Slashdot Mirror
Pandora Loses 7 Million Listeners (siliconvalley.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup:
So many listeners have turned off Pandora that Friday could have been called the day the music died for the internet radio streaming pioneer. Late Thursday, Pandora said it ended its third quarter with 73.7 million active listeners, a decline of more than 7 million listeners from the 81 million it had in the same quarter a year ago. Declining listener numbers, along with weaker-than-expected advertising revenue and a disappointing fourth-quarter forecast, had investors tuning Pandora out on Friday, as the company's shares fell by almost 25 percent, to close at $5.59.
Pandora still has more listeners than Apple Music, which has 27 million paying subscribers. But the Oakland-based music streaming business trails its other major rival, Spotify, which has 140 million active listeners, including 60 million who pay a monthly fee for on-demand streaming and to avoid listening to commercials with their music.
For comparision, Pandora now has just 5.19 million paying subscribers for its two ad-free streaming music services.
Pandora still has more listeners than Apple Music, which has 27 million paying subscribers. But the Oakland-based music streaming business trails its other major rival, Spotify, which has 140 million active listeners, including 60 million who pay a monthly fee for on-demand streaming and to avoid listening to commercials with their music.
For comparision, Pandora now has just 5.19 million paying subscribers for its two ad-free streaming music services.
The ads and the nag screens got to be too much. I barely use it anymore.
I used Pandora, for a while. I quit, for the same reasons I stopped listening to the radio. Too many ads, not enough of the music I like. Between a large(ish) music collection, two flea markets, and a half dozen second-hand music stores, nothing of value was lost.
Music streaming is as profitable as it is convenient compared to piracy. Being able to listen to any song, any time and without ads helps to it. Once you start making your service shittier to the point piracy becomes enticing once more, you lose paying customers. Simple as that.
I've been finding and streaming stations since the early 2000s. Any genre you could possibly want. Streams on almost any device. Streamripper still works great.
I thought Pandora was really spectacular at making playlists. I would set some qualities and it would make some surprising picks; a country music artist that did a cover of a song I like even though I don't like country music, that sort of thing. But yeah their library didn't seem to be extensive enough and it always seemed like the playlist algorithm could be awesome if it just kept doing new obscure picks instead of same repeats.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Link me to some of those white singers fucking their sister. Pretty sure that's 0.
Meanwhile, pretty much every black rapper sings about fuckin hos and getting paid. Why do you think the black community is knee deep in crime? If they can't be a rapper or pro athlete, they have no fallback.
Here in Denmark there are mobile providers that give you Premium Spotify with your mobile subscription. Supposing the same thing happens in other countries as well, this should count for a good portion of the Spotify subscribers.
When Pandora Plus was launched, the player stopped working on my primary device. My own library is large enough that I just don't care enough to figure out how to get it working again, so I dropped it entirely. It had previously introduced me to a few artists and songs I had never heard before, which is cool, but I have little patience for updates that break stuff.
I tend to listen to the white redneck types reminiscing about that music Grandma and Grandpa used to play, or a young buck kicking the Devil's ass in a fiddle showdown, or singing auctioneer style about all the places he has been, or singing about how he loves being on the road again and making music with his friends, etc.
This space unintentionally left blank.
There's far too much rap and people don't want to support it.
I think there might even be a correlation between liking rap and not being willing to pay for services.
But the main problem is not being able to exclude rap. You have to include all the other genres, and still get plenty of rap results because they're also marked as belonging to other genders - some clueless marketing guy (sorry, I repeat myself) probably thinks this increases listening and ad exposure...
So no matter what you do, if you happen to dislike the most popular genre these days, you're going to drown it it.
they removed the seeding feature, I can't get it to not play the same 5 bands over and over, there are dozens of bands in the genre that I like, but the damn thing only plays the same 5.
That's a mixed blessing. There were also too many idiots who had no clue what genre music belonged to, or even what a genre was, and used it as a personal grouping system. So you could listen to hard rock and get heavy metal, country or even rap presented as hard rock.
It's still a partial problem, in that those who now do assign genres tend to work by an uneducated guess system and over-assignment, so some genres are full of stuff that just doesn't belong there, while other genres are almost empty.
So I paid for Pandora for years, and stopped. The final straw for me was when they decided to play in politics and "take a stand" with the "Black Lives Matter" thing. I was already unhappy with the lack of a music catalog, I couldn't listen for longer than an hour or so before songs would start to repeat. They just got passed up by everyone else, and I've been a happy Spotify subscriber ever since I left Pandora.
