Pandora Launches Personalized Playlists for All Premium Subscribers

"We’re taking the guesswork out of the age-old question, 'What do I want to listen to?'" says CPO Chris Phillips.

Pandora's new personalized playlist feature is now available to all ad-free premium subscribers, the company announced on Wednesday (May 23). This follows through on a promise made in March that the streaming service would extend the feature to all premium users after initially testing it out with a small pool of listeners.

Each week, personalized playlists -- with themes such as ‘focus’ or ‘energy’ -- are automatically created with the help of Pandora’s Music Genome, in-house curation team and machine learning models. The playlists are specific to each listener, honing in on a person’s mood, activity or favorite genre.

"We’re taking the guesswork out of the age-old question, 'What do I want to listen to?' by catering to your genre-bending music personalities and giving you access to the best soundtrack tuned to the moment you’re in," Pandora CPO Chris Phillips explained in a blog post. "If you regularly avoid distractions at work with soothing instrumental music, we’ll serve you 'Focus Soundtrack.' If you find yourself rocking out to lively high-tempo music at the gym, you’ll likely get a 'Your Energy Soundtrack.'"

Premium users are also to share the links to their playlists with anyone -- even people who are not subscribed to the service at all.

According to Pandora, the launch of the inaugural themed playlists foreshadows the creation of even more themes and moods that will become available in the coming months. The playlists are accessible now via the "Featured Playlists" section of "Browse" in the mobile app.