Pandora’s Jane Huxley discusses its stance on local competitors

Pandora Australia has a strong stance on its position in the local market when compared to its competitors.

Speaking to TMN, Jane Huxley, Pandora’s Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, acknowledged Australia’s crowdedstreaming market(we have 36 services on offer) but said its personalised algorithm and easy-to-use interface sets it apart from other internet radio services like iTunes Radio and Nokia MixRadio.

“I agree that we are in a highly competitive space and that will continue for quite some time. It is our relentless focus on the listener and the innovation of our product that is at the heart of my confidence in Pandora. Ten years ago, Pandora the product we know now, came to be, and with that experience and the founders' vision to create a way for all musicians, large and small to reach an audience, is now the largest streaming radio platform in the world.

“The understanding of how unique every listener is and their delight at having music personalised for them is why Pandora has been so successful. That and the fact it is so easy to use – to start you just put an artist or a song in and the interactive platform based on the genius of the music genome project takes over."

Just this week Pandora announced it is piloting a new feature overseas called Artist Audio Messaging to give musicians, labels and managers access to speak directly to Pandora’s 80 million global monthly users. Locally, the service has been adding 20,000 new users each week in Australia for the last six months; the increase to its more than 2.5 million local users works out to be a new registered user every 30 seconds in Australia and New Zealand.

There’s no question that Pandora dominates the streaming radio market; it kicked off the craze in the US in 2000 and has since been aped by all the major players including Rdio and Spotify, which feature their own version of the service. However, Huxley told TMN the local market has room for its players to delve deeper into the algorithm.

“Radio is evolving – and this evolution is being propelled by ‘always on’consumers,” Huxley told TMN. “They now expect technology will deliver the music they want, when and how they want it. The streaming radio space is only just starting its journey in Australia and there is room for different offerings tailored to different segments of the market to survive, basically because the streaming space is at the beginning of what we believe will be a steep growth curve.”

Like its competitors, within the last twelve months Pandora has entered in-car, TV and gaming integration. In July last year it was announced that 135 car models from 26 auto makers would be feature Pandora built in. Its partnership with Ford Australia placed its app in60% of all new cars in Australia. On the TV and gaming front Amazon’s in-house streaming video device, called Fire TV, comes pre-loaded with the Pandora app and Pandora also has ties with Microsoft’s Xbox One in the US.

“On the whole though most people listen to music while living their life – they could be exercising, commuting, working or entertaining, whatever they are doing we are designing Pandora to be a seamless extension of their life,” Huxley told TMN.

Streaming services’ technical specifications have been widely debated for over a decade andPandora’s subscription model usually gets a name-check during these debates. While its concentration is on its free, ad-supported model, it only provides access to 1.2 milliontracks in the Genome(iTunes Radio has around 27 million). However, iTunes Radio can’t be listened to offline and its paid tier Pandora One costs around half the price of services like Spotify and Rdio.

“Music is often one of the victims of a busy life, by making it freeand so easily accessible, we do believe we are making people’s lives more enjoyable," said Huxley, "and in that way we hope to achieve our vision of unlocking the infinite power of music for artists, writers, listeners and advertisers in Australia.”