There are just so many things to like about this new service from Pandora—first and foremost, they are focusing on the user.

From The Verge’s review:

The first thing you’ll notice with Pandora Premium is that it takes fewer clicks to actually start playing music compared to Apple Music and Spotify. The app launches into My Music, which features a carousel of recently played albums and stations that can be played with one tap, something that requires switching tabs and searching through a list on Apple Music.

Perfect.

…it [Pandora] is curating the catalog to get rid of karaoke, tributes, and duplicate tracks, which it says will help to improve search.

Yes, thank you!

For its part, Pandora says it’s against long-term exclusives, and won’t get into the race between Apple Music and Tidal for windowed albums.

Pandora CEO Tim Westergren:

“In music, I don’t think that single albums command that kind of control over a service. If you have an exclusive you might get a short-term bump, but it’s not sustained. We don’t see that as important.”

Yes, exactly. A music service should focus on the experience of the user, not the short term bump that comes with album exclusives.

Pandora has opted for a staggered rollout plan for Premium on iOS and Android, with current users first in line. Existing users of Pandora’s free service will be able to test out Pandora Premium free for two-months, with invites to the trial beginning to roll out on March 15th. Pandora Plus users will get to try out Premium for six months for free, which is the best deal any streaming service has offered to date. Non-Pandora users will also have access to the two-month free trial…

Being an existing paid user, I’m looking forward to my six months free. After that, take my money. There are a lot of other great features listed in the review that is going to make listening and finding music really easy.