Pandora One Desktop App Reaches 2.0

Things may be looking better for the music-streaming services and online radio stations, but they're certainly not out of the woods yet. While some other services are getting a lot of hype, Pandora is still one of the most popular in the US and it is still growing at a healthy pace. Even so, money is tight when it comes to music services, so the company hopes to entice more paying subscribers with a new version of the Pandora desktop app.

“I'm pleased to announce that we've released version 2.0 of the Pandora One desktop app. You've been telling us that the desktop app is one of your favorite features of Pandora One and it's great to have the chance to begin the process of refining that experience,” Pandora CTO Tom Conrad wrote on the site's blog. “With this release we've tried to keep the interface very simple while adding several of the most-requested features.”

The Pandora desktop app is as straightforward as it gets, with its sole aim being to allow users to listen to the Pandora streams within their desktop through a native app. Well, as native as an Adobe AIR application gets. The app's first iteration came last year, though it was a very different beast from the one we get now. The current form of the desktop app was actually revealed several months ago along with the launch of the Pandora One subscription service.

The latest version brings some basic, but very demanded, changes and features. Right on top of the list is the possibility to review your play history to see the songs played in the last hour on which you can also vote. Another “groundbreaking” feature is a progress bar as, apparently, some users are keen on knowing how much of the song is left, you know, like in pretty much every media player since the early nineties. There are other, similarly needed features that should really be welcomed by the users paying $36 per year for Pandora One.