Pandora Turns 10 Today, Celebrates With Costly Ad Free Listening

Pandora turns 10 years old today. That is an eternity in streaming music and they're celebrating with a day of ad free listening that will cost the company more than $1 million in royalties and more than that in lost ad revenue.

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Pandora turns 10 today September 9th and will celebrate by going ad free for 24 hours.

They're calling it Listener Love Day – a full day of music with no ads from 12:00am ET, Wednesday, September 9 thru 12:00am ET, Thursday, September 10.

Pandora also announced a 1 day $.99 ad free pass today.

Analysis

Ten years in, Pandora is still losing money and fighting on every front to lower the royalties is pays. That's despite its dominance of the online radio space – almost 80 million listeners tune in each month, logging more than 74 billion listening hours, creating over 8 billion stations and sharing more than 55 billion thumbs over the last decade.

In recent months, Pandora has stepped up efforts to serve artists with analytics, including the purchase of music data provider Next Big Sound, and direct to fan messaging. If you can get past the royalty battles, its important to remember that 200,000 artists are playing to the largest audience in streaming music; and thanks to how Pandora delivers music, fans are discovering new artists on a daily basis.