Pandora’s Audience, Awareness Up
Last week Pandora announced a significant milestone when they reached 200 million registered listeners. The fact that the number of registered listeners leapt from 100 million to 200 million in two years makes it still more impressive. Remember, Pandora’s user base is largely in the US, although they have recently expanded to a few other places such as Australia.
During a presentation last week at RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas, hundreds in the audience got a first look at updated trends in Infinite Dial 2013. Arbitron SVP Bill Rose and Edison Research President Larry Rosin offered some stats on Pandora, which has an impressive brand awareness recognition rate of 69% among adults 12+ in the US, a number that grew 10% since last year’s study. iHeartradio showed impressive brand awareness in the new study as well, with 45% brand recognition, a jump of almost 15% since last year.
The study also reported that close to half of the folks surveyed had downloaded the Pandora app onto their cellphone. This fact reveals the steam engine driving both the growth in audience and brand awareness for industry leader Pandora – their amazing success with mobile apps. As usage of smartphones and tablets has soared, Pandora’s been right out there in front, gaining front page status on those devices. 21% of cell phone owners now saying they have used their phone to listen to a stream in their car, yet another indication of the growing importance of mobile devices.
We’ll be discussing mobile devices, connected cars and a lot more again on May 23 in Brussels at RAIN Summit Europe. Have you registered? Hope to see you there!
SiriusXM Launches Personalized Platform
Yesterday SiriusXM launched their new personalized streaming platform MySXM, a streaming option available to its subscribers for an add-on fee. The service features 50 channels that can be adjusted using “slider bars” to suit the listener’s personalized tastes. It’s described as more interactive than Pandora, with on-demand features that go beyond what Pandora offers. Backend music intelligence platform The Echo Nest provides the service with its personalization, and Omniphone provides cloud based services. 
Make no mistake, SiriusXM is still a satellite company, and this new offering is all about protecting its subscriber base. With an estimated 120 million folks in the US listening online in the past month, streaming is the fastest growing radio platform. Offering that as an option is a way to preserve its subscriber base.
According to year end reports, SiriusXM had close to 24 million subscribers at the end of last year, while Pandora has 200 million subscribers, 70 million of whom are actively monthly users. SiriusXM does not provide information other than subscribers.
Painting The Town Spotify Green
The competitive landscape of online music services had a busy week, with everyone out and about in Austin at SXSW wooing press and fans. Just 3 months after announcing that they had reached 5 million subscribers globally, Spotify announced this week that they now have 6 million paying subscribers, and declared themselves the fastest growing music service ever. Their presence in Austin featured a house, painted Spotify green, where they hosted live bands.
Rdio announced this week that they are expanding to still more countries. Their service, which new subscribers can hear ad-free for the first six months, is now available in United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Sweden and Brazil, in addition to the US.
Pandora hosted a “Discovery Den” that featured many well known artists, some of which also made an appearance at iHeartRadio‘s SXSW party. Rhapsody had a party, and hosted a panel as well: ‘Streaming Music: A River of Cash or up the Creek.’ The panel will bring together perspectives from all sides of the issue to examine what roles streaming music services can play for artists today and in the future. Hats off to them for that.
Streaming Music On Smartphones Is Popular
Smartphone users like to use the devices to listen to music, and that’s a trend that is on the upswing, according to new information from NPD Group. 56% of smartphone users listen to music on their devices, with 39% of them doing that daily. Of those, they mostly listen to Internet radio (65%), but also stream on demand services like Spotify or Rhapsody (30%) and listen to their own music (it’s not clear whether it’s on the device or streamed from a cloud service) as well.
Music listening on mobile devices extends to tablets as well, with 40% of tablet users listening to music on those devices.
Ovi Music – on the go (Photo credit: Nokia RSA)
The Audio Consumption study done by NPD Group also observes that hardware of products that enhance wireless local playback of streaming services on mobile devices, like wireless speakers and headphones, are growing as a result of this trend. “With both local music storage and the ability to connect to any number of online music services, tablets and smartphones are actually contributing to a net increase in their owner’s use of internet radio and personal music collections,” said Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis at NPD. “As a result, we are seeing sales growth in products that compliment playback on mobile devices, particularly those that feature wireless local streaming.” Wireless streaming speaker sales more than tripled in 2012, and wireless headphones grew by 34 percent.
