Pandora’s users continue to drop as SiriusXM publish their Q1 2021 earnings
Image Credit: Pandora
SiriusXM’s Q1 2021 financial results show Pandora’s continued drop in monthly active users and ad-supported listener hours.
Music streaming platform Pandora, owned by satellite and online radio service SiriusXM had 55.9 million monthly active listeners by the end of the first quarter 2021. This is down from 60.9 million in Q1 2020. Pandora peaked in 2014 with 81.5 million MAUs. That’s a drop of nearly a third over the past seven years, thanks to heavy competition in music streaming from the likes of Spotify and Apple Music.
Pandora’s advertising business saw growth in 2021, with ad revenues up 29% year-on-year to $312 million, despite ad-supported listener hours dropping by 8.3% to 2.87 billion. On another positive note, Pandora saw 113,000 net new self-pay subscribers to its Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium tiers during Q1 2021. Bringing the total number of paying subscribers to 6.4 million.
“Pandora’s tremendous scale remains the cornerstone of our success in ad sales. And while Pandora engagement overall remains a challenge, we do see encouraging growth in the use of Pandora in vehicles.”
“We recognize that the losses in the listeners are not where we want to be, and we’re extremely focused on that. We have a number of initiatives in place to deliver more and better content, more relevant recommendations and improving the Pandora digital experience in the apps.”
Jennifer Witz, CEO, SiriusXM in the earnings call
As reported in their Q4 2020 earnings, Pandora left 2020 with less listeners than they entered it with.
Pandora recently updated their app with widget support for iOS and iPadOS.