When Apple first announced its iTunes Radio service, many believed that it would be a “Pandora-killer.” Admittedly, I even predicted that Pandora Radio would take a huge blow from Apple’s latest music endeavor. However, it looks like the exact opposite has happened: Pandora listeners have actually increased.
Pandora’s own CFO, Mike Herring, even called the iTunes radio service a “credible threat” to his product. Today, he was pleased to announce that Pandora has actually seen a 9% increase in listening since the launch of iTunes Radio.
Of course, much of its recent jump may be credited to the fact that Pandora dropped its time limited listening restrictions right before iTunes Radio launched. The lifting of the restrictions allowed users to enjoy even more music on the service per month.
It’s also important to note that Pandora is a cross-platform service, whereas iTunes radio is only available on iOS and OSX devices. This gives Pandora a much larger overall reach, especially considering the chunk of market share that the Android platform currently holds. Being cross-platform also gives users with multiple devices less of a headache, enabling them to easily keep their music synced across all of their handsets.
The music streaming business has become extremely competitive with major players like Spotify and Rdio also now offering free radio streaming. So we can definitely assume that the folks over at Pandora are surely thrilled with the recent jump in listeners.
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