When Apple announced iTunes Radio at WWDC this June, it looked like a lot of subscription radio services would take a massive hit. But for Pandora, things couldn’t be better. Since Apple’s new service made its debut alongside iOS 7 back in September, listening has increased by 9 percent.
Pandora is already one of the biggest Internet radio services there is, with more users than rivals such as iHeartRadio. And iTunes Radio is doing little to shrink its growth. In October, the company’s share of U.S. radio listening reached 8.06 percent, up from 7.77 percent when iTunes Radio first made its public debut.
“October data was in line with our expectations and showed the resilience of our business,” said Pandora CEO Michael Herring during a talk at a Morgan Stanley conference in San Francisco this week.
Here’s what those percentages really mean: During October, Pandora streamed a whopping 1.47 billion hours of music and other content, Herring revealed — that’s despite the number of active users falling from 72.7 million in September to 70.9 million.
Pandora currently operates in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, but the company is planning to use some of the $400 million raised in a September stock offering to expand its business into new markets.
Source: Bloomberg
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
5 responses to “Has iTunes Radio Killed Pandora Yet? Quite The Opposite”
I killed my Pandora account (pay).. iTunes Radio is just fine for me. I already pay for iTunes Match..
I like Pandora, so I am happy for them that listening went up, which, I assume, translates into more revenue for them via ads. However, Pandora seems to be missing the fact that losing 1.8M active users since September is not positive. I would be interested to know how many of those were paid subscribers. This is important because if the number of free listeners has become more, then Pandora is relying on advertising for revenue more than in previous months. I know the CEO will do his best to put as positive a spin on the number as he can, but from my point of view, it appears that something has caused users to stop actively listening to Pandora. Whether this is as a result of the introduction of iTunes Radio or something else, it makes me wonder about their future.
I am one of those who decided not to renew my Pandora One subscription because I am already an iTunes Match subscriber. I don’t listen to that much streaming music anyway, so paying extra didn’t make sense.
I don’t quite understand why or how iTunes Radio is helping Pandora grow. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve listened to Pandora but I find iTunes Radio better because of the greater selection of music and having extended versions of songs I like to hear. What I don’t understand is why doesn’t Apple just copy Pandora’s format and take over listeners that way. With Apple’s wealth, they can do anything they want to put Pandora out of business if that was Apple’s goal.
iTR hardly means anything to Apple in terms of revenue. I’m using the free version of iTR and to me the occasional Nissan ad or ad to buy some songs is far better than any real radio station I’ve ever listened to. Although my personal song library is rather large I still like to kick back and listen to iTR for a couple of hours because I might hear songs that haven’t attracted my attention before. Whoever is propping up Pandora’s stock must have quite an investment in that company. I honestly don’t see how Pandora is as valuable as it is with Apple being the competition. Pandora’s revenue stream is paltry compared to Apple’s revenue stream.
Well for those of us (many) that have iTunes radio crash our devices on a regular basis even after restoring and resetting everything, its no surprise. The music app in general on iOS 7 is an awful buggy mess.
I think one of the main reasons Apple’s iTunes Radio has stumbled is that Apple fails to advertise many great features to users. I have iTunes Match and none of my Apple-using friends have heard of it. I feel like I am an Apple salesperson because I am always doing the job that Apple should be doing.
That, and Apple may have waited too long to enter the streaming music market. Many people don’t like change. They’re used to one service and they stick with it despite better offerings elsewhere. Look no further than email providers. There are so many users that don’t even have an iCloud account even though it makes everything seamless, especially if you use all Apple products (Macs, iPhone, iPod and iPad).