Pandora’s New ‘The Drop’ Will Build a Weekly Playlist Based on Artists You Like

Depending on how often you use Pandora, the streaming music platform’s latest addition might be one of its best.

Pandora has officially unveiled what it calls “The Drop”. This is a specialized playlist that will update every week, based on when new music launches from the artists you already like. If this sounds similar at all, it’s because it functions quite similarly to how Spotify’s own “Release Radar” playlist works. That means you’ll get music from artists you have already liked, based on when they actually release new music.

“Without further ado, we’re introducing The Drop, a new personalized playlist for our Premium listeners. This new feature uses our state of the art machine learning models to create a custom-built playlist filled with the latest and greatest music from the artists you love as well as new artists we think you’ll love. And best of all, it’s automatically updated as soon as new music drops–so you’ll never miss a beat!”

The industry standard for new content drops is Friday, which is when Spotify’s own effort updates, and when Pandora’s The Drop will be updated as well. What makes The Drop stand out is the fact that it will have up to 100 tracks in its listing, compared to Spotify’s 30. But it will still work the same way: So as new music gets added, older tracks will get cycled out. And The Drop works with algorithms, but Pandora isn’t going into any detail in that regard just yet.

Finding new music is one of the tentpole features for these streaming services, which makes sense because usage is where the money is. But while discovering new artists is a nice feature, it’s also pretty great to be made aware when one of your favorite artists is adding new music, too. Pandora adding this new playlist should be a welcomed addition for Pandora listeners.

Our Take

This is a feature that I’m still waiting for with Apple Music. This specific feature. Apple has its “New Music” playlist, which also updates every Friday, but as Apple puts it, this is “new music from artists we think you’ll like”. I don’t know about you, but Apple Music is definitely still trying to figure me out, even months later. Sometimes there is music from artists I’ve liked on there, and very rarely there is new music I actually like. Usually this is just a playlist of songs I end up skipping a few seconds into each track.

To be fair, Apple Music does do a pretty good job of notifying users of new music from the artists they like, but this isn’t 100% reliable. A weekly playlist like Spotify’s Release Radar and Pandora’s The Drop would be a huge bonus.

[via Pandora Blog]

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