NPD Group’s Russ Crupnick is a featured speaker at the upcoming RAIN Summit West on Sunday April 7th at the Las Vegas Hotel. For more information and to register, click here.
Streaming Music On Smartphones Is Popular
Smartphone users like to use the devices to listen to music, and that’s a trend that is on the upswing, according to new information from NPD Group. 56% of smartphone users listen to music on their devices, with 39% of them doing that daily. Of those, they mostly listen to Internet radio (65%), but also stream on demand services like Spotify or Rhapsody (30%) and listen to their own music (it’s not clear whether it’s on the device or streamed from a cloud service) as well.
Music listening on mobile devices extends to tablets as well, with 40% of tablet users listening to music on those devices.
Ovi Music – on the go (Photo credit: Nokia RSA)
The Audio Consumption study done by NPD Group also observes that hardware of products that enhance wireless local playback of streaming services on mobile devices, like wireless speakers and headphones, are growing as a result of this trend. “With both local music storage and the ability to connect to any number of online music services, tablets and smartphones are actually contributing to a net increase in their owner’s use of internet radio and personal music collections,” said Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis at NPD. “As a result, we are seeing sales growth in products that compliment playback on mobile devices, particularly those that feature wireless local streaming.” Wireless streaming speaker sales more than tripled in 2012, and wireless headphones grew by 34 percent.
NPD Group’s Russ Crupnick is a featured speaker at the upcoming RAIN Summit West on Sunday April 7th at the Las Vegas Hotel. For more information and to register, click here.
SiriusXM Plays Defense With MySXM
While the connected dashboard is a concept that holds lots of promise for streaming stations, it’s no secret that it poses a point of concern for platforms that already own the dashboard real estate – like broadcast and satellite. Last year Sirius XM added 2 million net subscribers, and a lot of those came from folks who bought cars with the product already installed. That’s a big source of new audience for Sirius XM. While the streaming industry is busy declaring victory with every new car that integrates Pandora, iHeartRadio, Aha or TuneIn, Sirius is busy thinking about protecting its turf from the new dashboard.
Enter MySXM, the satellite company’s streaming option for listeners. CEO Jim Meyers positions the new streaming platform as a defensive move, pointing out that SiriusXM will have an advantage by offering both satellite and IP options in the dashboard. “Listeners also don’t need to constantly lean forward to create a tailored listening experience. They can just tune to the music channels they already like and adjust the channel’s unique slider controls and set them once for good or change them any time they want….This new feature will further enhance our IP offering, which has been greatly improved over the past year and now includes the ability to time shift up to five hours on many stations, start songs at the beginning when tuning to a music channel and the ability to play thousands of hours of talk and entertainment from over 300 shows from our library of on-demand content.
Though there is no official launch date for MySXM yet, information from the call yesterday was that the platform will be available across all platforms and devices.
Pandora’s Conrad: We’re Pioneers
Streaming news at CES 2013 last week was all about integration into cars, with big announcements from Ford and JacAPPS, Pandora and Chrysler, Livio, Tunein, and lots of others. The news about Sprint and Nextradio is big as well.
Connected cars are a reality now, and Pandora has played a large part in that evolution. Pandora’s been concentrating on getting their service integrated into connected devices for a long time, and their efforts have had a very large impact. They’ve led a coordinated effort which can take a lot of credit for the high level of interest in connected cars at this year’s CES. Sure, lots of companies are enjoying the advantage of that increased buzz, that’s how it works – pioneers lead the way, open the doors, and others follow, and hopefully flourish.
I’ve said it before and I think it bears repeating – the Internet radio industry has benefitted enormously from having a giant like Pandora in the space. They’ve generated lots of buzz and innovation that others have and will continue to benefit from in terms of listeners as well as technology. This Techcrunch interview with Pandora CTO Tom Conrad offers a nice overview of where they have come from, and how they do it.
