Sprint tunes in Pandora partnership

Sprint announced an agreement with online music service provider Pandora to introduce its personalized streaming radio service to mobile subscribers. Pandora, which enables its 6.5 million online subscribers to enter a favorite song or artist and listen to streaming content with the same sound and style, will make its mobile debut on the Sprint Power Vision platform.

Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, a proprietary system that employs musicians to analyze songs one at a time, identifying musical qualities like melody, harmony, rhythm, arrangement, lyrics and vocals. Information about each current song, like title, artist and album, is displayed on the phone's color screen, and Sprint subscribers may scroll backwards to see the same data for recently played songs--they may also rate songs to adjust Pandora's programming, and pause and skip songs. In addition, Sprint subscribers may bookmark songs, saving title and artist for subsequent purchase at the Sprint Music Store. The Sprint service will integrate with Pandora's online service, enabling users to save up to 100 stations per account. Sprint customers can also create new stations directly on their phones.

"This is a watershed moment for radio," said Pandora founder Tim Westergren in a prepared statement. "Pandora's unique approach to radio combined with Sprint's powerful wireless broadband network heralds a new era of music listening. Now listeners can have personalized radio throughout the day--in the car, at home, at the gym--custom-created stations wherever they are on the Power Vision network."

For more on the Sprint/Pandora deal:
- read this release [1]

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- Sprint [3], Interscope offer exclusive studio sessions
- MTV adds to Sprint [4]'s radio lineup