Pandora Premium will take on Spotify in early 2017

Pandora is getting close to going head-to-head with its big rival, Spotify. The long-running music streaming service announced a new subscription plan, Pandora Premium, that will officially launch sometime in early 2017.

Pandora already has a subscription tier, Pandora Plus, that costs $4.99 a month and eliminates ads for accessing its music online. Tonight, Engadget reports that Pandora Premium will throw in on-demand access to a big music library, just like Spotify, along with offline support for playing tunes. In addition, it will merge any created playlists and albums from each user into one big combined list.

The service’s familiar thumbs up and thumbs down icons will still be around, and users who click on thumbs up on a song will have it added to an ever growing playlist. The service will also have a search feature that will be customized for each user, bringing up choices that are based on previous music choices that the user indicated he or she has liked before.

So far, there’s no word on a price point for Pandora Premium, but it would be a shock if it didn’t follow the $9.99 a month fee that other similar services charge. The company plans to offer access to Pandora Premium for its “VIPs” before launching it to the public in a few months.