Monthly Archives: September 2011

Pandora Tops Terrestrial Radio

I had no idea Pandora was this popular…

RAIN 7/28: Pandora beats all terrestrial stations among A18-34 in top five markets

A lot of it is radio-ratings-speak, but it is interesting that in NYC, Chicago and L.A., Pandora beat all of the top terrestrial stations in those markets.  I believe that the proliferation of smartphones and home streaming devices (such as the Squeezebox) helped make it more popular as well, as you need an internet connection to use Pandora.

The Infinite Dial also mentions their Tuesday report from Edison Research and Arbitron showing that 10% of respondents nationally had listened to Pandora in the previous week.  They make a good point here:

While Pandora’s personalization and the ability to skip songs leads some people to think of it as “the other,” it’s actually the culmination of what many radio programmers have been trying to do for the last 35 years, since listener music research took hold on a large scale: progressively eliminate more and more of the “bad songs.” It’s just that Pandora users have the advantage of deciding for themselves what the “bad songs” are, even if their own tastes aren’t all that different from what 100 respondents typically decide.

Putting programming control into the hands of listeners seems to be the key to their success.