In an interesting move, Pandora will now let its ad-supported and Plus users now listen to music on demand. All you have to do is watch a 15-second pre-roll ad before listening to music on demand. This is a major move by the music streaming company’s for the 72 million users that don’t pay $10 a month for Pandora Premium.
Pandora is hoping that by providing music on demand service to ad-supported and Plus users, it will help the company gain more paid users. This is essentially like what Spotify has done with its free tier. Prior to this change, Pandora’s ad-supported and Plus users could only listen to radio stations based on sings or artists they liked.
So how does this work exactly? Well, when a user searches for a specific song, artist, or album, they will be given an option to view a 15-second video ad to unlock a free Pandora Premium session. This will allow the user to listen to anything they want to on Pandora. Users will see no ads during playback after you watch the initial ad, but if you were to search for a new piece of content within the app of click on a link, you will have to watch another ad before you can go back to playing your selected choice.
Pandora said that these new features will begin to roll out to users starting today. So be on the lookout for your app updates and even in your browser.
