Pandora Introduces Standalone Apple Watch App, Stream Music and Podcasts With No iPhone Required

[MacRumors]

Pandora this week introduced a standalone Apple Watch app that allows you to stream music and podcasts from your wrist with no iPhone required.

Starting with ?watchOS 6?, developers are able to distribute apps built specifically for the ?Apple Watch?, without a companion app on iOS. These apps can be downloaded from the new App Store app on watchOS 6.

Acquired by SiriusXM in 2018, Pandora is a streaming music service in the United States that features free, ad-supported radio. The service also offers two paid tiers, including Pandora Plus with personalized, ad-free radio for $4.99 per month and Pandora Premium with on-demand music and podcasts for $12.99 per month.

(Thanks, Stefan Constantine!)

Article Link: Pandora Introduces Standalone Apple Watch App, Stream Music and Podcasts With No iPhone Required

 

[Agit21]

No Spotify offline playback - no buy.

 

[adambomb78]

I can't even make it through a day on my series 4 watch & I just play music on my phone. There's no hope for my watch if I start playing music with this app.

 

[redbeard331]

That would be great if it actually worked.

 

[cardfan]

Didn’t know pandora was still a thing.

 

[jacjustjac]

I can't even make it through a day on my series 4 watch & I just play music on my phone. There's no hope for my watch if I start playing music with this app.

Even better because a good portion of the time and battery would be spent loading ads.

 

[incoherent_1]

I have the iOS app already with the watch version enabled on my phone. Does that mean when the standalone app is released, the Watch app will update to the standalone version or will I need to manually swap over?

 

[EatinPonies]

Can you cache music or stations to a WiFi only watch?

 

[aricG]

Didn’t know pandora was still a thing.

Surprisingly yes and I still feel it’s better than Spotify in regards to new music discovery based of your previous likes. I was on Pandora since the Palm Pre days and only switched to Spotify a year ago because of the package deal they offer with Hulu and Showtime and while Spotify fills the streaming music need for me I still stand by my opinion that Pandora has a much better algorithm.

 

[randyhudson]

can I get Howard without my phone now?

Bababooey
[automerge]1581702293[/automerge]

Didn’t know pandora was still a thing.

Pandora is included with SiriusXM now, which has 30 million subscribers.

 

[deeddawg]

Nice. I had to explicitly download the new app version from the watch app store, then login with my Pandora credentials. Nice that the watch lets you use the phone for keyboard input.

It appears to still work in the classic mode where the watch app serves as a remote control for the app running on the phone. That'll be handy.

Put phone into airplane mode and tried it out. Worked well over wifi connection.

This will be really nice for when I'm out for a run since I leave my phone behind.

Can you cache music or stations to a WiFi only watch?

You've sort of been able to do that already with Pandora on your phone downloading content for your top stations to your watch. Hasn't really worked very well IMHO with it being pretty thin in how much content I'd see come across, and no way to specify which stations I wanted it to download to the watch. Perhaps they've updated that with the new version.

BTW - it appears the standalone works over wifi. Could be handy at the gym if you can connect watch to their wifi and prefer not to have your phone with you.

 

[sjinsjca]

This will be really nice for when I'm out for a run since I leave my phone behind.

I haven't been able to get it to work over a cell connection. Over WiFi, it works well, though it got into a mode where it would only act as a remote for my iPhone app. I turned off the phone, delete the app from the Watch, re-downloaded it from the Watch App Store, and it returned to autonomous functionality. I hope it doesn't make a habit of switching to remote-only functionality.

UPDATE:

Ugh, it does.

I had it streaming via WiFi with my phone turned off. Turned phone back on, no problem. Turned phone back off, the Watch app stopped streaming and refuses to re-start, presenting me with:

There appears to be no way to get the app running independently again. Force-killing it doesn't help.

So, Pandora still has some work to do.

 

[V_Man]

I can't even make it through a day on my series 4 watch & I just play music on my phone. There's no hope for my watch if I start playing music with this app.

What do you do with your watch? I can get almost 2 days on my series 4

 

[MartyvH]

No headphone jack in the Watch ?

 

[deeddawg]

No headphone jack in the Watch ?

While I realize you're being facetious, others may not, so I'll mention that the Apple Watch will pair directly with bluetooth headphones. Currently I use a set of AfterShokz Aeropex for running, leaving my phone at home.

 

[fyrfyter33]

What do you do with your watch? I can get almost 2 days on my series 4

That's what I want to know. I can literally use around 50-60% of my series 3 battery in a 24 hour shift, but I use it throughout the day and night. When I am off duty, it could probably go 2 days between charging.