Pandora, the Internet radio station, announced it has reached 100 million listeners.According to a news release on Pandora’s blog, 36 million of those consumers are “monthly active users.” It also said that in the past six months, Pandora has upped its market share of radio listening from 2.3% to 3.6%.
Pandora will celebrate this milestone with a flashy — and Flash-free — redesign. Tech-news site Mashable reports it will be available to those 100 million users during the next few weeks, with subscribers to Pandora One — a premium, paid service with no ads and higher-quality audio — getting access first.
Pandora went public in June as part of a deluge of tech IPOs. Critics say its business model may never be profitable, and having more listeners (most of whom don’t subscribe to the paid service) doesn’t necessarily fix the problem.
Since Pandora has to pay more in royalties as more people listen to music, subscription and advertising revenues need to offset this increasing cost. So far they have not.
In its registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission when it went public, Pandora acknowledged this catch-22 of music distribution, saying, “If we cannot successfully earn revenue at a rate that exceeds the operational costs associated with increased listener hours, we may not be able to achieve or sustain profitability.”