Can Pandora Find a Business Model That Works?



By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

Royalty payouts and the burden they impose have always been a strongly debated issue when it comes to Pandora. The company has pursued numerous routes to lower the cost of music streaming from listening caps to government lobbying — some of which have been more successful than others. In this interview panel on Pandora, four influential executives in the music and tech industry weigh in on whether they think Pandora can find a sustainable, profitable business model.

Pandora Must Look Beyond Discovery In Order To Grow

Max Engel | Director of Product at the web publisher SpinMedia, formerly BuzzMedia.
Pandora’s fundamental problem is that it is a victim of its own success. This is the endemic problem of the space: that success is expensive. For Pandora to find a sustainable path to sustaining profitability for the foreseeable future, they’ll need to innovate and diversify their revenue stream.
Pandora already has worked to bolster its ad platform to create a display ad network that can bridge the desktop and mobile. The company could potentially take its ad platform and possibly take it off-network so other music sites could benefit from their deep customer insights and targeting. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, Pandora could also explore offering services to labels and musicians that create other means of monetizing their users and data. Project Daisy has alluded to offering tools like this, and given the company’s ties to Topspin, it seems like a logical opportunity. Pandora could go down a similar route an make a smart acquisition or two to quickly bolster its offerings.

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