Pandora For Windows Phone 8 Launched Ad-Free For 2013

Pandora is still a very popular streaming music radio service, but the company is dealing with a growing cadre of serious competitors; Windows Phone 8 has a similar problem in the mobile market with iOS and Android. Now, the two companies have partnered to offer Pandora ad-free on Windows Phone 8 at no cost, for the rest of 2013.

The app itself looks smooth and pretty, and it offers users the ability to pin favorite stations to their Start screens, and a live tile shows what track is playing. There’s also a handy feature in Windows Phone 8 called Kid’s Corner that’s sort of a ”guest account” that sequesters all your kid-friendly content and apps; in Pandora, that feature automatically blocks explicit content, so your kids won’t accidentally start learning Eminem lyrics.


What’s interesting about this partnership is that it appears as though Microsoft is the one subsidizing the cost of the ad-free streaming; judging by Pandora’s recent financial struggles including the new 40-hour-per-month mobile streaming cap, perhaps anything else would have been a dealbreaker for the streaming service.

In any case, as Pandora and Windows Phone 8 fight for consumer attention in their respective markets, this deal will benefit both parties.