Pandora, the music discovery service, gets a major overhaul with its 5.0 release, now available for download from the App Store.
With Pandora, you can discover and listen to new music. The backbone of the service is a 14-year-old effort called the Music Genome Project. Over the years they’ve categorized songs based on hundreds of attributes and compiled the resulting information into a huge database. In practical terms, the Pandora service lets you find music you’ll like based on artist, song, genre, or composer.
New features in the 5.0 release, posted Wednesday, include the following, according to a blog post from Pandora VP Mike Grishaver:
- Upgraded core functionality with artist suggestions, viewing station details, shuffle, rename and delete stations.
- More information about artist and album, and easily purchase tracks from iTunes, along with lyrics, artist bio and discography.
- Detailed timeline with more music preferences retained, including details like stations created, bookmarked tracks and thumb history. You can make your profile public or private, and view what friends and other listeners with similar tastes are listening to.
- Social sharing features with support for Facebook and Twitter.
Pandora’s free to download and use, though you’ll have to deal with ads unless you pay $3.99 per month for Pandora One, the premium service available as an In-App Purchase.
- Free – Download now
Do you use Pandora? Or has iTunes Radio replaced it? What else do you use to discover new music? Sound off in the comments.
