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Pandora's CEO is doubling down on podcasts
By JP Mangalindan Pandora CEO Roger Lynch wants to offer listeners an easier way to discover new podcasts as the company adds more podcasts to its service and beefs up advertising. Indeed, podcasts will become a more significant aspect in the months and years ahead for Pandora, which has over 75 million monthly active users -- 5.5 million of which use Pandora's paid features and services. The key to growing those users, according to Lynch, who joined the company in September, is offering a more comprehensive catalog of content. "In the car, 80 percent of listening is music, while 20 percent is other stuff," Lynch explains to Yahoo Finance. "As a service, if you don't have that 20 percent, it doesn't mean you capture the 80 percent, because then people will just stay on their FM Radios. But if you can create audio content for people that gets packaged with the music content in a way that doesn't give them a reason to go back to that FM dial, then you capture much more than just the spoken word."
Spotify’s challenge is to prove it’s a real business, not a fantasy
Three months after quietly filing to become a public company, Spotify finally made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday. It was a big day for the Swedish music-streaming giant, to say the least, and it ended up exceeding expectations from Wall Street analysts on its first day of trading. But for many investors, Spotify may not be the safest bet. In its IPO filing, it disclosed that it has incurred significant operating losses over the past few years, warning investors that it may be a while before it's able to generate profits on a sustained basis.
Pandora goes full Spotify with personalized playlists
Spotify began building custom-curated playlists back in 2015 and now Pandora is offering a similar option for its listeners. With that Pandora calls "personalized soundtracks," the company will put its Music Genome to work creating a library of playlists based on your listening habits. "The personalized playlists fit your moods, activities and favorite genres and are updated each week based on your individual musical tastes," chief product officer Chris Phillips explained in a blog post. "We combined our human curation with personalized algorithms to automatically serve up new artists and songs anticipating the perfect balance of discovery and steady favorites."
CDs and vinyl are outselling digital music downloads
Digital music downloads began to outsell physical media since 2012. It took four more years for digital music revenue to surpass those from physical media as well. Then streaming happened, and last year generated more money in the US than all the other formats. Now, digital downloads are coming in dead last, with fewer sales than CDs, vinyl or other physical media, according to the latest annual report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Google adds Disney parks to Street View
Last year Google revamped its Street View cameras to help us better map the real world, now it's taken the technology to a much more magical land. From today, you'll be able to explore inside 11 Disney Parks, getting an on-the-ground glimpse of all its castles, rides and attractions, including the captivating Avatar-themed world of Pandora. It'll also definitely prove popular when the Star Wars area opens up next year. Now if only the imagery was available in real time, so we'd know whether to bother lining up for Splash Mountain or not.
Pandora Premium finally works in your web browser
It's been almost a year since Pandora Premium -- the company's on-demand streaming service and competitor to Spotify and Apple Music -- first arrived. Ever since launch, Premium has only been available on mobile phones, but today it'll finally have a player in the web browser, as well. And while it's been well over two years since Pandora purchased the dearly-departed Rdio, those who used the old service will find Pandora's web service very familiar.
Spotify is testing a Pandora-esque standalone Android app
Spotify apparently has plans to launch another music app -- one that's more like Pandora's original service, or like a radio, if you will. The company has begun testing a playlist-based app called "Stations" for Android, and according to its Google Play listing, it plays music as soon as you launch it. You'll have to "like" tracks in the app so it can create personalized stations for you, but like Spotify's main app, Stations learns what music you prefer the more you listen. All you need to do to switch stations and automatically start playing other music is to scroll through your playlists.
Apple Music now offers artists detailed streaming and download info
As a musician, knowing how your songs are performing on streaming platforms is important. Spotify brought real-time stats and demographic information to a dedicated app for artists this past October, while Pandora and YouTube have had similar dashboards for a while now. Finally, Cupertino is catching up with the beta launch of Apple Music for Artists, a dashboard that lets users drill down into various statistics on song performance from now to as far back as 2015, when the Apple Music service launched.
Pandora's on-demand music service works over your Xfinity cable box
Xfinity X1 users have been able to access the free version of Pandora, but now they're also getting support for both Pandora Premium and Pandora Plus. In an update available now, users will be able to get Pandora music going on X1 just by saying "Pandora" into the X1 voice remote and Premium subscribers can search and play any song, album, station or playlist they wish. To get to a specific song, they'll just have to say something like, "Play 'Santa's Coming for Us' by Sia on Pandora." X1 also now supports Pandora Plus, which lets subscribers listen to stations ad-free with additional skips and replays. The update also includes a simpler sign-in experience and a new display design.
Pandora lets free users sample its on-demand service
It's been just over a year since Pandora first gave an official glimpse of its on-demand music service, meant to go up against the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. And while there's a lot to like about Pandora Premium, it hasn't exactly shaken up the status quo -- most people use the free service to build stations based on songs, artists and genres they like. But the company has a somewhat intriguing strategy to give those free users a taste of premium. Today, Pandora is announcing that free users can get a sample of the on-demand service by watching a 15-second video ad. After watching that ad, free users will unlock the full premium experience for a limited amount of time, which means they'll be able to queue up any song they want, build playlists from Pandora's catalog, check out the company's new curated playlists and more.
