Pandora app redesign brings new features and updated look

Pandora is one of the older music streaming services around, and today it's getting a fresh coat of paint on mobile devices.

A redesigned Pandora app is now rolling out on Android and iOS. Pandora says that this is "one of the biggest-ever enhancements" to its mobile app. It also includes new features for all tiers of its service, including the free ad-supported flavor and the Pandora Plus and Premium services.

The new For You section of the Pandora app is a personalized feed that serves you curated music and podcast recommendations through the day based on your listening history or even the time of day. Recommendations can be based on categories like Moods, Decades, and Artists on the Rise, and Pandora plans to roll out more than 35 different For You modules in the coming months.

Also part of For You is a special feature for users on the free and Pandora Plus tiers of service. These people can get access to the entirety of Pandora's content recommendations in For You using the Premium Access feature, which will unlock a free Pandora Premium listening sessions after viewing a brief ad.

Another new feature is Pandora Modes. With it, you can tweak the kinds of songs that are played on your Pandora stations using modes like "Crowd Faves" that'll play songs that are most liked by other Pandora users, "Artist Only" that'll only play songs by the station artist, and "Discovery" that'll play more songs by artists that don't normally play on that station.

Finally, Pandora has moved the navigation bar to the bottom of the screen, which ought to make using the app a bit easier with one hand, especially on phones with larger screens.

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