By: Andrew Tropeano
Pandora may be one of the originals to find success in the music streaming arena but services like Spotify and Apple Music with their on-demand streaming service pretty much redefined the business of music distribution.
Now Pandora, never to be one left in the dust, has struck a deal with Sony Music and Universal Music Group to bring their music to a soon-to-be-launched on-demand service. Once they have Warner Music Group nailed down, rounding out the big three record companies, they’ll be in a pretty good position to make the service successful.
Pandora has traditionally been a personalized-radio platform where you can create different stations according to your taste in music. For instance, you can create a “Notorious B.I.G.” station and it will play that artist and other similar artists.
So far it seems that model has been successful as per Pandora CEO, Tim Westergren, they have about 80 million users a month engaging with the platform.
Now what’s exciting about Pandora’s new on-demand streaming service is that the subscription is supposedly going to cost as little as $5 per month as reported by the New York Times. Compared to the $10 plus that Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, etc. charge, this is a big deal.
Westergren expanded on Pandora’s mission in the world of streaming music to CNBC, “What these deals that we’ve struck allow us to do is essentially substantially expand that product to be able to address sort of every consumer need. If you want lean back, we’ll have that. If you want lean forward, be more engaged, have more interactivity all the way up to a completely on-demand service.”
As a user of Pandora, Apple Music and Spotify, I’m particularly excited about an expanded Pandora. I’m not completely thrilled with Apple Music or Spotify’s UI and have a few gripes with what appears to be major glitches. With the expansion of Pandora into on-demand territory I have another option to look into for my streaming needs.
What are your thoughts on Pandora launching an on-demand music streaming service? Can it catch Spotify and Apple Music? Let us know in the comments!
