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Pandora's more skips upsell prompt

The music app, Pandora, feels like a tale as old as time. Known for their smart radio stations that help listeners discover new music based on an artist or a song, they are still a widely successful app, even among other giants like Spotify and Apple Music. 

What doesn't feel old about Pandora is their cleverly placed upsell prompts.

Why this is really good UX:

  • There are certain disadvantages to Pandora's free account: ads, less flexibility. Users might not notice these things holding them back, though, until they are prohibited from doing something. In this case, a user wants to skip more than a certain number of songs an hour.  When they have reached their limit, Pandora hits them with the upsell.
  • Pandora frames their upsell in the context of getting more of something (in this case, Skips). If users tend to be skip-happy, this proposition is valuable. If a user rarely hits their Skip limit, they are also offered the option of watching a video ad. Pandora does a great job of leaving this upsell as optional only.