They jacked up the price and still have the nerve play loads of commercials that interrupt the music.
I mean, what's not to like about that?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I was a paid Pandora user for years. When they changed up their software they removed functionality which had worked well related to adding songs to a station to enhance the selection into multiple genres. Their player started crashing on my phone and their customer support was non-existent. They had no place for me to tell them what was my challenge (I've forgotten all the details by now) and so my only recourse was to cancel my subscription and switch to a different provider. Still don't like Google Music's station functionality nearly as much, but it works...
I've been a Pandora One subscriber for years. (guess that's "Plus" now) Basically just paying for no ads and a longer timeout before the player asks if I'm still listening. I love the whole discovery concept. Can't live without it. Don't really need to steam whole albums of specific playlists, I have subsonic for that. Has anyone improved on the discovery aspect? What am I missing by staying with Pandora One?
What world did all of you come from? How is having over 73 million active listeners considered "the day the music died for (Pandora)"?!??!!?
At this moment, every comment is critical of pandora in some way. WTF? How are people leaping to that conclusion from these numbers:
Spotify: 140 million active listeners (60 million paying)
Pandora: 73.7 million active listeners (5.19 million paying)
Apple: 27 million users (all paying)
Sure, Pandora took a loss of 7 million users over the past year, but if they had not lost those, they'd simply be at 80.7 million active listeners. Maybe they're not first place, but they're the only one of those three that offer a service like theirs, and they have MILLIONS of users, and MILLIONS of paying users.
These comparisons on that level are just stupid. They say nothing about whether the company can be successful or not. FWIW, I'm not arguing that they are, or have been, successful/profitable/etc, but these numbers don't spell the end in any language. They're top of their class, and in the top 3 for internet streaming music. That should still be impressive, not a death knell.
I feel like things weren't always this way, and this is an internet age thing, where people feel only one or two companies/products can be even considered, and everything else is garbage (or, on the low end, everything is garbage and just buy the cheapest shitty stuff you can get your hands on). It's depressing that 3rd place no longer counts for anything.
You don't listen to much real hiphop then. Get off the mainstream, and there's a lot of quality hiphop.
When they jumped on board the SJW crap and came out in support of Black Lives Matter, that's when I canceled my subscription and closed my account.
I just want music on my music program. Keep your politics to yourself. When you decide to alienate half of the country, don't be surprised when they decide to part ways with your product.
Moved over to Spotify. No idea how they lean politically, because they just play music.
He who laughs last is at 300 baud.
You know, that's strange, because I have several channels that I listen to on Pandora, and most of them have no rap.
A comedy channel - lots of Weird Al, vintage comedy sketches (Hope and Crosby, Marx Brothers, etc.).
Classic rock channel - no rap
Heavy metal channel - no rap
Tom Petty channel - no rap
It's almost like you either don't use Pandora or just want to complain about rap.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
"Losing one is unfortunate. Losing seven million looks like carelessness."
--
Stephen Fry. Or maybe it was Bernie Madoff?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There are other options out there free - I'm not sure if they play more, fewer, or comparable ads - and the paid service just keeps getting more and more expensive.
IIRC (it was a while ago) when we started paying for it, it was something like $20/year. Now it's what, either $6/mo or $10/mo?
That's nuts when there are tons of equally-tolerable options.
(Note: I'm not saying Pandora are evil greedy sonsabitches. I felt that they're terrifically screwed by their royalty contracts because they tried to do the right thing and compensate artists, but they're paying MULTIPLES of what radio stations have to pay, per song. I really like the company and think they're victims here, a little.)
-Styopa
I listen to Pandora on my PC at work, when I can. They switched to a cruddy flash interface a few months ago, which I suspect is part of why their numbers are down. The new interface locks up, doesn't pause correctly, and just sucks in general. The only reason I haven't switched is the effort I put into creating my stations, but that day is coming soon.
Linux did UNIX right.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
People have preferences. Not liking rap/hiphop or it's "culture" isn't racist. No more racist than feeling the same about country.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
You don't use Pandora, obviously.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I just decided to use what I'm already paying for instead of listening to advertisements. I'm using Amazon Music since I'm already a Prime member. No need to debate it with myself, it's just a simple choice.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
On July 14, 2017, Pandora emailed Australasian users to notify them that the New Zealand and Australian access to Pandora would cease on July 31, 2017.
Now Pandora is back to being an isolationist US only service, while Spotify and Apple Music have expanded their service globally. How can a company expect to survive with a strategy like this?
