Pandora Aus launching Warehouse event, on-demand service next month?

Music streaming and internet radio company Pandora this morning announced it will stage its inaugural Pandora Warehouse event in a secret location in Sydney on October 8. Open exclusively to 1,000 registered listeners, the line-up and ticket details will be unveiled on August 29.

Pandora holds 80 live events in the United States each year. These include Summer Crush in Los Angeles (this year with Fergie and 5 Seconds of Summer), the Pandora Discovery Den at SXSW in Austin, Texas, and Pandora Holiday in New York City.

In the meantime, a report in the Wall Street Journal suggests that Pandora could be launching an on-demand music streaming as early as next month. There’ll be a free tier as well as two new monthly subscription options.

One of these, at US$10 a month, will give users unlimited access to any song on the platform. A tweak of its current $5-a-month Pandora One, an ad-free version of its internet radio, will offer offline listening and perks as skipping more songs.

Pandora is also said to be close to signing deals with major record companies that will allow it to stream in the US and new overseas markets. One deal could be finalised by this week.

But the Wall Street Journal says that record labels, who’ve been putting the pressure on free tiers offered by digital companies, have put up a resistance to Pandora’s freemium tier. They want a say on which songs are offered for free.

Pandora only operated in markets where it gets automatic licensing as an internet radio company: the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Its users so far can select artists and “stations” but not specific songs.

Pandora’s move to on-demand listening is a big step for the company. Its user baser has stagnated at 80 million free users and 4 million subscribers. So it has managed to keep operating costs down by avoiding on-demand services. But streaming user figures have exploded: they grew 66% to 68 million subscribers worldwide at the end of 2015, according to the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI).

Last year Pandora acquired Ticketfly, and introduced a concert recommendations feature this month, which tells users which acts they listen to are playing in their cities. It’s this year also expanded its podcasting offers as Serial and This American Life, and increased its marketing by $3.6 million for the first four months of 2016.

Pandora clearly feels the pressure to keep with streaming services, whose users are expecting more from these. Its two biggest rivals are rapidly growing, Spotify now with 100 million monthly listeners and 30 million paid subscribers, and Apple Music with 15 million in 14 months and expanding with artist exclusives.

However, Pandora still has some pluses. It is seen as a place to discover new music. It has 16 years’ worth of data on listening habits and trends, which it can pitch to brands for advertising. The company is now providing a clearer picture of where it’s heading. But it still has issues looking at the future: its quarterly financial report in July showed that revenue was growing but its losses were growing to $55 million year-over-year.