Has iTunes Radio Killed Pandora Yet? Quite The Opposite

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itunes-radio

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

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