Last week, Pandora announced a new premium service known as Pandora One that includes a new desktop application powered by Adobe AIR. As a subscriber to Pandora One, users have access to not only a beautiful desktop application but also higher quality streaming and an extended interaction timeout period (up to five hours!). Also, since it is a premium service, advertisements are not displayed within the desktop or browser-based players.

If you are an audiophile
and love the personalized mixes served up by Pandora, this is an application you should definitely check out. Currently, a one year subscription costs $36/year. One feature I particularly like is that notifications appear as overlays that fade in and out as a new song starts. However, the higher quality music (192Kbps!) significantly enhances the listening experience over the standard web player version. Congratulations to the team at Pandora that developed this application!

It is exciting to see companies like Pandora and the New York Times provide subscription services that are delivered to the desktop using Adobe AIR.
If you have shipped or are working on a premium application that you are charging your users for, please leave a comment and let us know. We’d really like to hear what you are working on.

For more details, be sure to check out the Pandora One page.