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Pandora
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Recently I have been messing around with Pandora and their full music service and I have to say it has a great look and feel. Pandora is considered the godfather of music streaming as they were one of the first music streaming services online. Pandora has struggled in recent years with Spotify and Apple Music growing in numbers but it’s important to remember Pandora is an internet radio company and makes the majority of their revenue on ads. Recently in their earnings report, Pandora mentioned they have about 5.5 million subscribers to their paid services. Pandora does two paid service tears one being Pandora Plus $4.99 which is internet radio only with no ads or Pandora Premium for $9.99 being their fill on music service. Pandora has not disclosed which service has the majority of subscribers. Apple has over 40 million subscribers and Spotify has 70 million subscribers making it look like Pandora has little to no market share. Pandora has mentioned that they have over 90% of users listening through mobile which is very impressive, to say the least. Pandora who does make a majority of its revenue via advertising like most radio companies. Back in September SiriusXM invested $480 million dollars in a strategic investment with Pandora. Then in March Pandora acquired tech startup AdsWizz. AdsWizz tech aligned with Pandora’s specifically in the areas of audio monetization and ad-buying capabilities. Pandora says that it will continue to invest in AdsWizz technology that supports its core business. It’s important to realize that Pandora has 74.7 million active users which is a drop of about 6% compared to the previous year. It’s import to realize that Apple and Spotify offer artist based radio which can and has hurt Pandoras business. When you are comparing Apple Music to Pandora it can be hard because Apple Music...
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July 12, 2017Pandora has been on shaky ground for years now struggling with rising bandwidth cost, hosting costs, music royalties and major competition in the online music space. Pandora who for the longest time has been the standard for internet radio in the browser and mobile market. Pandora is always in the top 50 downloaded apps in the Apple App Store and has major brand recondition with music listeners but yet struggles with revenue. Pandora recently decided to break into the subscription based market after the huge success of services like Spotify, Google Music, Amazon Unlimited and Apple Music proved the market viable for subscription based music services. The question remains to be seen if this model will work for Pandora in the long run? There is something to be said about Pandora moving in the direction of a full music service rather than just radio which has been their core business for years. While Pandora is still offering the free ad supported model that many users enjoy will users spend $9.99 month for a full-blown music service when they are used to listening to Pandora radio for free. Pandora has always made their money on the advertisement on their website and their app with a paid option for ad free listening, unlimited skips and higher quality audio as the selling point for the upgrade of the service. Pandora has always offered Pandora Plus a $52 dollar a year or $4.99 a month depending on how you pay your subscription. Pandora may be banking on these users possibly upgrading for a few dollars more a month or year to upgrade to Pandora Premium for $9.99 a month. I think for Pandora it’s going to be hard to get users of the free service to go to the $9.99-month for a full music service when most users are used to just radio and getting the service for free at no cost. These users are mostly your casual music listeners who just want a good radio station to listen to since FM radio is terrible...
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October 18, 2016I remember when I first found Pandora in 2005 they were the first of their kind with artist radio. Pandora was doing artist radio when no other company at the time was in the artist radio business. The iPod had taken hold as way to play music in your pocket, FM radio was still strong in the music business while Sirius and XM were still head to head on which would be the dominate satellite radio provider. This was a different time in the music industry. Pandora was a popular website with ads generating revenue with limited skips and limited allowed listen time even threw the browser at that point. I opted in for Pandora One at $36 dollars a year no advertisements, unlimited listening and the use of desktop app. Pandora’s service stayed pretty consistent and never had issues despite constant reports of financial problems within the company. Then when the iPhone released in 2007 and the app store released in 2008 the boom of app market helped Pandora with their app being in top 20 of apps downloaded on a consistent basis. Still to this day if you type music streaming into the app store Pandora is still in the top five every time. Pandora has had some miss steps over the years with limiting mobile listening in favor of pushing Pandora One now $54.98 then after subscriptions slowed taking off the cap and allow unlimited listening with ad supported. Pandora even today talks about how many hours’ users have to listen for them to turn a profit on the mobile app. On June 15, 2011 Pandora went public on the stock market at $16 a share giving them a valuation of nearly $2.6 billion dollars the stock currently sits at around 12 dollars a share and is...
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Pandora executives said that they would lift for the 40-hour monthly cap on free mobile listening that was announced back in February. This is actually the second time Pandora has instituted a free cap and then lifted it again it last lifted the cap in September 2011. The decision to do so was announced by the company CFO Mike Herring, who explained the reasoning behind the move during an earnings call. The company has developed more precise techniques to control costs, and recent improvements in advertising allow Pandora to better monetize those extra listening hours. The decision was made for two reasons the first being when the mobile cap was reinstituted, usage dropped 10 percent. The second is to compete with iTunes radio and Spotify which has no cap. There was one down fall to lifting the cap. Herring mentioned without the cap, subscriptions won’t grow dramatically, and he predicted that they’ll make up 20 percent of the company’s revenue for the year. The announcement was made yesterday at Pandora’s earning report. The revenue report shows great results Pandora is up 58 percent year-over-year the company predicts that it will be profitable for the full year.
