Pandora Announces ‘Artist Takeovers’ With Guest Artists

Pandora announced a new feature for its music stations called Artist Takeovers. It features music handpicked by a different artist with special audio commentary.

The new Artist Takeover series began rolling out in recent months with Shawn Mendes, Chris Stapleton, and more. Artist Takeover Modes are a pop-up experience on stations, and selections from each carry over into Pandora Stories playlists for continued listening.

Artist Takeovers are an extension of Pandora Modes, a feature allowing you to customize your listening experience on favorite Pandora stations by offering a set of selectable “modes” that give more control over the kinds of songs that are played.

I think this sounds like a great feature. It brings to mind guest stars on Apple Radio 1.

Pandora’s Holiday Music Enhanced with Modes and Stats

Pandora announced on Wednesday its holiday shows with seasonal Modes and a Soundboard Study.

Pandora has enhanced two of its most popular holiday stations, Holiday Hits and Christmas Radio. Both stations now feature Modes, a popular feature that allows you to customize your station listening experience based on a musical theme. Whether you want to tune into favorites from Christmas past or present, instrumentals or ensembles, covers or duets, Pandora has a Mode for every warm holiday feel.

Pandora HomePod Mini Support is Here

Pandora now supports the HomePod mini ahead of its launch on November 6. Juli Clover tells us the details.

According to Pandora, ‌HomePod‌ integration requires the latest version of the Pandora app. Once it’s installed, open the Pandora app on an iPhone or an iPad, and then select ProfileSettingsConnect With ‌HomePod‌Use in Home to get it working. Music can be requested from Pandora by adding “on Pandora” to any ‌Siri‌ request for a song.

Pandora Will be Available on HomePod, HomePod mini

As we saw during Apple’s virtual keynote on Tuesday, Pandora joins other services by coming to the HomePod and HomePod mini.

With Pandora on HomePod, users will be able to easily play their favorite Pandora content and control their listening experience hands-free by using simple Siri voice commands, such as:

“Hey Siri, play some relaxing music on Pandora.”

“Hey Siri, play the Sway’s Interviews podcast on Pandora.”

Pandora will be available on Apple HomePod soon. Once available, users will be able to enable Pandora listening directly from HomePod by tapping this link via their iOS device

Pandora for Podcasters Launches for Creators

Pandora for Podcasters, as the name suggests, is a new platform that lets people submit their podcasts to Pandora. All you have to do is submit your RSS feed URL, answer a few questions, and your episodes will be added.

Podcasts on Pandora is powered by the Podcast Genome Project, which helps listeners cut through the overwhelming clutter of available podcasts to simply, easily find the podcasts they love…Starting today, creators who are new to the platform can submit their shows via Pandora for Podcasters here and start connecting with listeners ASAP.

Pandora Now Lets Users Pick the Algorithm That Selects Their Music

Pandora is now letting users select which algorithm their music is picked by. The music streaming service added 5 choices on top of its classic algorithm, The Verge reported. The new options, called Pandora Modes, are available to both free and premium account holders.

There are now 6 listening modes: My Station, which is Pandora’s original algorithm; Crowd Faves, which will favor the songs that get the most thumbs-ups by other users in that station; Deep Cuts, which will serve up lesser-known songs by an artist or in a genre; Discovery, which will play more artists that aren’t usually on that station; Newly Released, which will only pick the newest songs from an artist or in a genre; and Artist Only, which will let you binge entirely on a single artist’s catalog.

SongShift Lets You Transfer Apple Music Playlists to Other Services

There’s an app called SongShift that lets you transfer Apple Music playlists to other services. Supported services include Apple Music, Deezer, Discogs, HypeMachine, LastFM, Napster, Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube. You can “shift” complete playlists from one streaming service to another, and automatically keep all of your playlists synced with each other. I’ve heard some Apple customers say that when they unsubscribe from Apple Music, then re-subscribe later on, none of their playlists and content is saved. I’ve never unsubscribed yet so I haven’t run into this issue, but it sounds like SongShift can help in these cases. App Store: SongShift – Free

Sonos's Future: Opening Up Control to Alexa and Third-Party Apps

On Tuesday, wireless speaker manufacturer Sonos summoned the press to Manhattan to show off some new software features they’ve been working on and, in doing so, painted a picture of a more open Sonos experience. Demonstrating Amazon Alexa voice control and Spotify app integration, Sonos showed a not-too-distant future where customers have the ability to control their Sonos products in a variety of new ways without sacrificing any of the existing benefits of the Sonos platform.