Pandora to offer 'day pass' for those afraid of commitment

Shawn Knight

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pandora music ads pandora one streaming music ad-free music day pass

Pandora is planning to offer a new subscription tier that would allow users to eliminate ads on a short-term basis. The streaming music specialist hasn’t yet hammered out details such as price or length of membership although a slide recently shown to investors mentioned a one-day pass for $0.99 according to Gigaom.

In an e-mailed statement to the publication, a Pandora spokesperson said they recognize that some consumers may want an ad-free experience but don’t necessarily want to commit to a subscription. A short-term offering will allow them to choose and explore what is right for them or suits a particular event or experience.

This more or less echoes what Pandora Chief Product Officer Chris Phillips told investors, adding that the company will be testing the price and whether a one-day or three-day pass would be the best option.

Pandora currently offers a subscription called Pandora One that eliminates ads, grants more daily skips, offers fewer timeouts and lets members listen at 192 kbps on the web. The premium tier sold for $3.99 per month up until last March when Pandora raised the price by a buck and eliminated the annual subscription option.

The latter decision didn’t sit well with music listeners, however, as the company was forced to bring back the yearly option in December at a price of $54.89 (you get a free month of service when paying a year in advance).

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Why dont you just download your music? Shuffle it? You're already ripping them off, why not cut out the middle man? Then you'd get fairly better quality music files, too.

LOLing @ "ripping them off" by making Pandora behave the way it did a couple years ago.
 
Oh, and this is a great idea and more content companies should consider it. Remember shareware? When you could use an uncrippled game or application for a limited time (or only to a certain point of progress) and get a feel for how well it was coded, whether it met your expectations, etc? Cloud-based services need to adopt that model even more than offline software does.
 
I'm thinking of canceling my Pandora subscription, there's not enough variety. Pandora used to always play something new to discover, but that no longer seems to be the case. I'm assuming they just have not made any new deals with the record labels out there. It's a shame, because at the same time they've raised their subscription price.
 
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