Managing your Pandora stations on your phone just got a little easier. On Tuesday, Pandora released a revamped version of its mobile app that brings a streamlined interface, more ways to personalize stations, and easier access to artist information.
The biggest change to Pandora is the addition of the Personalization Icon, which appears on the upper righthand corner of the Now Playing screen. This icon allows users to see the history of tracks they have thumbed up and down, allowing users to change their rating and also add influences to the station’s variety on the same screen. If you accidentally give Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” a thumbs up and want to right your wrong, that power is now yours.
According to Pandora, the new interface prioritizes “simplicity and clarity,” which means fewer buried options. For instance, instead of options such as Share, Buy Track and New Station being on a side panel, the beta version displays these options as you scroll through information about the artist playing.
The new version is only out as a beta test for select Pandora users — the company has trickled it out to only 3 percent of Android and iOS users to begin. It plans to eventually roll it out to all mobile and tablet users “over the coming months.”
Pandora is refocusing its efforts on mobile listening in order to regain lost ground. From 2010 to 2012, Pandora’s user’s monthly usage went from 4.77 hours to 12.9 hours, but declined to 12.6 hours in 2013 as Pandora implemented a 40-hour monthly listening limit to mobile users from March to September.
