Pandora, play music for my workout. Pandora, play more music like this song. Pandora, thanks for letting me use my voice to tell you what I want.

Tell Pandora what you want it to play and now it will play it with a new Voice Mode making music streaming simpler than ever on their mobile app. Their smart assistant works like many of the voice controlled AI’s we’ve become accustomed to in recent years like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa but entirely based around controlling your music streaming experience on Pandora’s app.

Wake Pandora’s Voice Mode up by saying ‘Hey Pandora’ then gain hands-free control over the mobile app as well as unique discovery commands. For example you can ask the app obscure requests such as “play something I like” for a random selection from your listening history, or try “play something different” to discover something new – all powered by it’s unique and expansive Music Genome Project. You can use it to add songs to your playlists, like tracks, and of course control playback and more.

Pandora’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Phillips says: “Pandora is the leader in personalised audio entertainment, and millions of our listeners are already loving the experience we’ve created on smart speakers and other voice-enabled connected devices. With Voice Mode, we are introducing an even more natural and conversational way for listeners to discover new music and enhance their experience directly in the Pandora mobile app, like getting recommendations from a friend who really knows you.”

It’s interesting that Pandora have created their own voice recognition platform in partnership with SoundHound instead of integrating one of the big brand’s powerful assistants. Although Apple, Amazon, and Google all have their own music streaming services so it makes sense that they would want independent and un-biased control built into their apps.

Pandora have begun rolling out Voice Mode access to select listeners on iOS and Android now and will make it more generally available for all mobile users soon.