Pandora, which has lately been the subject of intense comparisons to competitor Last.fm, will release a number of new features aimed at sharing tonight.
Many of the features are being added to a user’s “favorites” page (a bookmark list of songs you’ve heard that you like). An example of a favorites page is here. Users now have the ability to listen to a thirty second sample of any song on their favorites page (actually anybody’s favorites page – there is a URL for each user). Each song also links to a summary of the band and song. Finally, whenever you visit another user’s favorites page, you can click and add any station that they have created. A station on Pandora is a highly customized feed of music based on the user’s preferences. Sharing stations just became a lot easier.
Pandora has also added a number of RSS feed options. There are five categories of feeds:
- A listener-specific feed of favorite songs: keep track of the songs your friends are discovering
- A listener-specific feed of stations: keep a running list of your friends Pandora stations
- A Pandora-wide feed of the top-rated songs playing on Pandora
- A Pandora-wide feed of the top-rated artists playing on Pandora
- A Pandora-wide feed of the most-shared stations playing on Pandora
Pandora has also added keyboard controls and ways to link to the site. What I’d really like to see is an API to add the Pandora player directly to another website.