Pandora‘s audience grew in April, but not enough for investors, apparently, as the stock was down three percent at 10:00 AM this morning.
The market-leading Internet radio service released its monthly audience metrics for April today, promoting year-over-year growth in its key metrics. Today’s report is the second-to-last monthly update of Pandora’s audience metrics; the company previously announced that after the may report, its disclosures will be quarterly.
As always, Pandora revealed three measurements in the monthly report: Active listeners (a much-scrutinized number that indicates size of audience and allegiance to the brand), Listener hours, and Share of total U.S. radio listening.
The “Share of total U.S. radio listening” statistic is the most controversial, with radio industry advocates disputing it regularly. (It is a private calculation for which Pandora does not disclose methodology, leaving itself open to criticism.) That number has climbed steadily, and for April Pandora claims a 9.28% share — a 1.8% month-over-month gain. Year-over-year, the share-of-radio number has grown 7.3%.
Listening hours were essentially flat month-over-month, from 1.71-billion hours to 1.70-billion.
In the eagerly-awaited “active listeners” category, representing audience size and often used as a key indicator of business progress, Pandora enjoyed an incremental gain of about one percent in April, moving from 75.3-million active listeners to 76-million.
Pandora serves a registered user base of 250-million people who have signed in at least once. Registering is required to listen.