Pandora: Music & Podcasts

Pandora Review: Stations Still Smart, the App Pricier and Less Stable

Free, Plus or Premium: What $0, $5.99 and $11.99 a Month Buy

The free tier is station radio with audio and visual ads, a cap on skips and replays, and a shorter "Are you still listening?" timeout than paid accounts get. Playing a chosen song, album or playlist needs a Premium Access session, unlocked by watching a video ad. Plus, now $5.99 a month or $65.89 a year on the web, strips ads from stations, lifts the skip cap, raises audio quality and keeps four stations offline: three top stations plus Thumbprint Radio, picked automatically. Premium, at $11.99 or $131.89 a year, adds search and play, your own playlists and downloads. Premium Family covers six accounts for $19.99 a month, and the buyer must be 21 or older. These US web prices apply to new subscribers from September 22, 2026 and can change.

Six Modes and 450 Attributes: How a Station Chooses Songs

Station picks start with the Music Genome Project: staff analysts tag each track with up to 450 musicological attributes, and the system then matches it with similar artists and songs on listeners' stations. Thumbs tune one station at a time, so a thumbs-down keeps that track off that station only. Six Modes reshape any station without starting over: My Station, Crowd Faves, Deep Cuts, Discovery, Newly Released and Artist Only, and a thumbs-up is weighted differently in each. The limit is coverage. A Play review with 652 helpful votes says most of the writer's favorite artists could not be added as stations, and the developer's reply pointed to a community suggestion page. Several September 2026 reviews also complain that AI-generated tracks now turn up on stations with no label.

1,400+ Podcasts, SiriusXM Shows and the 30-Day Offline Rule

Podcasts share the app on every tier, and the App Store listing counts more than 1,400 of them, including SiriusXM talk shows. That link exists because SiriusXM bought the company in a $3.5 billion all-stock deal that closed on February 1, 2019; its help center says the two still run as separate brands and services. Paying does not make podcasts ad-free: many arrive as finished audio files, so ads recorded into an episode still play. On Android, only Premium can download episodes. Every download, from Plus stations to Premium albums, needs the app to reconnect at least once every 30 days, can take 300 MB to 700 MB of storage, and stops playing if the subscription lapses.

SiriusXM's Privacy Policy, Tracking Labels and a Rough September 2026

One privacy policy covers SiriusXM and its Pandora Media subsidiary. The March 18, 2026 version says some data disclosed for advertising could count as a "sale" under state laws, offers an opt-out link and honors Global Privacy Control where required. Apple's label lists location, contact info, identifiers and usage data as usable for tracking across other companies' apps. Google Play's form says voice or sound recordings may be shared for advertising, while the policy says voice commands are not kept tied to you. Stability is the other worry: of the 199 newest English Play reviews, posted September 19 to October 1, 2026, 108 gave one or two stars; 31 mention the price rise and 21 describe crashes or an app that will not open after the 2609 updates.