Pandora adds a Browse section to help you find new music

Pandora is making its music-streaming platform even more personal for its users.

“Finding new music should be a simple and enjoyable experience”, said Chris Phillips, chief product officer of Pandora. Once you find a station you like, you can save it to your library for easy access going forward. Pandora’s, like many of their features, promises to be more tailored to the listener’s individual interests. The streaming service just launched Browse, a new hub within its iOS app that helps users discover new artists and stations they might actually like. The service offers features such as providing artists and stations that are only relevant to users, receiving nonstop discovery of new stations based on end-users’ listening activity, seeing what’s spinning on a station before adding it to a station list, or seeing how many fans have added that station. They’re already doing quite well in the book and film departments (they bought a bunch of the buzziest movies out of Sundance over the weekend), so their entry into direct competition with Spotify, Apple Music and such could be a real threat to those companies.

This new tool comes after the announcement in December of Pandora’s new Thumbprint Radio, an algorithm that provides a mix of music based off what users previously liked. Stations are laid out in a grid with large album artwork accompanying them, most of the navigation is hidden in a left-side menu and there’s a new “mini player” slice along the bottom of the screen so you can keep navigating through the app and still see what you’re listening to.

However, the new feature will only be accessible to iOS devices in Australia, New Zealand, and US. Along with new cover art for artists, the service allows users to list their “My Station” content in alphabetical or recent order.