Pandora Premium aims to compete with Spotify and Apple Music

A little over a year after acquiring key assets from Rdio, Pandora is now getting ready to make one of the biggest changes to its service in its history. That’s right, as expected, it’s finally debuting its own on demand streaming option dubbed Pandora Premium.

For $9.99, Pandora Premium users will get all the great radio features you’d normally get from Pandora but with the addition of on-demand options that let you select any song or album directly for play. There’s also a few new playlist creation features that should make using the service even better.

Pandora will keep things invite only for a while, with first invitations going out this Wednesday. A few weeks after that, Pandora Premium will become available for all users. The big question is whether or not Pandora can make a dent in the on-demand streaming market, a world that has become largely dominated by Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play Music.

For their part, Pandora has a large fanbase that might be tempted by the idea of getting these expanded music streaming options without having to use another service. Pandora also has one of the easiest to learn, user-friendly interfaces of any music service on the web. This simplicity could appeal to those who are interested in full music streaming (and online radio) but find the alternative services a tad too complicated.

Any of you interested in giving Pandora Premium a try when it becomes available, or are you already actively using another music streaming service?