By Tom Taylor
The following article comes from Tom Taylor’s newsletter, Taylor on Radio-Info.
Update from Pandora — Spotify and Rdio aren’t really competitors, and Pandora is looking overseas.
In fact, Pandora founder Tim Westergren avoids this question from Fox Business News’ Liz Claman – Have they already identified a CEO for China? But Westergren says they’re laying the groundwork to expand internationally, addressing issues of music licensing, etc. At one time, Pandora was available outside the U.S., but it pulled back inside American borders to focus on the core U.S. market. Tim says the car is the next frontier for Pandora, and says it’s a “hot priority.”
More from the Fox Biz talk – Pandora is now on more than 400 different devices. Westergren, a wandering ambassador for Pandora, was in San Francisco (back home, in other words) for the Web 2.0 Summit. Tim says the 2007 introduction of Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone changed the whole business, and sent Pandora down the trail of appealing to mobile users. Now – about 70% of its usage is mobile. As for services like Spotify – Westergren says they’re subscription-based, and thus don’t really compete with Pandora. He says many people use both Pandora and another service.
AOL Radio, unhooked from CBS, slashes its spot load in half.
At last month’s RAIN Summit in Chicago, AOL (NYSE:AOL) Radio General Manager Lisa Namerow revealed there would be “50% less commercials” than with CBS (NYSE:CBS), her previous partner. Now AOL is re-launched, powered by Slacker radio. And what’s the object? To pursue Pandora. In terms of features, the next-generation AOL Radio will be “competitive with other premiere music product offerings, including on-demand music, offline play on mobile, custom artist stations” and a very large library. You can bookmark or even “ban” songs. There are over 200 stations “curated” by AOL Radio music directors. There is also spoken-word news and sports content (with ESPN Radio).
Coming in November – two subscription-based offerings. Radio Plus will be commercial-free and allow “unlimited song skips, song lyrics and offline listening for mobile.” One step above that is Premium Radio, which adds “on-demand listening by song, album, artist or custom playlist.” The homepage for the new AOL Radio is here.
Tom Taylor is the Executive News Editor at Radio-Info.com.
Contact the Author: tom@in3media.com
