In June, a SiriusXM employee told The Desk the new feature, called “Personalized Stations Powered by Pandora,” would allow customers with certain subscriptions the ability to create artist-based custom stations with features that mirror those available on Pandora, including the ability to rank songs by giving them “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” and up to six song skips per hour.
The new feature began rolling out around July 1 to customers who subscribe to the All Access or Premiere Streaming subscription packages, the employee said. It launched first on SiriusXM’s Android application and web streaming player, with an update to SiriusXM’s iOS and Apple TV applications coming later in the month. (Update: The feature went live for iPhone users via an app update a few hours after this article was published on Friday) The Desk was able to access the new feature by logging on to SiriusXM’s streaming radio service in a web browser.
Last weekend, SiriusXM quietly published a FAQ page explaining how the new Pandora-powered feature will work when it launches on Apple’s mobile operating system. SiriusXM has not formally announced the new feature, and a company spokesperson has not yet returned a message seeking comment.
SiriusXM closed on its $3.5 billion acquisition of Pandora earlier this year. A short time later, it said features that integrated the satellite radio service with Pandora’s streaming music operation would come down the line, but said both companies would continue to provide standalone offerings to customers.
The first integration of Pandora into SiriusXM was the launch of a pop-oriented channel called Pandora Now on satellite radio and SiriusXM’s streaming platform. Around the same time, Pandora began offering around 20 on-demand podcasts of SiriusXM-produced talk shows.
