Apple Music rival Pandora cuts 7% of US staff despite upturn in subscribers
One of Apple's competitors in the music space, Pandora, has announced plans to lay off 7 percent of its U.S. workers -- excluding those at Ticketfly -- despite improvements in its paid subscriber base, and plans to launch on-demand streaming.
Pandora now has over 4.3 million paid subscribers, according to TechCrunch. By the end of December the company had added over 375,000 subscribers to its paid tier, Pandora Plus, which costs $5 per month or $54.89 per year for perks like ad-free listening and more skips.
Many more people are likely listening to the service for free, as with Spotify, which has several times the number of free listeners versus Premium customers.
Pandora has faced a tough market in the past few years. While it's often credited with having some of the best algorithms in online radio, the rise of on-demand streaming -- in the form of Spotify, and more recently Apple Music -- has created serious problems, and forced it to adapt.
Sometime this quarter the company is due to launch Pandora Premium, its own on-demand service. The plan is to differentiate from rivals with more personalization, including smart playlists and a feature called AutoPlay, which will generate a radio station based on a recently-played album or playlist.
Apple Music depends largely on curated content for its stations, though people can create their own stations from songs, albums, or artists in which they use Pandora-like voting to refine track selections.
Last month, Apple announced that its subscription-based Apple Music service surpassed 20 million subscribers, just 17 months after launch. In contrast, rival Spotify took some seven years to reach that same plateau.
Apple has further pushed the service with a redesign of the Music app with iOS 10.2 last month. And it is expected to add a number of scripted television shows to Apple Music later this year -- one way to further differentiate itself from competitors like Pandora.
Pandora now has over 4.3 million paid subscribers, according to TechCrunch. By the end of December the company had added over 375,000 subscribers to its paid tier, Pandora Plus, which costs $5 per month or $54.89 per year for perks like ad-free listening and more skips.
Many more people are likely listening to the service for free, as with Spotify, which has several times the number of free listeners versus Premium customers.
Pandora has faced a tough market in the past few years. While it's often credited with having some of the best algorithms in online radio, the rise of on-demand streaming -- in the form of Spotify, and more recently Apple Music -- has created serious problems, and forced it to adapt.
Sometime this quarter the company is due to launch Pandora Premium, its own on-demand service. The plan is to differentiate from rivals with more personalization, including smart playlists and a feature called AutoPlay, which will generate a radio station based on a recently-played album or playlist.
Apple Music depends largely on curated content for its stations, though people can create their own stations from songs, albums, or artists in which they use Pandora-like voting to refine track selections.
Last month, Apple announced that its subscription-based Apple Music service surpassed 20 million subscribers, just 17 months after launch. In contrast, rival Spotify took some seven years to reach that same plateau.
Apple has further pushed the service with a redesign of the Music app with iOS 10.2 last month. And it is expected to add a number of scripted television shows to Apple Music later this year -- one way to further differentiate itself from competitors like Pandora.
Comments
Apple could acquire them and feed their users to Apple Music but Pandora seems to be for poor people.
Anyways, your clown show aside - some reality...
Spotify is the world leader with a crushing advantage in market-share. They are also rolling a profit now in case you missed it.
Their library and music curation is decades ahead of Apple. Yes, decades. While Apple can barely scrape together actual similar artists (spoon feed top 40) - Spotify provides personalized weekly and daily playlists from previously unknown artists that will blow your mind. Almost as if they can dig into your deepest psyche and determine the exact music you have spent your life looking for. (Maybe because their library is vastly larger than Apple's)
This isn't subjective. Spotify does this one thing better than anyone else and it's not up for debate.
Apple is trying to improve this aspect, but floundering. Mostly because they approach the industry from a technological added-value viewpoint rather than a human-exploration aspect.
This defines the problem with Apple's current leadership and underscores what Steve's true brilliance was - he humanized the technological experience.
(Technologically beautiful but useless laptops anyone?) Apple has become more about the tech than the user experience.
Technology will not drive the music industry. People will.
Point being, Apple will be out of the streaming business long before Spotify is.
While Apple is restricted to their own technological platform - Spotify has no limitations.
The day Spotify releases an IPO - that's the day Apple becomes a footnote in the market.
Spotify is going to be just fine.
If they do release an IPO it will be huge and I imagine half the people here will invest in a heartbeat.
I've used them all, and for now, I still us Google Play Music as the stations are great and the human curated Songza stations for every mood and situation are fantastic. Plus, it's only $7.99 for me still and includes YouTube Red, so no ads for any YouTube videos I watch.
I haven't invested too much time in Pandora, so I can't speak to exactly how well they curate music. I know that when I stumbled across the web version last year and I generated a playlist, it was the usual suspects. Slightly better than Apple, but nothing overly exciting - all major label stuff.
I prefer smaller labels, so i've been super happy with Spotify.
Been having a blast with Tidal's MQA lately thou.
Haven't touched Google Play or songza.
Since you have to go into the app to see the buttons, then I don't see how that can be considered anything of the sort. If they had a separate Apple Music App that showed up on every screen, then you might have a point.
This is the most desperate and self-delusional post I've read in years.
Spotify provides personalized weekly and daily playlists from previously unknown artists that will blow your mind.
Uh-huh.
Almost as if they can dig into your deepest psyche and determine the exact music you have spent your life looking for
Really?
This isn't subjective. Spotify does this one thing better than anyone else and it's not up for debate.
Yeah, when someone says it's "not up for debate", that usually means "I pulled this 'fact' out of my butt, so I can't debate."
Seriously fella, you make Sog look sane.
2) You're claiming that be stripping the Music app of utility it once had that "I have no point" but if the were to have created a separate Apple Music app specifically for Apple Music the way he Beats app works and left the Music app alone I would then "have a point" even though what I'm stating would not exist as a problem since the app they created for local music a decade ago is now difficult access without triggering links to join Apple Music.
Not a single reasonable person on the planet could actually think this. It makes zero sense. Apple Music doesn't even need to make a profit- they can break even or take a slight loss. It's a value added bullet point to Apple's ecosystem, and a valuable one at that. There's no way in hell Apple is going to leave the streaming music business, and anyone who has a clue about how these things financially work would know that there is an infinitely higher likelihood of Spotify folding or being bought out, due to economics, razor thin margins, and lack of leverage using any OS. It's not that complicated. Apple has the capacity to throw infinite resources at Apple Music, Spotify does not, and it can very easily fold no matter what kind of userbase it has. The rest of your post is sensational, troll-level drivel. I use both Apple Music and Spotify. The difference is nowhere near what you describe, at all.
I dont one know what you're talking about, but I get no top 40 music in AM. I have eclectic and alternative tastes and that's exactly what the weekly playlist gives me. That combined with the More Like This and our discovery needs are met in this household. Surely we're not an anomaly.
Sounds like you took a page out Jimmy Iovine's playbook -- human curated collections in AM.
Useless laptops? More fantasy for another day.