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Online music service Pandora has created a station devoted to playing only your favorite songs.
Launched Monday, Thumbprint Radio is based on all the music on Pandora that you’ve ever thumbs-upped to show your approval. The new station plays all of your thumbed-up songs, both old and new, but also adds new music based on the tunes you’ve already liked.
Thumbprint Radio is a new way for Pandora to try to distinguish itself from powerful rivals such as Spotify and Apple Music. Though Pandora is the largest music streaming service with more than 80 million active listeners, Spotify has grown nearly as big, now counting more than 75 million users. Apple Music still trails, with roughly 15 million users about three months after its launch in June.
Other services have made their own attempts at customized music tailored to your preferences. Spotify offers a feature called Discover Weekly with a playlist based on what it picks up as your favorite music. Different services also offer customized stations and the ability to create playlists based on your favorite songs. But Thumbprint Radio is more automated as it does all the work in collecting and playing the music it knows you like.
Listeners to Thumbprint Radio can potentially hear every song they’ve ever liked, from the first to the most recent. You can customize your thumbs-up list by adding more songs or removing songs you no longer like. To create your Thumbprint Radio station, you’ll need to have at least three separate stations with four thumbs-up each. But the more thumbs you provide, the more diverse the listening experience will be. You’re not limited to one type of music, since your thumbs-up selections can spread across genres.
You can view all of your thumbs in your profile, a Pandora spokesman said, and edit your thumbs up and thumbs down in your station page as well. You can also share your Thumbprint Radio station with your Pandora friends to give them a sense of your musical tastes, Pandora Chief Product Officer Chris Phillips, said in a blog post Monday. And as your Thumbprint Radio station changes on your end, so will it change for your friends. So there’s no need to reshare it or manually update the station for others.
“Thumbprint Radio is a collaboration between each listener and Pandora,” Phillips said in a statement. “You shared with us what music you love via all your thumbs, and we heard you.”
Thumbprint Radio is available both on Pandora’s website and its mobile apps and is accessible to paying subscribers and nonsubscribers.
