Pandora expands to consumer appliances

By Shaun Nichols on May 24, 2007 11:31 AM
Filed under Hardware

Online music broadcaster Pandora has struck deals with a pair of hardware manufacturers to bring the service to home appliances and mobile phones.

The company will work with appliance manufacturere Sonos and mobile phone company Sprint in the US that will put the Pandora service on the companies' respective devices.

Pandora allows consumers to build customer radio stations that are tailored to their individual tastes. It is based on the Music Genome Project, which analyses the qualities of different songs and groups based on its attributes and influences. The service rates the ability to let consumers discover new music as one of its chief benefits.

"This is an entirely new system that allows us to unleash Pandora from the desktop and delivery to any device, in any music format, over any network wired or wireless with capacity for tens of millions of users," said Tom Conrad, Pandora's chief technology officer.

Sonos will pre-load the Pandora service onto its digital music stereo system which features an internet connection. Existing users will be able to access the service through firmware upgrade.

Sprint will be making the Pandora service available on five of its mobile phone offerings, and the company plans to expand the service to ten models by late June. Sprint will require customers to join its "Power Vision" service plan in order to access the Pandora software.

Pandora offers an advertising supported service on its website. Sonos and Sprint users will have to sign up for the premium service at a US$3 monthly rate. Sprint will also offer users to permanently download songs at US$0.99 each.

The new services are currently only available in the US. The company didn't comment on plans for international expansion. The web-based Pandora service in the US, UK and Canada.