my blog: Pandora 4.0 for iPhone and iPad gets complete redesign and goes social

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Pandora 4.0 for iPhone and iPad gets complete redesign and goes social

Pandora for iPhone and iPad received a huge update that includes a complete redesign and tight social integration. It still includes the same great ability to create personal stations of music that include your favorite artists and songs and similar music , but now you can share your latest discoveries to Facebook and Twitter, follow your friends, re-discover your favorite music on your profile page, get full lyrics, and more.

Pandora 4.0 features 4 main tabs: Stations, Feed, Profile, and Settings. From any of the tabs, you can quickly and easily get to the Now Playing screen where you can mark the song you're listening to with the thumbs up/down, pause, skip, and more. Tapping the button in the top right corner will you take you the current artist's page where you can explore and learn about the artist and track including biographies, album discographies, lyrics, and more.

New to Pandora 4.0 are the Feed and Profile tabs. In the feed, you'll see what your Pandora and Facebook friends are listening to, what they like and dislike, and listen to their stations. From your Profile, you'll basically see what information is being pushed out to your friends' feeds including what you're listening to, stations you've created, and who you've started following. You can also leave comments on profile pages.

Some of the other new features in Pandora 4.0 include a timer to the track progress indicator, support for the iPhone 5's larger display, support for BMW vehicles, and several stability and performance enhancements. It's also important to note that the iPad version has a bug that prevents iOS 6 users from using landscape mode. Pandora says they will release a fix shortly.

Pandora is is a free ad-supported music service. To drop the ads, you can subscribe to Pandora One for $3.99 per month and also enjoy higher quality audio, a desktop application, custom skins, and fewer interruptions.

So what do you think of the new Pandora? Personally, I find the new features and social integration to be a great addition, but I'm not a huge fan of the new look as it seems very basic and boring. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!