Pandora today finally launched its long-awaited Pandora Premium music service for mobile devices and the web. Pandora Premium is a $10-per-month music streaming service that competes with Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play Music. Like similar products, Pandora Premium offers ad-free, all-you-can-eat streaming of millions of tracks. It includes unlimited skips and downloads for offline listening. Pandora Premium competes with Pandora's own $5 monthly product, which is also ad-free and allows for some skipping. The major difference between the two is the recommendation engine. Pandora Premium relies on the data Pandora has collated via the Music Genome to the tune of one billion data points per day. It also takes advantage of users' own "thumbs up" activity and creates playlists based on those songs. The Premium product will be more aggressive about pushing recommendations, particularly when users reach the end of a play list or album. Pandora first announced Pandora Premium late last year. Today marks the service's official launch. The Pandora app is free to download from the Google Play Store and iTunes App Store.


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