The music streaming space is becoming more and more crowded over time, with seemingly every company, from Google to Twitter, getting into it. So if you are a service like Pandora, how do you make yourself stand out?
By giving users something no one else can.
Pandora has unveiled a new station called Pandora Premieres, which will allow users to preview album releases in their entirety before they go on-sale, the company announced Tuesday.
The new station will feature previews from a wide variety of artists, both established and emerging and across multiple genres, the company said, and they will be available up to one week before they are scheduled to launch in the U.S.
“Pandora Premieres represents a great new discovery platform for our more than 200 million registered users and an equally powerful vehicle for artists, both established and emerging to reach new audiences. Never has so targeted a program been delivered on such a massive scale,” Tim Westergren, Pandora Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, said in a statement.
The first albums on the station are premiering Tuesday. They will be from the Classic Rock and Folk music genres, and will include “Wrote a Song For Everyone,” the ninth album from John Fogerty, and “Once I Was an Eagle,” the fourth album from English folk singer Laura Marling.
Pandora also announced that it has chosen T-Mobile as its debut sponsor for Pandora Premieres, and they the exclusive partnership will remain through the end of this year.
“Our partnership with Pandora is yet another example of how we are always looking to offer consumers something different. Together we have introduced a very unique service, a different way for consumers to experience music. By bringing this custom Pandora radio station, Pandora Premieres, to life, we are offering consumers access to pre-release materials before their U.S. on-sale dates,” Peter DeLuca , SVP of Marketing at T-Mobile, said in a statement.
Other recently Pandora news
Earlier this year Pandora hit 200 million users, 140 million of them use Pandora on a mobile device. The company also announced that, in March, it played more than 100,000 unique artists and more than 1 million unique songs, and that more than1.49 billion hours of music were streamed that month alone.
In March, Pandora CEO Joseph Kennedy announced his resignation following the release of Pandora’s better than expected Q4 2012 earnings.
The company had a narrower than expected loss of $0.04 per share, beating analysts’ expectations of $0.05 per share. Revenue also beat expectations with $125.1 million for the quarter, a 54% increase over the same quarter last year. Wall Street had pegged revenue at $122.8 million.
Total revenue for 2012 was $427.1 million, of which $255.9 million was mobile revenue.
In a statement, Kennedy did not give a specific reason for leaving, but seemed to indicate that he simply accomplished all he wanted to at the company.
“As I near the start of my tenth year at the helm of Pandora, I am incredibly proud of the team and what we have accomplished in redefining radio. As part of our Board discussions of the road that lies ahead, I reached the conclusion and advised the Board that the time is right to begin a process to identify my successor,” Kennedy said in a statement. “There is a tremendous market opportunity ahead and I look forward to continuing to work with all the great people at Pandora to keep driving the business forward.”
Kennedy had taken over the role of CEO from founder Tim Westergren in July 2004 and led the company through its highly successful IPO.
Pandora shares are currently down 0.58%, or 9 cents, to $16.29 a share.
(Image source: http://mp3.about.com)
