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Pandora debuts ad-free app for Windows Phone 8

The online radio station has finally unveiled an app for Windows Phone 8 users.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
Lance Whitney
2 min read
Screenshot by CNET

Pandora has tuned up a Windows Phone 8 app that's both free and ad-free.

Available as of today in the Windows Phone store, the app offers all the standard features for Pandora listeners.

You can create up to 100 different stations based on your tastes in music. You can tell Pandora what you like and don't like by giving each song a thumb's up or thumb's down.

You can filter certain songs that you won't want to hear and flip on a switch for higher-quality audio. Existing Pandora users can log in with their current accounts; new users can create new accounts via their phones.

Unlike Pandora's basic service and its other mobile apps, the Windows Phone 8 version temporarily frees you from commercials and the 40-hours-per-month mobile streaming limit. The freebies will last until year's end.

After that, listeners will need to upgrade to Pandora One to skip the commercials and continue unlimited streaming. That service costs $3.99 per month or $36 per year.

Pandora's new app also takes advantage of the Windows Phone 8 environment. You can pin your favorite stations to the Start screen to access them with a single tap. You can see the title of the song currently playing via the app's Live Tile. You can also view a page of recent stations and see a list of your favorites.

Pandora still doesn't offer an official app for Windows 8 or Windows RT. But the launch of the Windows Phone 8 version could mean that an app for the latest Windows PCs and tablets isn't far behind.