Pandora pretended to be music for me and all that pretend pandering, but when all was said and done it was boomers pretty much telling me how I should listen to their music.
Spotify is much closer to actually pandering to my tastes. The one thing that it does not seem to want to do is allow me to block certain artists. Who the hell wants to listen to Bieber? I certainly don't, yet the damn thing keeps putting him in my "discover" list. I want to block his tattooed ass right now. This is where Spotify also gets it wrong. By allowing backroom music deals it just makes a huge opening for me to move on in a heartbeat to any service that allows me to fully control what goes into my earballs.
Pandora isn’t available where you are yet.
Pandora is only available in the U.S. right now – but we are working on bringing our music service to other parts of the world.
a couple years, more than a few years ago, until they billed me without my consent. I dropped their shit that day and never looked back and sent them shitty email where I got a form letter effectively telling me to fuck off.
The variety of their music when you listen to something eclectic isn't great (I found out once you could open an xml in there somewhere and it would show you the next several songs that it was going to play for a given channel which made it even more predictable).
My wife, however, still uses the free ad version sometimes.
They stream low-quality to high-end systems. You can pay the subscription fee, you still get crap on a high-end receiver or prepro.
They want my money, they have to fix that. And since they were told about it years ago and haven't lifted a finger to fix the quality of the music... to heck with 'em.
The place to spend money is with a service that takes care of its customers, not ignores them. Yeah, high end systems might be a niche market, but we spend money. I guess they don't want it. I'm okay with that, too. And gee, look at what's happening to them. Huh. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Eunuchs did...
Er, no, wait. Never mind.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A Capella station - rap
You could argue a case for it, but really? Bad enough there is only ~20 songs on the station...
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
I love Pandora and prefer it to Spotify. I was a paying customer for years, even when it offered 40 hrs ad free. I loved the service so much that I paid for it anyway. I was paying about $4/mo. My wife and son were both able enjoy it as part of that. But, they switched and no longer allowed more than one user. So, that tripled my price. For the same money, I was able to get Spotify, which allowed you to play any song. Then, Pandora came out with that option and it was $10 or $12 per month, with no family plan. For 3 people, that that was twice what Spotify charged. Even though I prefer Pandora to Spotify, itâ(TM)s simply not practical. They did it to themselves. They should have either left well enough alone or came up with a competitive family plan.
like an artist and they show up no matter where you are. feel like listening to genre X?, well that artist in genre A you once liked is going to come up every third track regardless of how out of place it is.
When I listen to Internet radio I have found that the radio that are better tasting to me are the ones that have a real radio transmitter and are either simulcasting what is pumpend in the antenna and their "speciality" channels. The advertising level it's bearable, because they know that too much ads and too less music or spoken words makes people to tune out and I also suppose that overe the air ads are paid more. I am in Europe, so we have a lot of public radios, and if you like classical music you have a really good choice, especially mecause some of these radio have also an orchestra to make recordings of live shows.
I use Spotify for classical, but I'm also looking into Idagio. Idagio has a much nicer interface for classical music, since you can search by composer, conductor, etc. It links multiple movements together into a single piece, etc. However, it lacks a lot of the large labels and there is no free version.
soylentnews.org
Same, I loved the service and used it to listen to music at work all day. The day they suddenly decided we were not worthy was a sad day for me.
BBC Radio 3 is amazing in this regard. Not only the music but also a huge quantity of interesting educational material up on line.
soylentnews.org
I am a paying subscriber. I have noticed a downgrade of quality and some more annoying items. For example on one channel , an artist interrupted the music playing to discuss upcoming concert dates. That is not something I could opt out of. Other times on some channels the algorithms play songs that are way out of the preferences I have been setting up with my upvotes. It feels almost like the artist paid to be inserted into my music stream.
apt install pithos
no commercials, unlimited skips, you're welcome...
My paid Pandora subscription ended last month, and in the one day between expiration and getting around to renew the subscription, the ads and awful nagging got so bad I simply won't renew it. They have advertised their way out of having me as a customer.
It was the worst listening experience I can imagine. One or more commercials between every single song, sometimes a minute or more in length. Video ads loading and playing flashing battle scenes and shit while my phone was on my dashboard, in my car, driving, at night. Constant "With Pandora Plus..." ads, sometimes even cutting off the end of the songs.
Good job, you killed your business.
I left Pandora because they insist on using Adobe Flash. I have eliminated Flash from all my systems due to the constant security issues with it. Pandora is obsolete and does not play on any of my systems. I have moved on to other platforms that don't jepardize my systems.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.