Pandora's app now offers direct control for Sonos speakers
If you use both Pandora and Sonos, there's a pretty useful update coming your way today. Pandora's apps for iOS and Android now let users directly control music streaming to your Sonos speakers. The Sonos controller app is still required to set up Pandora, but once that's done, users can select songs, playlists and stations directly through the Pandora app to play on their speakers.
Pandora adds curated playlists to its on-demand music service
For years, the main feature of Pandora's music streaming service has been stations generated from the company's vast Music Genome Project. A system that analyzes songs based on 450 different attributes, it helps Pandora build stations of songs that the company claims go together better than what other services offer. But, the company finally launched a full-fledged, on-demand service earlier this year, and now it's expanding the kinds of music it curates for users. Today, Pandora Premium is launching Featured Playlists, a set of 250 curated playlists across the categories you see on pretty much every other music service out there. Pandora says that in addition to genre-focused playlists, it's also building ones for moods, activities, specific artists and "cultural moments."
Billboard’s charts will give more weight to paid music streams in 2018
Starting in 2018, Billboard will change the way it counts streaming music for its charts. Right now, the way it works for the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart is that there are two tiers for streaming music: on demand (where you can select what you listen to) and programmed (think Pandora). On demand listening is given a greater weight than programmed. But next year, the company will add another tier. Paid subscription services (such as Apple Music and the paid tiers of services like Spotify) will have more weight than purely ad-supported listening and unpaid tiers of subscription streaming services.
Sonos will add AirPlay 2 support for direct control in 2018
If you watched in envy as your Spotify-loving friends controlled their Sonos systems from within the music streaming app, hoping Tidal and AirPlay 2 would follow, there's reason to celebrate. The audio firm has announced support for those services as well as Pandora. AirPlay 2 won't be out until next year, but Pandora and Tidal will be available before the end of 2017. Meaning, you'll be able to control a multi-speaker system via your streaming app of choice rather than Sonos' own kludgy application. It's the latest step Sonos is taking to provide a platform-agnostic experience, where almost everything works with its hardware regardless of who's providing the music.
Pandora appoints Sling TV's Roger Lynch as CEO
It's been a rough year for Pandora. The service followed its relaunch as an on-demand streaming service by looking to get bought, but soon closed shop in Australia and New Zealand and got sued by PayPal to boot. Finally, CEO Tim Westergren stepped down, leaving the company he co-founded in 2000. But Pandora has found his successor in Roger Lynch, the founding chief executive of Sling TV.
YouTube hopes to patch things up with the music industry
The music industry hasn't been too enamored with YouTube, what with all the unsanctioned content on the video site. Now that Google is planning to merge Google Play and YouTube into one music service, however, it's time to start fixing that awkward relationship. YouTube's head of music, Lyor Cohen, took the first steps toward reconciliation at the New Music Seminar in New York City this week, with a panel geared toward the lack of ad revenues and how the music industry can be more supportive of streaming services.
Pandora is shutting down in New Zealand and Australia
While Pandora got a nice infusion of cash from SiriusXM a few weeks ago, there's bad news for the streaming services' users down-under. The company just announced that its co-founder and CEO Tim Westergren is stepping down and, according to Billboard, Pandora is ending its service in the only two non-US markets it currently operates in: Australia and New Zealand.
Pandora's CEO is stepping down as digital music evolves
The rumors were true: Pandora CEO Tim Westergren has announced that he's stepping down from the company he co-founded 17 years ago. He'll remain in the leadership position while the company searches for a replacement. President Mike Herring and marketing chief Nick Bartle are also leaving, the streaming music company says. While Pandora isn't clear about why the executives are bowing out, it comes after efforts to "refocus and reinforce" the firm by selling its ticket business and taking a $480 million cash infusion from SiriusXM. In other words, it's likely looking for fresh blood as it adapts to a changing digital music landscape.
Pandora's CEO might leave the company he founded
Pandora has had a busy year so far and now, there are rumors circling around co-founder and CEO Tim Westergren. According to Recode, Westergren will be stepping down from his current role. There are currently no candidates to replace him, so he'll likely remain in the CEO slot until someone new is chosen.
SiriusXM invests in Pandora to get into on-demand music streaming
Pandora made the leap to on-demand streaming back in March after building on the pieces Rdio left behind. Earlier this month, reports surfaced that the company was looking for a buyer. It didn't find one, but it was able to attract a big investor: SiriusXM. The satellite radio company announced today it's investing $480 million in Pandora, adding a portion of the à la carte music streaming service to its catalog of audio options. The deal gives SiriusXM a 19 percent stake in the company.
