How To Create A Playlist On Pandora: Complete Guide

How do you create a playlist on Pandora?

Pandora is a popular music streaming platform that allows users to create personalized radio stations based on their favorite artists, songs, genres, and moods. One of the app’s best features is the ability to create custom playlists that cater to your individual tastes and preferences.

This might not be one of Pandora’s main strengths, but it can still get the job done.

What is Pandora?

Pandora is a music streaming and discovery app. It lets you create “stations” based on songs, artists, or genres that you like, which then play related songs. For each station, you can choose which songs you like or don’t like, which will cause Pandora to play more songs similar to the ones that you like.

Pandora One is the paid subscription version of Pandora. It allows you to play songs with higher sound quality, and you can skip more often. Pandora One also eliminates all commercials and ads between songs and does not cause your current station to pause for a break as often as the free version.

You can use Pandora to stream music on a variety of devices, including your smartphone, tablet, computer, smart TV, smart speakers, car stereo system, Blu-ray player, or game console. Pandora allows you to create personalized radio stations based on an artist or song that you like. Once you select a seed song or artist, Pandora automatically gathers and plays songs with similar qualities.

A subsidiary of Sirius/XM Holdings, Pandora refers to these similar qualities as “music genomes.” They might include tags of descriptors such as folksy, female vocal, strong drums, or other recognizable aspects that help orient a work of music to others like it.

How does Pandora work?

Pandora works a bit like radio. You can choose to listen to a station you made based on an artist or song that you like, but you cannot choose to listen to a specific song or replay a certain track — at least not in the free version of the service. And you are allowed to skip only a limited number of songs per day with the free version.

Each station has a name based on its characteristics when you select it. Examples might include 80s Pop Hits, Elton John Radio, Holiday Radio, or Italian Cooking Music Radio. For stations that carry an artist’s name, you will hear music from other artists that have a similar style or are one of the artist’s contemporaries.

You can customize the music on the station to be more to your liking by choosing the thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or never-play options. This is an effective way to fine-tune your stations, of which you can create up to 100.

Discover music on your terms

Pandora is rather flexible with regard to how you use it. You can listen without an account, or you can create an account and save your musical preferences. Plus, you can listen to it directly on the Pandora website, or download the app for your mobile device or modern home sound equipment!

Oh, it is free too.

Create custom radio stations

Is “Let It Be” by The Beatles your favorite song ever? Or maybe you are more of a Nirvana kind of person, or perhaps even a metalhead. Just type a song, artiste, or genre into Pandora, and it will find something that you’ll enjoy listening to!

Refine your radio stations by adding criteria

You can tell Pandora to make a radio station that plays songs similar to two different artistes at the same time! Or, if you happen to like a song that comes on, you can “thumbs up” it; similarly, you can “thumbs down” and skip a song that you don’t like. The more that you interact with Pandora, the better it learns your musical tastes, and the more it can play just the music that you want to hear.

Pandora allows you to share songs on your Pandora profile so that people who view you or follow you can see what you’re into in terms of music. You can also share your favorite stations and songs on your Facebook or Twitter accounts, so your friends can see what you’re jamming out to. Also, you can buy songs or CDs on iTunes or Amazon right from Pandora.

Pandora Plans

Pandora Free

The free Pandora service is ad-supported by pop-up web and audio ads on your streaming media devices. The audio ads repeat every three or four songs. If you like to work with continuous music in the background, this may be annoying.

You can listen to as many songs as you want, all day, every day, without incurring a subscription charge as long as the ads don’t bother you.

However, if you want to listen without ads and gain extra features, Pandora offers paid subscription services: Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium. There is also a Pandora Premium Family plan, which offers all of the features of Premium for to up to six unique Pandora accounts.

You can sign up for any of these services right away or upgrade after listening to the free version for a while.

Pandora Plus

For $4.99 per month ($54.89 per year), you can upgrade your free account to Pandora Plus. Here are the benefits:

No ads.
Skip or replay as many songs as you like. You don’t have to shelve a song or give it a thumbs down. Just skip a song that doesn’t suit your present mood.
Listen to up to three stations of your choice offline, plus your Thumbprint Radio, which amalgamates all your liked tracks with some extras. Online listening is only available on compatible mobile phones using the Pandora app.
Better sound quality. Pandora streams songs in a compressed format like most digital music files. If you want a fuller, richer experience, you can stream a higher bit rate with Pandora Plus. This is particularly desirable when listening to high-quality speakers in your home theater.

