Pandora pilots Artist Audio Messaging feature

Tweets from musicians and celebrities to fans could be a thing of the past. Music streaming service Pandora is piloting a new feature overseas called Artist Audio Messaging.

Now stars can send personalised messages about upcoming music releases and tour dates, crowd-funding campaigns and comments about new songs to its 80 million global monthly users.

Pandora founder Tim Westergren predicts the resultant closer communication will lead to increased ways that music fans can financially support acts and become their patrons. "It's the beginning of a much longer roadmap," he said.

Among a small group of artists initially selected to try out the scheme is Lenny Kravitz. Last week he sent fans a message introducing a new song.

This more personal communication between artist and fan is a step forward from the Pandora AMP analytics tool that Pandora introduced last October for its 125,000 artists (12,000 of which each have 100,000 unique listeners). It allowed them to discover where their fans on Pandora come from, which songs they respond most to, how many were hardcore and how many were passive, and how long people spend checking out their offerings.

Spotify, Apple and YouTube offered music analytics before Pandora. But Pandora’s point of difference was that it had nine years of data of listener habits, and that it used the same standard measurements as the free-to-air billion-dollar radio industry.

Last week, Westergren revealed Pandora had made a slight profit in its third quarter of 2014. Total revenue for that period was $239.6 million, representing a year-over-year growth of 42%, and with mobile revenue growing by 52% to $188 million. Advertising revenue had grown 118% to $41.8 million. But most of the money made went to licensing fees, Westergren claimed.