Music Business

Pandora “The Company Most Likely To Collapse In 2014”, Says Top Analyst

pandoraPandora has been named "The Company Most Likely To Collapse In 2014" by The Street analyst Rocco Pendola. In addition to increased online competition and high royalty obligations, traditional broadcasters are finally waking up and getting innovative. By contrast, he sees Pandora as standing still. "It's acting a lot like traditional radio acted when Pandora was busy disrupting it," says Pendola.

Yesterday, Wall Street appeared to agree, sending Pandora stock down 8.9%. 

Pandora stock had already taken a beating over the last 10 days after releasing slower than expected growth predictions. Yesterday, Pandora released new audience metrics for the month of April 2014, and while they showed significant growth, investors bid the stock price down again.

What's the bottom for Pandora?  

Pendola thinks its a sale, perhaps to Apple. "Sooner or later somebody's going to come for Pandora," he writes. "So why not Apple?"

New Pandora Audience Metrics For April

  • Listener hours during the month of April 2014 were 1.70 billion, an increase of 30% from 1.31 billion during the same period last year.
  • Share of total U.S. radio listening for Pandora in April 2014 was 9.28%, an increase from 7.33% at the same time last year.
  • Active listeners were 76.0 million at the end of April 2014, an increase of 8% from 70.1 million during the same time period last year.

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1 Comment

  1. Pandora is a natural candidate to become at least $5 billion dollar store. Pandora for own sake and for new life of the industry should lobby in new fair use doctrine. It would lock the music in virtual walls and convert Shazam and all other music and lyrics ID services to cash registers of the industry. There is well over billion users of ID services and they can sale instead prostitute the goods.
    Pandora is brilliant in lobby games – let’s go back to music as a merchandise.

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