Leaving their run in the streaming game far too late, Pandora have unveiled the imaginatively-titled Pandora Premium, after hinting at their entry into the on-demand streaming market for years now.

The company bought Rdio last year – which, you may remember, went bankrupt by not being able to compete with Spotify – and Pandora are hoping that the Rdio engine paired with their brand-recognition will be enough to convert any users not yet convinced by Spotify.

It’s a big ask. Spotify has been entrenched as the clear market leader for some years now, which means years of personalised user playlists, saved albums, offline tracks, learning the interface, drawing the logo onto school pencil-cases in liquid paper, and the like. It will be nigh impossible to convince these users to abandon a system they have gotten used to in order to test drive what is essentially a product they didn’t adopt back when it was called Rdio.

At the launch announcement earlier this week in New York, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren called the service the “first truly premium music service”, elaborating by defining premium as “personal.” Of course, this is nonsense.

Having said all that, those who love Pandora might be tempted, considering their “thumbs up” tracks from over the years will all be available in a playlist, along with any that get your “thumbs up” approval in the future.

Realistically though, the only way this will steer users away from Spotify is if they can offer something substantially different: a new Smiths album; the entire Prince vault; unreleased Beatles tunes  – or maybe an even better logo.

The service is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2017.

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