According to Billboard, the music label BMI is filing a lawsuit against Pandora. Yesterday we wrote about how Pandora bought a terrestrial radio station in South Dakota as a way to lower the royalty rates that they have to pay to music labels. Clearly this did not sit well with BMI.
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Pandora has acquired an FM station in Rapid City, South Dakota called KXMZ-FM, according to The Hill. Why would an online radio streaming service acquire a brick-and-mortar FM radio station? Content. Pandora believes that The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is unfairly treating Pandora in terms of royalty rates.
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Internet radio company Pandora is launching a new service that offers previews for upcoming album launches entirely, up to about a week before they go on sale. Pandora Premieres is a “first-of-its kind station” and it is sponsored by T-Mobile. Starting today, you will be able to hear new albums from a wide range of artists. The first two artists that are featured on Pandora Premieres are Laura Marling and John Fogerty.
Pandora Media Inc (NYSE:P) has reported that they have hit 70.1 million “active listeners” as of the end of April. This is a 35% increase from the previous year. The company also reported that total listener hours increased 34% from 1.06 billion last April to 1.31 billion in April 2013. The share of total U.S. radio listening for Pandora in April 2013 was 7.33%, which is an increase of 5.95% at the same time last year.
Online radio service Pandora announced today that they have hit 200 million users. It took Pandora around 6 years to hit 100 million registered users, which happened in July 2011. In under 2 more years, Pandora hit another 100 million users. Of the 200 million users, 70 million use Pandora on a monthly basis. Pandora’s largest rival, Spotify, has 24 million active users and 6 million paid subscribers.
Pandora has announced this week that CEO Joe Kennedy will be stepping down. Kennedy has been the head of Pandora for the last 10 years. He will stay on board until a successor is found. Kennedy joined Pandora in 2004, around 4 years after the company was founded by Tim Westergren. Kennedy previously worked with companies like E-Loan and Saturn before Pandora.
Pandora, the popular music streaming service, will no longer have unlimited free streaming music services available through their mobile app. This is because royalty rates have increased for streaming music. The royalty rates are expected to increase 16% over the next few years.
Internet radio company Pandora has announced their numbers for 2012. Over 13 billion hours of music were streamed in 2012 across 1 million songs and 100,000 artists. Pandora users created 1.6 billion stations and over 10,00 artists hit around 250,000 unique listeners.
