@rrhoover Totally agree with your thought on paying users having settled on their music-streaming service of choice. I used to be a huge fan of Pandora as I liked being able to select a few artists/songs and have it build a relatable station that was constantly feeding me new music. However, when that novelty sort of wore off I became a paying user of Spotify and never looked back. It'll be interesting to see if this is enough to convert paying Spotify, Apple, etc. users over to Pandora.

@rrhoover @johnpaul @adammarx13 Unless they can somehow include a way to import playlists from other products (Spotify, 8Tracks). Music I think is too personal for people to keep on switching. And Spotify is cheap, and partnered with telcos for easy billing (at least here, in the Philippines) It would be interesting to see what else they're going to do after this to go after paying Spotify users.

@rrhoover @johnpaul Writing a larger piece on this (and other streaming services) right now, but here's my takeaway this moment: it won't change the landscape much at all. Here's why: 1) Pandora's on-demand offering is coming fairly late in the game; even Soundcloud beat them there (as a contingency for their label licensing deals over the last 18 months). This is especially important, considering the fact that Pandora is uniquely different than Soundcloud because of its material offering: whereas Soundcloud lived in the independent world for a while (before trying (and arguably failing) to move into major label content), Pandora has arguably always subsisted on major label content, merely distributed in a different fashion. You listen to the same Katy Perry or AC/DC songs as you would on other major label-focus services, but your engagement is through a radio dynamic. That's what made Pandora unique among the big services. Radio creates serendipity, and as much as people love curation, the drive towards "the ultimate recommended playlist" is actually what has made cracking discovery so hard for these services; they've moved away from serendipity, something so important to the delight-factor in music. 2) Unlike the other music services, Pandora's royalty rates are not negotiated per deal; they are set by an independent government organization called the Copyright Royalty Board. The pro here: they're not subject to the same types of royalty-label whims as Spotify or Soundcloud. The con here: because they are assessed based on a terrestrial radio format, they similarly have no wiggle room to negotiate better terms; they're stuck where they are. This is doubly confusing now that they have an on-demand feature. Will that part of the business be subject to the same type of terrestrial radio royalty rules, or will it be something different? The waters get muddier and harder to maneuver. 3) Pandora REALLY needs a win, which is made all the more stressful by their existence as a public company. Frankly, their numbers since they IPO'd in 2011 have been ok, but not bombastic, and since a spike in 2014, have posted pretty consistent losses. And that's on top of running around spending over half a billion dollars in 2015 (~$75M for the remnants of Rdio, and ~$450M for TickeyFly), which they now need to put to work. I broke down the numbers here when writing on Spotify's potential IPO last summer: https://medium.com/@adammarx13/s... 4) Add to all that the reality staring every major music service with major label licensing fees in the face: the rising revenue opportunities are now not coming from major label artists, but unsigned/independent ones. So while the major music services will of course continue to offer major label material, that demographic isn't even the highest earning one anymore. In effect, while music services scramble to continuously renegotiate major label terms for their life-blood (the major label material), the music landscape as a whole will move (is moving) towards a more independently focused paradigm, where, ironically, those major licensing expenditures might not be necessary. So, something to consider there. And, as Ryan and many others are pointing out, none of this even takes into account the people-factor, wherein people will likely settle on one service for their mainstream needs. Thus, for the major label content, users will likely choose between Apple, Spotify, or Pandora (maybe Soundcloud) for their premium dose of mainstream, major label material without subscribing to multiple. The way forward, then, is not in proving more of the same, but more of the different, i.e. new, independent music which is ever-expanding and flexible to distribute.

@rrhoover I agree with you that built-in integrations work great but i would go a step further and partner with other ride sharing companies likes Lyft/uber, partner with smart tvs and wearable to create more user exposure. Pandora has lost a lot of market share and they have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to converting the spotify users back to pandora. Pandora= Myspace generation Spotify= Snapchat generation for now i will enjoy my free version of spotify because i have already memorized the ads *shrugs*

@adammarx13 @rrhoover @johnpaul Spotify will win the streaming war - no questions, no prisoners, hands down. Apple Music has the money but with all of the major labels owning a piece of Spotify that is the sure bet here. Not to mention their users surpass every other streaming platform currently in rotation. Pandora is largely limited not only by the listening experience but also the geographic regions it operates in. YouTube still surpasses any of these in terms of people actually listening to music on a platform. And they pay the worst! Classifying any listening services by the type of user they have is irrelevant. It has more to do with the style rather than the service and their distribution model. Pandora skews older because it's passive and has more of the radio model of listening. On Spotify a user actively curates themselves with songs and involves more of a discover experience through playlists they are are subscribed to or what their friends are listening to and sharing. Spotify does make music a more social experience which is how we can probably attribute a younger audience to Spotify and not Pandora. Pandora is more of a radio experience which could be why they skew older since listening services and iTunes came around later than when the average Pandora listener came to consume music. When the labels get revenue from Spotify's eventual IPO, they will not only be payed out on the mechanical and publishing side of things but for their IP in these platforms. That is where the real problem lies in streaming. Across all of these services there's no standard way of paying out a mechanical royalty for artists and differs based on the type of license each platform has agreed to with the content owners. While a mechanical royalty is technically for a sale of music, with their being a set mechanical royalty for an iTunes sale (9.13 cents) there should be a streaming mechanical royalty paid out and agreed upon by the industry. However that is determined (1000 streams = 1 song purchase) that is what will change the music industry and make it more reliable in terms of revenue. We're basically training an entire new generation of music listeners from the ownership model to an access model which is indicative of where we are heading with streaming finally surpassing physical global music revenue as the most important revenue stream in music. It will be interesting to see what Pandora's conversion rate is with free to paid users but wouldn't be surprised to find out they are bought up in the next 3 months by a larger listening platform. Ahem, SiriusXM.

@tyckr I hope they come back to Brazil too. But I think it's gonna take some time. They won't even have the web and desktop apps on launch :(

@wordofchristian According to The Verge, the service will roll out this Wednesday. So just two more days :)