Cell Phones Blog

Sprint has teamed with Pandora Media, a popular online music service, to deliver a free Internet-based radio service that lets people create stations based on their favorite artists and other songs it finds that match in style. Sprint customers can now discover new music and hear favorite songs through their own personalized “DJ” on their phone.

Listening to Pandora is simple: users enter a song or artist that they like, and within seconds, Pandora delivers a personalized radio station with a continuous stream of songs that fit the same sound and style. The songs are selected based on the Music Genome Project, Pandora’s proprietary system that utilizes musicians to analyze songs one at a time, identifying hundreds of different musical qualities of each recording, including melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics and vocals.

Pandora on Sprint phones is integrated seamlessly with the online version of Pandora. Up to 100 stations can be saved in a user’s account, and they can be enjoyed online. Sprint customers can also create new stations directly on their phones through an easy-to-use interface.

Information about the current song (including title, artist and album) is displayed on the phone’s color screen, and customers can also scroll backwards to see this information for recently played songs. Additionally, customers can rate songs with the touch of a button with either “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” so Pandora can immediately adjust the station’s programming, and they can pause a song as well as skip a song that they don’t want to hear.

Pandora is now available on five Sprint Power Vision phones: the LG Fusic, Samsung A900 and A920, and the Sanyo 7500 and 8400. By the end of June, Pandora will be available on all Sprint Power Vision phones. Pandora on Sprint, which includes both ad-free online and mobile access, is available for a no-charge trial for the first 30 days and then costs an additional $2.99 per month with a Power Vision data plan (standard Power Vision charges apply).