Most publicity around Pandora is U.S.-based, naturally enough since most of its business and audience are stateside. But Pandora is available in two other national markets — Australia and New Zealand. Today comes an announcement of Pandora partnering with Samsung in a distribution agreement that puts the Internet radio platform on Samsung Smart TVs. Continue Reading
In 1941, the U.S. Justice Department set up a music licensing system that still governs publishers, composers, and songwriters. Today, the Justice Department announced its intention to review the 73-year-old laws and consider changing them. At stake — how publishers negotiate royalty payments, how much money music creators earn, and costs to streaming music services. Continue Reading
Today Pandora released the final edition of its monthly audience metrics report, bringing to an end a two-year series of disclosures. Audience metrics were essentially flat month-ever-month, with year-over-year gains. Pandora stock (P) opened sharply lower this morning, and remains down about 2.5% as of this post. Continue Reading
Financial services firm Canaccord Genuity released its monthly audit of Pandora ads for May, showing that as listener hours increased, average ad load dropped incrementally. The company uses a methodology that tests within several registered identities in different demographics, across four geographic markets. Continue Reading
Wells Fargo, the 4th-largest U.S. bank, has been spotted in Pandora this week with the bank’s new “Small is Huge” campaign. The placement uses Pandora’s most attention-getting ad unit in the desktop-browser player. Click for screenshot and video. Well Fargo recently changed its lead creative agency. Continue Reading
ClearVoice Research, a market intelligence company founded in 2006, released a 50-page survey analysis of the streaming music industry entitled Media Review: Music Streaming Services Market Profile. The report analyzes results of a 1,010-person survey of U.S. Internet-using adults. survey questions explored how users consume music and other audio (news, sports), their awareness of streaming music brands, and their considerations when evaluating services. Continue Reading
The Copyright Board of Canada issued a royalty-rate decision that retroactively establishes payment amounts to artists and labels for the 2009-2012 period. The official rate supports arguments made by webcasters which participated in the hearing. The rate applies to non-interact Internet radio services, and is retroactively for 2009-2012. Continue Reading
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. As always, Pandora revealed three measurements in the monthly report: Active listeners, Listener hours, and Share of total U.S. radio listening. Continue Reading
Pandora announced the launch of Promoted Stations, a new music recommendation unit that features sponsor-branded listening stations by Taco Bell, Skechers, Toyota, and several other advertisers that have signed onto the program. The new ads are cycling through about 10% of Pandora’s listeners. Continue Reading
In the course of Pandora’s three-year history as a public company, it has had pretty strong support from the stock analyst world. However, consistently during that period there’s been one major bear — Rich Greenfield, of the research firm BTIG. Greenfield has issued approximately 29 analyst reports on Pandora, every one of them negative. Kurt Hanson analyzes. Continue Reading
In the course of Pandora’s three-year history as a public company, it has had pretty strong support from the stock analyst world. However, consistently during that period there’s been one major bear — Rich Greenfield, of the research firm BTIG. Greenfield has issued approximately 29 analyst reports on Pandora, every one of them negative. Kurt Hanson analyzes. Continue Reading
Listening to music and acquiring music are entwined. In 2014, collecting music has a new meaning, and increasingly occurs without the need of a traditional music product — physical or virtual. What collecting music means today. Continue Reading