Pandora Media is a SiriusXM-owned US-based streaming music company.
The company is headquartered in Los Angeles.
Pandora was founded in 2000 by Jon Kraft, Will Glaser and Tim Westergren and was originally called Savage Beast Technologies.
The company is led by SiriusXM Chief Executive Officer Jennifer Witz.
Acquisition by SiriusXM
In September 2018 Sirius XM Holdings announced its acquisition of the streaming company in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.5 billion.
The combination brought together SiriusXM’s then-base of over 36 million subscribers across North America and 23 million+ annual trial listeners, and Pandora’s 70 million monthly active users.
Now, as a subsidiary of SiriusXM Holdings, Pandora claims to provide its listeners with “a uniquely-personalized music and podcast listening experience with its proprietary Music Genome Project and Podcast Genome Project technology”.
Advertising technology
Pandora claims to be the ‘leading digital audio advertising platform’ in the US, after having acquired digital audio ad tech platform AdsWizz in 2018 in a $145m deal.
Then-Pandora CEO Roger Lynch, who exited the company after its buyout by SiriusXM, said at the time that “Audio is the fastest growing format in digital advertising and the marketplace is rapidly evolving”.
Through its own Pandora service, its AdsWizz platform, and third party services, such as SoundCloud, the company claims to connect brands to the ‘largest ad-supported streaming audio marketplace in the country’.
Pandora is available through its mobile app, the web, and integrations with more than 2,000 connected products.
The streaming platform launched an in-house digital consultancy called Studio Resonate in 2019 to provide advertisers with audio creative development, sonic branding and strategy services, as well as visual design, rich media production, web / mobile experiences, and live activations.
Original content strategy
In March 2019, Pandora’s then-new owner SiruisXM signalled its intention to invest in original audio content to compete with rivals like Spotify.
SirusXM pledged a ‘major commitment to delivering world-class content’ for Pandora users with the development of a dedicated Content Team.
The news followed the SiriusXM-owned streaming company’s launch in February 2019 of a new podcast/playlist hybrid feature that allows artists to create music playlists with vocal commentary in-between tracks.
Continuing with the original content ramp up, by April 2019 SiriusXM had unveiled a significant podcasting venture on Pandora with some of its biggest talk show stars including Jenny McCarthy, Ricky Gervais, Kevin Hart and others.
Pandora and parent company SiriusXM announced in July of that year that they had inked a new creative partnership with Drake in an extensive deal that included a dedicated station, curated music, and ‘collaborations with creative talent’.
Subscriber numbers
As of September 30 2020, Pandora was reported to have had 58.58m Monthly Active Users as of September 30, 2020 a 7% decline year-over-year, according to parent SiriusXM’s Q3 2020 operating and financial results (for the three months to end of October).Music Business Worldwide