Pandora launches a new ‘Premieres’ station for US users, previewing new albums up to a week before launch

Internet radio and music recommendation service Pandora is rolling out a new service that will offer previews of upcoming album launches in their entirety, up to a week before they go on sale.

Sponsored by T-Mobile for its initial roll-out phase, Pandora Premieres is being pitched as a “first-of-its kind station,” featuring previews from a range of artists – established and emerging. Indeed, from today you’ll be able to listen to John Fogerty’s “Wrote a Song for Everyone”, as well as Laura Marling’s “Once I Was an Eagle,” both of which go on sale later this month.

You can add the Pandora Premieres station to your account by typing “Pandora Premieres” into the search field.

“Pandora Premieres represents a great new discovery platform for our more than 200 million registered users and an equally powerful vehicle for artists, both established and emerging to reach new audiences,” says Pandora Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Tim Westergren. “Never has so targeted a program been delivered on such a massive scale.”

Listeners will be able to choose any track, in any order on the featured album, and listen for an unlimited period for the duration it’s live. Naturally, making the whole album available prior to launch in this way will undoubtedly lead to it landing on pirate download sites, though the flip-side is it should help generate a bit of buzz around the album ahead of launch.

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Pandora continues to be a popular Internet radio service in its active markets, which are the US, Australia and New Zealand, though most of its reported figures relate specifically to the domestic US market. Indeed, Pandora recently announced 200 million registered users in the US, notching up 1.5 billion monthly listener hours between them.

Pandora offers two subscription plans, an ad-supported free plan, in addition to a monthly fee-based subscription plan which removes the ads.