Pandora Premium “coming soon” to Australia

Pandora’s full-fledged ad-free Premium service will be “coming soon” to Australia and New Zealand, according to the company’s US headquarters.

After soft launching last month to invite-only existing subscribers, Pandora Premium earlier this week opened up to all to all US music consumers on Android and iOS.

Launched in 2000, Pandora’s digital radio service is available in the US, Australia and NZ. It claims 81 million listeners, as of last month, and 250 million registered users. 91% of them access the service via mobile phones.

But while its digital radio offering was in the vanguard of audio streaming, Pandora’s early users were not impressed by the fact they had no control over the playlist, and couldn’t skip tracks as much as they wanted to.

Newer rivals Spotify and, later, Apple Music were more in tune with what customers wanted, and Pandora lost many customers to them.

Now through Premium, Pandora is playing catch-up in a crowded field.

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Despite its large listener numbers, its other service Pandora Plus only has 4.8 million subscribers. In comparison, Spotify has 50 million paying members and expects to double that by the end of the year, and Apple Music hit 20 million last December.

But after a reboot, which included the return of its founder and a brand new image, Pandora has a major sense of its points of difference.

The major one is that it has gathered a huge amount of customer preference data through the Music Genome Project from its online radio service. One single song choice can instantly create an entire playlist. Entire albums are suggested.

At the same time, Pandora is also catering for the mass market consumer that wants to stream without too many distractions.

It’s edited out all the “karaoke tracks, knock-off covers and pet sounds” that bog down other services.

There’ll be no content windowing or exclusives, and it clearly sees no need for a “Discover Weekly” type feature.

Aside from offering a range of free or discounted trials for up to six months, Pandora has launched a major campaign across digital ads, billboards, hand-printed murals, influencer programs, and social media integrations, which includes Snapchat lenses and filters and custom Twitter emoji.

The US campaign uses 18 artists. They include Gorillaz, Keith Urban, Questlove, 2 Chainz, Big Sean, Miranda Lambert, Bishop Briggs, Kelsea Ballerini, Maggie Rogers, Pitbull and Ziggy Marley.

Each artist’s face is linked to the huge “P” logo introduced last year, The P includes the covers of albums that inspired these artists. The tag “Sounds Like You” reinforces how unique the musicians and the listeners are, and drills in how important it is to celebrate that everyone has their own tastes.

The campaign also encourages listeners to check out mixtapes featuring the 18.

Pandora’s largest age group is aged 35-44, while the second largest is the 18–24 demo. 52% of users are female.

The average US Pandora user spends 25 minutes a day on the app.

After making $1.385 billion last year, Pandora’s projected revenue for 2017 is between $1.55 billion to $1.70 billion.