Music fans can take advantage of a new offer from music streaming service Pandora, which, for a limited time, is giving away two free months of its premium Pandora One ad-free listening service. The ad-free tier normally costs subscribers an additional $4.99 per month.
Pandora is the top internet radio-style music streaming service in the United States, with over 78 million active listeners monthly. Pandora differs from its on-demand competitors like Spotify and Apple Music in that, while listeners can select a specific song or artist that they would like to use as a "seed" for a playlist-style station centered around it, they may not play particular songs of their choice on demand.
The advantage to radio-style streamers like Pandora and iHeartRadio, however, is that they are legally entitled to play any song they choose, by any artist, as long as they properly compensate rights holders for the selected number of spins. That means that Pandora can't be excluded from playing songs by artists once they're released, such as all of those from Adele's latest smash album 25, most of which were not available on demand at Apple Music, Spotify and other on-demand streamers.
However, because of restrictions placed on Pandora-like radio-based streamers, Pandora can only play a limited number of songs by a particular artist per hour on that artist's based station, and users can only skip songs several times an hour. Pandora One allows extra skips for Premium users, and also offers higher quality audio, but most importantly, it eliminates the annoying advertisements that play in between tracks, often interrupting the musical flow.
Through a special collaboration with Groupon, Pandora is offering free vouchers that entitle their holders to two free months of Pandora One service. In order to take advantage of the deal, listeners must first be current Groupon members. If you're not a Groupon member, you can sign up for free here.
Then, click on this link to view the Pandora One Deal, and click "Buy" (although, technically, you are not buying anything) and then "Place Order." Then, retrieve your deal by clicking on the green "Redeem" bar, which will automatically take you over to Pandora's website. Either enter your current free Pandora credentials or join up. Your voucher code will already appear in the box, so just click "Redeem Your Code." You will now have a two-month free upgrade to Pandora One.
Just be careful that you cancel your subscription to Pandora One before the two months are up if you don't want to renew at the regular $4.99 rate. If you want to do that right away, you can do so through your Pandora account by canceling auto renew. The two free months will remain valid. Then, if you do decide you'd like to pay for the service in the future, you may do so manually.
