Internet radio service Pandora launched a new version of its site today, available at tv.pandora.com, tailored specifically for discovering and playing music through a TV or set top box.
The company says it’s been optimized “for a 10-foot experience” and will be accessible from a range of smart TVs, video game consoles and set-top boxes that support open Web standards.
It’s available right now from the browser on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but will be rolled out gradually for other consoles – presumably the Wii U – as well as smart TVs and set top boxes that support the necessary standards over the coming months.
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It’s a significant move for Pandora, will no doubt benefit from a refresh in the television and home theater space. The platform arguably isn’t quite as lucrative as smartphones, tablets and the Web at the moment, but it’s still an important market where Xbox Music and Last.fm have made some in-roads.
The new interface for tv.pandora.com is refreshingly simple, with just a handful of controls for skipping ahead and giving a track either a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Album artwork takes center stage, with crisp, white text for the track name, artist and record title.
Pandora is only available in the United States at the moment, but announced recently that it has 200 millon registered users listening to 1.5 billion hours of music collectively each month.
If the new service is robust and user-friendly, it could help bypass the slow roll-out of apps being offered by on-demand music streaming services such as Deezer and Nokia Music+.
Pandora recently extended its partnership with Facebook through a new Timeline app that allows users to share what they’re listening to on the popular social network. The company also introduced a new ‘Premieres’ station to offer listeners a full preview of upcoming records from new and established artists last month.
Image Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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