While at CES (Consumer Electronic Show) a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas, Pandora founder co-founder/CEO Tim Westergren talked about the company’s future moving forward, which most notably consisted of entering the on-demand streaming world that’s dominated by Spotify & Apple Music at the moment.
“In my opinion, the other music subscription products out there are unsatisfying,” he says, referring to the on-demand streaming services the new Pandora Premium will begin competing with later in 2017. “They give you millions of songs, a search box and ‘good f—ing luck," Westgren added.
“Playing music that you’ve never heard but you love, that’s the goal for a music service,” he says. “If you can do that consistently, that’s all she wrote -- that’s a customer forever.”
In order for Pandora to enter the on-demand service however, they first needed to strike deals with the record labels, and to do that, they had to agree to slightly higher royalty rates for its radio service.
In 2016, on-demand streaming went from the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. music industry to the most dominant one, and actually saw real growth in the recorded-music business for the first time in a decade.
Time will only tell what kind of impact Pandora will make in the streaming world, but we’ll find out in a matter of months when it's rolled out. If you’re interested in reading more on this story, read Pandora's recent cover story over at Billboard.
