Pandora wants to help you find the perfect podcast
The streaming music giant activates new features for podcasts.
Pandora has decided its podcast recommendations are ready for prime time.
The company behind the on-demand music app has been testing podcast recommendations in beta over the past few weeks. On Thursday, it officially launched the feature as part of Podcasts on Pandora.
The company also added 60 percent more podcast episodes and made it easier to find them. Pandora says hundreds of podcasts and more than 100,000 episodes are available in a variety of genres, such as news, crime stories, sports, comedy, music, business, technology, entertainment, kids, health and science.
Pandora will recommend podcasts by evaluating content based on users' thumbs-up and -down ratings, what they've skipped, what's in their collections and what they've played, the company said in a blog post.
Pandora started testing the podcast feature in beta in November. The feature is available on iOS and Android devices and is powered by the Podcast Genome Project, which uses artificial intelligence to categorize and recommend shows. The system catalogs shows and episodes using more than 1,500 attributes, including topic, production style, content type, host profile and more.
First published on Dec. 6, 12:21 p.m. PT.
Updates, 12:34 p.m. PT: Adds more information about Pandora's podcast episodes.
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