Pandora is adding 20K new users a week in Australia

Internet radio giant Pandora has been adding 20,000 new users each week in Australia for the last six months.

A representative from Pandora Australia and New Zealand told TMN the increase adds to its more than 2.5 million local users and works out to be a new registered user every 30 seconds in AU/NZ.

Growth in Australia’s crowdedstreaming market has been left to a select few; Pandora, Rdio, Spotify and Deezer are the major players among the territory’s 36 services on offer.In fact, because of this oversaturation we’re the only market other than the US to feature all of streaming's global major players.

Since Pandora launched in Australia and New Zealand in 2012 with its on-demand and streaming radio algorithm based on users’ preferences, its ad-funded structure has given it room to be patient as the market plays catch up to its US parent –in the US the active number is 80 million per month.

Pandora’s Australian and New Zealand CEO Jane Huxley told Sydney Morning Herald: "It's nice being a start-up here in Australia in the big warm hug of a listed US company that's doing really well. We are incredibly well funded here in terms of looking at the longer term of what we want to achieve.”

While local market heavy-hitters Spotify and Rdio both offer radio-based features on their services, Pandora will experience stronger competition from YouTube’s incoming streaming service Music Key, and from Apple’s iTunes Radio, which, to Pandora's benefit, can’t be listened to offline.

Meantime, Pandora announced it is piloting a new feature overseas called Artist Audio Messaging. The service gives musicians, labels and managers access to speak directly to Pandora’s 80 million global monthly users.