Pandora launches AMPcast to connect artists with fans

PRESS RELEASE:

Pandora today announced AMPcast, a powerful new tool to help artists engage and grow their audiences on Pandora. This new feature, which is available on Pandora’s Artist Marketing Platform (AMP), is a promotional tool that lets artists instantly speak to their fans on Pandora’s platform of over 80M monthly listeners. AMPcast enables artists to record spontaneous audio messages on their mobile phone and target their fans who are listening to their music on Pandora.

AMPcast messages can be recorded in a matter of a few seconds and are completely self-serve. Whether artists are on tour or in the studio, they can use AMPcast to alert fans about local concert dates, album releases, or just to share some stories from life on the road. Artists can also include a link for fans to buy an album or tickets for their upcoming tour. It’s also simple for listeners as these messages will be served up to them while they’re enjoying their favorite artist’s music.

“Lately I’ve been using AMPcast to spread the word,” said chart topping Oakland-bred rapper G-Eazy, who has over half a billion spins on Pandora. “It’s as easy as it can possibly be. Pandora is changing the game with this one.”See his story here

“AMPcast has the potential to change the odds for musicians,” said Tim Westergren, Pandora’s founder, and former touring musician. “This powerful tool, combined with the scale and reach of Pandora, gives every talented and hard-working artist a real shot to build a career in music. Marketing and promotion for artists will never be the same.”

This new tool is available starting today to a select group of artists and will launch to all artists registered on AMP within the coming months. Not signed up for AMP? Make sure to register at amp.pandora.com, so you can start using Pandora’s promotional tools.

AMPcast builds on the success of Artist Audio Messages where over 152 million messages have already been heard by listeners in just one year. The engagement on those types of messages have been eye-opening:

● Steve Aoiki, one of the world’s top DJs, created a message that invited listeners to stream his latest album “Neon Future Odyssey” on Pandora Premieres. Listeners clicked-through those messages at an astonishing rate of 17.67%.

● Hermitude, Australia’s electronic hip-hop duo, created seven geo-targeted messages about their upcoming tour and sent them to their most loyal listeners. Those messages saw click-through rates ranging from 3.17% – 8.95%.

Over the past year and a half, Pandora has invested in helping artists grow their careers, beginning with the launch of AMP in October 2014 and then with the rollout of Artist Audio Messages in February 2015. The acquisitions of Next Big Sound and Ticketfly have helped to deepen this partnership by providing even more data to artists while making it easier to connect with fans through live events.

Tofind out more and see G-Easy talking about how he uses AMPcast check out theblog