Pandora is betting its future on a new on-demand music service called 'Premium' - here's what it's like to use

It's hard to understate how important Pandora's new on-demand service, which competes with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, is to its future as a company.

Many investors seem to have lost faith in Pandora's ability to succeed as an independent company without some sort of change. That's why Pandora's stock price swings wildly every time an exec at Liberty Media, which is seen as Pandora's only real suitor, makes a comment about its business.

But Pandora still has a massive and loyal audience, and its leadership is betting big that Pandora Premium, the new on-demand service, will be a hit.

"We intend to be profitable this year," Pandora CEO Tim Westergren said earlier this month on CNBC. A chunk of that goal is likely tied to on-demand, where Pandora wants to have 6 to 9 million subscribers by the end of the year.

I've been trying Pandora Premium, which is being gradually rolled out to the public, for over a week, and I have both good news and bad news for Pandora investors.

The good news is that it's a beautiful and intuitive product, and is likely to snag some of Pandora's internet-radio fans, especially with playlist-building features that leverage Pandora's trove of historical data on longtime users. The bad news is that there are a few places where Pandora Premium really misses on the chance to be the first service to seamlessly integrate on-demand with the "lean-back" style of listening Pandora is famous for. Here's what I mean: