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Pandora delivers laughs with comedy channels
The music-streaming service now lets users create comedy stations and personalize them based on their tastes. The new feature works just as music does on Pandora.
Pandora now lets you add comedy channels to your listening selections.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jonathan Skillings/CNET)Get ready to laugh when you load up Pandora.
The company today announced the launch of comedy stations, and just as with music streaming, users can listen to tracks, skip those they don't like, and give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to personalize what they hear. According to Pandora, a team of analysts have culled through thousands of performances to classify them based on style and content.
Pandora debuted in 2000, allowing users to stream music over the Web. Since then, the company has secured a growing (and dedicated) user base that creates stations on different genres or topic areas, and personalizes those stations to match their tastes.
Though Pandora's comedy service won't feature the same breadth of content available to music lovers, the company said that it has quite a bit available. Listeners can create stations based on a specific comedian or genre, such as political comedy or "working class comedy." Stations are also available by decade, spanning the 1960s through today.
"We are delighted to now be able to give people a mix of familiar and new comic material that they'll love to listen to," Pandora founder and chief strategy officer, Tim Westergren, said in a statement.