Nielsen Will Measure Pandora
News that Nielsen will purchase Arbitron is good news for online radio services like Pandora. Nielsen, which measures many media segments, already has a strong foothold in digital and cross platform measurement, not only in the US but globally. Yesterday’s announcement that they will purchase Arbitron was quickly followed by statements that they will measure online radio services like Pandora as well.
I call this excellent news. Arbitron, which has dallied in Internet radio measurement several times in the past, recently denied Pandora a place at the table when they sought to be measured alongside broadcast radio counterparts. Pressure from those broadcasters, who spend a lot of money with Arbitron, certainly appeared to be one of the reasons that the company decided to measure streaming only as an adjunct to broadcasts. That decision enraged advertising agencies as well as online only services.
I think Nielsen’s entry into radio and digital audio measurement would be an excellent thing for the marketplace. Their multi-media measurement platform and global footprint likely mean that broadcasters won’t be able to flex their muscle to influence company decisions that are better made with a broad perspective. Nielsen is a company that understands that today’s advertisers need measurement tools that can enable accurate media placement across many platforms and technologies. Folding radio into that mix can benefit radio as advertisers are able to view it as an important part of a larger multi media landscape.
Getting Hip to Hispanics
Internet radio stations that neglect to offer programming for hispanics are missing out, since of the leading demographics in terms of mobile usage, smartphone penetration and web radio listening. One in four Hispanics reported listening to Internet radio in the last 7 days, compared to about 18% for the general population (in a US based study by The Media Audit).
One streaming service that has been catering to that market for a long time is Batanga, which launched in 1999. I spoke with the guys who started it a few times about joining the Net Radio Sales network, but they always assured me that they were doing just fine on their own. In 2005 they merged with a 
company called Planeta out of Miami Florida. They recently announced upgrades to their platform that enhance interactivity - allowing users to build digital radio stations by adding the songs and artists they love, offering similar sounding songs, and excluding the music that they don’t want to hear. Other new features include lyrics and more songs.
Meanwhile Pandora has been paying close attention to the Hispanic portion of their audience, which accounts for 20% of their overall audience, according to AdWeek. Reporting on a discussion hosted during Advertising week recently, AdWeek quotes Pandora sales vp Priscilla Valls, who said that 80% of Pandora’s Hispanic users are on mobile devices. Pandora plays 7,000 latino artists in its offerings. While Pandora does not ask for race or ethnic background in its listener profile, but does conduct a yearly survey among listeners for supplemental information for advertisers. This info enables them to target Hispanics on behalf of advertisers.
“We have a variety of marketers who advertise to that audience in Spanish, Spanglish and in English,” Priscilla Valls, a vp of ad sales for Pandora…. ”What we are finding is that brands are using their general budgets to also reach a Hispanic audience.”
With 20% of their audience speaking Spanish, Pandora is hip to hispanics…
Study: More Than One in Five Listen To Streams Daily
Triton Digital and Alan Burns and Associates recently released a new study Radio Tomorrow which focuses on listener attitudes and behavior with a focus on future prospects for the medium. It’s a dense study with a lot of interesting questions in it. For example,
25% of those asked stream music on a smartphone daily from AM/FM, Pandora and other sources, and the number climbs to almost 40% weekly. Pandora alone claims 11% daily and 15% weekly in terms of people using it, per the study.
Some of the news in the study is predictable: young people listen to radio less, want more control of their stations.
Some of it is less so – for example, the study found that 44% of listeners would be more likely to buy a phone if it had an FM chip in it. And of the nearly 20% who have internet access in their cars, many still listen to AM/FM (70%).
When asked if there is a medium that feels like a friend, 50% named RADIO. And they find radio ads more trustworthy and less annoying.
If you haven’t taken a look at this study you should. There’s meaningful takeaways for anyone programming a station, online or not…
Alan Burns and Associates Radio Tomorrow Study
