It’s almost 2 years since Pandora enhanced their radio streaming with on-demand music streaming and it’s paying off with 6 million users now paying to stream with them.

Pandora are one of the biggest names in online music thanks to their long running radio stations. Letting anyone come to their site for free and listen to a “radio” stream based on their choice of artists or tracks. It’s 2 years since they expanded into paid, on-demand streaming and it’s working magic for them.

Pandora have just announced that they have surpassed 6 million paying subscribers with over 70 million total active users on all of their music offerings. This data was revealed in Pandora’s 2018 Q2 earnings report which also revealed more positive news for the music streamers as their revenues show 12% rise from last year which shows them moving closer to profitability.

Pandora was last profitable as a company in 2014, 2 years before they launched their premium streaming options. Last year’s second quarter showed losses of $289.7 million for the period ending June but Pandora’s significant growth in the past year, particularly in 2018, has meant that net losses for stockholders in the same period this year was reduced to $99.5 million.

Whilst their paid services are showing significant growth and performance it’s Pandora’s ad-free services that are still making the majority of their revenues, although the gap is closing. For their Q2 ad-supported revenues made up $271.1 million whilst their revenues from paying subscribers equalled $113.7 million.

Pandora CEO Roger Lynch says that the streaming service’s paid subscribers are listening to music three times longer than their ad-supported listeners. Fortunately for them their paying users are growing greatly, gaining 351,000 in their last quarter thanks partly to the launch of their new family streaming plan which offers multiple users to listen on the same plan for just $14.99.

Lynch mentioned future plans for Pandora saying that a student plan could be in the headlights as well expanding device support for their mobile music streaming app.