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March 5, 2013Pandora users who listen to the free streaming music service on their mobile devices will now be limited to 40 hours per month. The online music streaming company announced it will begin charging those who exceed the 40-hour limit have to pay 0.99 cents to continue their service for that month, or subscribe to the premium service, which features unlimited music and is advertising free. Users will also have the option of listening to unlimited listening via desktop. Users will receive a warning when they near their limit. Pandora, which eliminated a similar listening limit for desktop users in September 2011, blamed increasing royalty licensing costs for the mobile cap’s introduction. Pandora’s per-track royalty rates have increased more than 25% over the last 3 years, including 9% in 2013 alone and are scheduled to increase an additional 16% over the next two years. The change will affect less than 4% Pandora’s total monthly active listeners. For perspective, the average listener spends approximately 20 hours listening to Pandora across all devices in any given month. Pandora founder Tim Westergren made the announcement on the company blog.
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November 13, 2012Have you been looking for a device that supports Netflix, Amazon Instant, Hulu Plus, HBO GO, Vudu, Pandora and Facebook in one device look no further with the Roku. The Roku which was designed as a Netflix player by Netgear has slowly taken on a life of its own with a lot of new great features and channels. The Roku delivers HD video with surround sound, comes with a great remote control, and you can play at least a few casual games on it. The product has a channel for almost any app you can think of and has an on demand feature for about any channel you can think of giving this device the edge. With a very easy setup and simple to use interface making this product ideal for anyone who wants to steam media from any content provider. No monthly fees except for subscription based services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, exc) makes this product a onetime investment without reoccurring fees. The Roku comes in a wired or wireless version depending on your preference and can hookup to any wireless setup very easily buy just typing in your wireless password. The Roku is always adding new features recently was added to allow owners of Roku boxes to search for TV and movies available on Netflix, Amazon Instant, Vudu, Hulu Plus, Crackle, and HBO Go via one simple interface. The Roku Search channel will be rolling out to supported players (Roku LT, Roku HD and Roku 2 boxes) over the week and sits right next to the settings menu on Roku’s home screen. Roku has recently released the Streaming Stick. One of the most interesting home theater products at CES 2012, packing an entire streaming-video box into what looks like an oversized USB dongle. Roku Streaming Stick sells for $99. That’s...
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August 3, 2012Pandora a decade-old company which relies mainly on advertising and subscription revenue and competes with traditional radio, satellite radio and upstarts like Spotify, Rhapsody, iHeart Radio, and TuneIn just to name a few. Pandora’s subscription based service called Pandora One is $36 a year which allows for more skips and ad free listening. Pandora has never disclosed how many Pandora One subscribers they have from research I have done on the internet the estimated number is 800,000. The company has over 150 million registered users with about 52 million active listeners that have given Pandora almost a 6 percent share of the U.S. radio listening market. The company has made huge strides on the mobile market clinching a spot in the top 25 most download apps. But the company has admitted that they only make about $20 dollars for a 1000 hours of listening on the mobile app which is down in comparison to the $80 it makes on the PC for the same amount of listening hours. The company lifted its 40 hour a month restriction to help gain more advertising revenue. Pandora has taken some negative press after Timothy Westergren co-founder of Pandora said the company had 80,000 artists, 800,000 tracks in its library. Spotify had made mention that they have over 15,000,000 tracks in there library which made Pandora look inferior but over all Pandora’s loyal fan base stood by them. Pandora reported that first-quarter revenue rose 58 percent to $80.8 million blasting past analysts average forecast of $74.3 million as the company scooped up more advertisers. Pandora a mostly free service that recommends music based on a listener’s playlists, also raised its full-year revenue outlook.
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April 11, 2012One thing that has made every business news conglomerate is that Facebook has chosen the NASDAQ (NDAQ) for the IPO. This is great for the NASDAQ group they lost LinkedIn (LNKD), Pandora (P) and Yelp (YELP) recently. The latest IPO boom every market has been trying to sweeten the deal for technology and internet companies when Zynga (ZNGA) made its IPO it choose NASDAQ. What does this mean for the NASDAQ Index with Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), Groupon (GRPN), Zynga (ZNGA), Microsoft (MSFT), Netflix (NFLX) and now Facebook joining then market index? With all these BIG technology companies joining the NASDAQ or already being part of the Index as long as they do good so will the Index. If a few of them should start to do badly so will the Index value. One of the major concerns is what if the technology bubble breaks again the whole NASDAQ market could tank. This is a major concern when a market gets top heavy with a certain type of business stock. Facebook’s IPO has been anticipated for a while and looks to be very strong and beefed up. With any social media company there is always concerns especially after the failure of Myspace. Facebook’s revenue is derived from ads and games. Facebook has hung around longer, has a much better following and is biggest of any social media company to date. I be leave myself that these tech IPO’s have been the saving grace for the stock market and are adding to the rebound of our economy just like the Computer and PC industry helped our economy in the 80’s and the dot com industry did in the 90’s. Facebook is looking to IPO at $150.00 a share and I be leave it will sky rocket on opening day despite recent tech IPO’s not doing great on opening day. Most investors and share holding are waiting for the Mark Zuckerberg to ring the NASDAQ bell.