Thursday was a busy day for Pandora. CEO Joe Kennedy resigned just before reporting good
results for the last quarter. The company grew healthily, but still failed to turn a profit. Pandora has 65M active users and listening hours increased 52% over last year.
Pandora accounts for 77% of online radio listening and 8% of total radio listening in the United States. Revenue grew 54%to $125 million of which an impressive $80M came from mobile.
But as this Statista chart shows, Pandora has a big problem: the rising cost of royalties and licensing fees. In Q4, content acquisition costs grew 59%, eating up 60%t of the company’s total revenue.
