You Can Now Tell Pandora What You Want to Listen To

Telling your phone what to do is quickly becoming way cooler than, you know, touching it, and Pandora is on it. The company just announced Voice Mode, which will let you tell it what to play. It’s cool.

This new mode will be available on both Android and iOS and will be accessible with the phrase “Hey Pandora” with the app open. You’ll be able to change stations, as well as adjust the volume and play/pause content. You can also use it for specific requests, like “play music for relaxing,” which is a pretty nice touch.

Beyond that, Voice Mode will support giving songs a thumbs up with your voice by saying “I like this,” skipping songs with “play something different,” adding tracks to playlists with “add this to my <whatever> playlist,” and a lot more. Here’s the full list from Pandora’s press release:

Types of requests include:

• Control requests to change stations, control volume, skip or pause music, and other basic navigation commands.
• Thematic requests delivering personalized music based on each user’s unique tastes, moods, and favorite activities like “play something for my workout” or “play music for relaxing.”
• Open-ended requests like “play something different,” “play something I like” or “play more like this.”
• Basic requests for a specific artist, song, station, podcast or playlist like “play new music by…” or “play my happy jams playlist.”
• Interactive requests like “what song is this?” or directional requests like “add this song to my party playlist” or “I like this” to give a thumbs-up.

While some of these features are clearly only for users who subscribe to one of Pandora’s paid tiers, it seems that all users—both those who subscribe to Pandora or simply use the ad-based tier—will get access to Voice Mode in the coming weeks.

via Pandora