Pandora announced that Pandora's personalized Internet radio service will now be available for free on more than 20 Sprint mobile phones. Sprint subscribers who are currently paying the $2.99 subscription to access Pandora on existing Sprint phones will no longer be charged for the Pandora service and the free Pandora application will be available to all Sprint customers who have compatible handsets and a Sprint data plan. Sprint was the first carrier to launch a mobile version of Pandora in May of 2007 and currently supports Pandora on many popular phones, including the Samsung Instinct.
"This is a very significant move for Sprint and for the mobile industry more broadly," said Tim Westergren, Founder of Pandora. "Internet radio is rapidly expanding off the desktop and we're thrilled that we can now offer Pandora for free to Sprint's customers".
In concert with this launch of Pandora for free on Sprint, the Pandora service is also now available on select Windows Mobile handsets with additional new handsets planned to roll out over time.
As with the ad-supported desktop version of Pandora, the mobile experience will include advertising, specifically audio advertising.
Listening to Pandora is simple: users enter a song or artist that they like, and within seconds, Pandora delivers a personalized radio station with a continuous stream of songs that fit the same sound and style. The songs are selected based on the Music Genome Project, Pandora's proprietary system that utilizes highly trained musicians to analyze songs one at a time. These musicians measure hundreds of different musical qualities for each recording, including every detail of melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics and vocals. As the songs play, Pandora users can further refine the playlist with a simple "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." They can also pause a station or skip a song that they don't want to hear.
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