As predicted in this week’s Sirius XM earnings call for Q4 2018, the Sirius XM acquisition of Pandora closed today. Pandora is now a wholly owned component of the satellite broadcaster. In the earnings call, Sirius CEO Jim Meyer had things to say about Pandora, and was explicit in laying out broad strategic thoughts. Click through for abundant quotes. Continue Reading
Pandora’s shareholders have approved a big change to leadership, a move that will see new owners Sirius XM exerting much more control over the audio company. The January 29 meeting saw stockholders approve the all-stock acquisition of Pandora by Sirius XM. When the buyout closes, several high-ranking officials will leave Pandora, including CEO Roger Lynch. Continue Reading
In a new development connecting several big audio trends, Pandora has launched a Voice Mode that lets listeners control its mobile app with spoken commands. Voice Mode is powered by SoundHound’s Houndify voice AI platform, and it will begin rolling out to users today. Continue Reading
Webcast listening in September was 8% higher than the year-ago period, as Spotify widened its upward trend advantage compared to Pandora. This according to Triton Digital’s Top-20 Ranker, a monthly report based on Triton’s Webcast Metrics streaming measurement technology. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Wrapping up 2018 at Pandora and Shazam, plus the top Christmas tracks on YouTube. Continue Reading
Pandora has hired a new head of country programming. Jennifer Danielson joins Pandora after almost 10 years with CMT, where she was most recently the director of music strategy. She will oversee programming for country music, which Pandora says draws more than 30 million unique listeners to the service every month. Continue Reading
Pandora has hired a new member of its programming team. Akim Bryant joins the audio company in the role of top 40 coordinator, curation programming. He will be based in Pandora’s New York office and will work closely with Tiana Lewis. Continue Reading
Results of a major new consumer research study performed by Edison Research, supported by Pandora and Omnicom MediaGroup, has been released today. top-line takeaways include frequency of station switching among AM/FM listeners, and desire for digital technology in dashboards. Continue Reading
Pandora has officially thrown open the gates to podcast listening on its audio platform. The company’s Podcast Genome Project is now available to all users, meaning anyone can receive personalized listening recommendations. Continue Reading
Pandora has released a slew of holiday 2018 playlists, representing an imaginative, sometimes amusing sweep of holiday joy and stress. There is also a special Pandora Premium promotion set for Dec. 1 in the Google Android store. Continue Reading
Ad tech company AdsWizz, wholly owned by Pandora, announced new integrations with Google’s Display &Video 360 platform. The deal connects the AudioMax supply side platform, which is used to power Pandora’s programmatic buying solution, and AdWave, a global audio marketplace with more than 3 billion audio ad impressions each month worldwide, to Google’s massive footprint of buy-side users. Continue Reading
Pandora announced that its full on-demand subscription tier can now be accessed via Amazon Alexa. Pandora Premium has added support for voice commands, meaning subscribers can issue commands to control playback for songs, stations, and playlists on Alexa-enabled devices. Continue Reading