Pandora Announces Offline Streaming, More Skips
Pandora has been planning to add on-demand streaming since acquiring Rdio last year, and that plan is still expected to debut before the end of 2016 for a $10 monthly fee. In the meantime, they’re launching Pandora Plus, a rebranded version of their $5-a-month Pandora One service, The Verge reports:
Pandora One, the longstanding premium tier from the online radio service, allowed users to get rid of ads, access higher quality streams, and increased the daily skip limit on songs. Pandora Plus improves on nearly all of that, with unlimited skips and replays, and a new offline mode that will keep the music playing when your connection drops.
That last functionality relies on “predictive offline mode.” Pandora will store your thumbprint station plus the three stations you listened to most recently, and when your connection falters, it will automatically switch you over to whichever station best matches your current listening patterns, along with an audio message notifying you that your connection has been lost. Pandora One users will be switched over to Pandora Plus gradually.
The free version of Pandora is also evolving. Users can have access to more skips and replies by opting into a video ad.