Music streaming has been a hot area in the tech industry in the past few months. Apple took the opportunity at its World Wide Developer's Conference to debut its first foray into the music streaming business with iTunes Radio, which sparked other popular music sites to innovate and stay relevant.
The first of the music streaming services to do so was Spotify who came out with an iOS update for its music streaming app adding a better, more intuitive navigation optimized for iOS 7's impending release. In addition it added a "Discover" feature so that users can find new music while still on the go.
Now Pandora has taken its first step toward optimizing its system for iPhones and iPads in order to make itself more appealing to users than trying something new with iTunes Radio. According to PC Mag, Pandora's latest update includes features like auto-pause when the phone is muted as well as "stutter-free" playback.
Version 4.4, which was launched on Monday, has a lot of other bug fixes as well but, the brand won't be saved by bug fixes alone. The inclusion of an auto-pause function for muted phones is important as people will no longer have to open the application on their smartphones before they can mute music. Instead users can simply mute their iPhone from the physical buttons on the side and have the track pause for them so they can resume after they, for example, finish at a drive-thru or pull over for sirens.
In addition, the new Pandora update has improved playback buffering. This will allow Pandora users to listen to music and be un-interrupted by skips or pauses to load the track. Meanwhile the same URLs that work on the web work for the iOS version.
The iOS Pandora application is currently available to download for free in the Apple iTunes App Store.
