Pandora says it has already had ten million people using Pandora on Internet-connected televisions, and now they’re launching a new browser-based television experience at tv.pandora.com. The product is a complete overhaul of the TV version of Pandora people are used to.
“This is an entirely new experience designed from the ground up for your television and remote control,” says Tom Conrad, CTO and EVP of Product at Pandora. “This new initiative is standards-based and embraces next generation TV, game console, and set top box architectures that support open web standards.”
The experience currently runs from the browser on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and it will spread to other platforms in the coming months.
“It’s also a completely new approach which will allow us to evolve the ’10 foot’ experience of Pandora with greater flexibility and speed than ever before,” says Conrad. “We’re still in the early stages of a transition to a world where all of the devices we interact with throughout the day – our TV’s, our stereos, our refrigerators, our cars, our watches, our eyeglasses — are all connected to the internet. This then begs the questions: how will developers create applications for this incredibly diverse set of devices? We think the answer can be web standards. The world doesn’t need more proprietary platforms fragmenting the innovative efforts of developers everywhere.”
A few months ago, Pandora surpassed 200 million users, and has since been adding features to make its service more appealing in the increasingly competitive online music space. Last month, Pandora premiered a feature that lets you listen to music on demand before it’s actually released. The company also launched new Facebook integration to help Facebook users populate the Music section of their profiles.
