Today Pandora Internet Radio reported that they ended up with a lower increase in listeners in the third quarter than they were expecting. Pandora Internet radio is one of the most popular streaming radio apps available to consumers, as they have had a web platform and a mobile app available on both iOS and Android for quite some time. After a while though many more apps started to pop up and offer similar services and more options to the consumer for listening to streaming music. This no doubt has in little part something to do with Pandora not reaching their active listeners goal, with the the wide array of options that are out there now with competing services like Spotify, Google Play Music All Access, Songza, Slacker Radio, and others users have more to choose from.
Despite having lower than expected listener increases this quarter they still had a rise in listeners of about 5.2 percent over the same time last year, reporting 76.5 million active listeners as of September 30th. Even with the increase though Pandora’s shares decreased by about six percent as a result of the lower active users. The listening hours from active users are down as a result of the lower than expected increase from third quarter last year as well, as Pandora had expected their active listener hours to reach an estimated total of 5.02 billion hours, but instead total listener hours only ended up amounting to 4.99 billion hours.
Nonetheless, Pandora’s active listener hours the same time last year were 3.99 billion, so users are still finding Pandora Internet Radio a desirable option among competitors. Streaming music is a big business right now and Pandora has no shortage of competition, as the services mentioned above along with Apple’s still open and running Beats service(for now)and Amazon offer streaming music to consumers as well. Google is also reported to be launching a YouTube based streaming music service sometime in the future, which will only seek to draw even more attention away from Pandora. When that time comes though, perhaps Pandora will have something up their sleeve to grab in more users and overshoot their goals for active listeners. Do you use Pandora? Or do you prefer some other streaming music service?