Pandora Premium

For $9.99/month or $109.89/year, you can get Pandora Premium. It includes all the Pandora Plus features plus:

Fully customizable playlists.
Search and play on-demand listening.
Download any songs you want for offline listening.

Pandora Premium Family Plan

This subscription option provides the features of Pandora Premium for up to six users in a household. Since there can be multiple subscribers, an additional feature, referred to as Our Soundtrack, combines each family member’s musical preferences into a single playlist. The playlist is added to each person’s My Music Collection.

The Pandora Premium Family plan is priced at $14.99 per month ($164.89 per year). However, if you’re a current Pandora subscriber and wish to upgrade to the Premium Family Plan, there are some restrictions.

How to create a playlist on Pandora

You can create a playlist on Pandora by going to My Collection and tapping on the drop-down menu next to Collected. Select Playlists, go into New Playlist, name the playlist, and hit Save. You can add songs to it by going into the Playlist and looking into the Find something to add section.

Additionally, you can access any song page, tap on the More button, select Add to Playlist, and pick the playlist.

How to create a playlist on Pandora for Android

Let’s start with the instructions for making a Pandora playlist on Android devices, using the official app.

Launch the Pandora app.
Go into My Collection.
Next to Collected, you’ll see a drop-down menu. Tap on it.
Select Playlists.
Select New playlist.
Add a title and hit Save.
Your playlist will now show up on the My Collection page.
You can access it and select Find something to add to search for the songs you want to include.
Additionally, you can look at any song page while playing, tap on the three-dot More button, and select Add to Playlist. Then pick the playlist you want to add the song to.

How to create a playlist on Pandora for iOS

Here are the iOS instructions for the iPhone-touting listeners among you.

Launch the Pandora app.
Go into My Collection.
Next to Collected, you’ll see a drop-down menu. Tap on it.
Select Playlists.
Select New playlist.
Add a title and hit Next.
Tap on Done.
Your playlist will now show up on the My Collection page.
You can access it and select Find a song to add to search for the songs you want to include.
Additionally, you can look at any song page while playing, tap on the three-dot More button, and select Add to Playlist. Then pick the playlist you want to add the song to.

How to create a playlist on Pandora using a browser

If you’re using a PC, you can also do this from any browser.

Go to the Pandora website and log in.
Make sure you are in the My Collection tab.
Select Playlist in the Collected section.
Click on Create playlist.
Name the new playlist and go back to My Collection.
You can access it and select Find a song to add to search for the songs you want to include.
Additionally, you can look at any song page while playing, click on the three-dot More button, and hover over Add to Playlist. Then pick the playlist you want to add the song to.

How to create a playlist on Pandora using a computer

Navigate to Pandora on your PC or Mac computer and log in to your Premium account.
Select “My Collection” from the top menu bar. Then, select “Playlists.” If you’re new to Pandora Premium, a playlist based on the songs you’ve given a “thumbs up” to will be available.
Hit ” + Create playlist” in the top-right corner to begin making a new playlist.
From here, you can name your playlist, and then begin adding songs by typing the name of a song into the search bar. Pandora allows you to search by song title or artist.
Click on a song to add it to your playlist. Drag the songs to rearrange them.
Pandora also gives you the option to “Add Similar Songs” and will populate your playlist with additional music based on the ones you already inserted.

Your playlist will automatically save as you add songs.

How to create a playlist on Pandora using a mobile device

Launch the Pandora app on your iPhone or Android device and log in to your Premium account.
Select “My Collection” from the bottom menu.
Tap “Filter” and then select “Playlists.”
Tap “New Playlist” in the middle of the screen.
Title your playlist, and then hit “Next” to begin adding songs via the search bar. Hit “Done” to finish and save it.

How to use personalized Pandora playlists

A Pandora Premium subscription gives you access to personalized playlists that are curated based on your listening history and behavior. These playlists are automatically generated and appear in your account from time to time. They provide an alternative to the personally customized options.

These lists are sometimes created after you thumbs up a certain number of songs. You may also see these lists when you’ve been a Premium customer for a while, and Pandora’s algorithms have a better handle on what music you like and dislike.

How to create a playlist on Pandora: In conclusion

As Pandora gets to know your preferences, its choice of tracks becomes refined and geared toward what you like to hear. If you want more control over which songs it plays, learn how to create a playlist on Pandora. Pandora playlists allow you to integrate songs or full albums into a personalized list that plays in the order you decide. Playlist functionality is only available for Pandora Premium subscribers.

How To Create A Playlist On Pandora: Complete Guide

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What is Pandora?