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Read more...This analysis is the latest installment from Steve Carpenter, an Internet entrepreneur, who's one of the few providers of financial insight about the high-profile yet opaque private company sector.
This week, we take a look at Pandora, the popular personalized radio station. In our interview, Steve predicts Pandora will more than double its revenue to $125 million this year, due to its popularity on the iPhone and its ability to extract more money from advertisers, thanks to its skyrocketing subscriber base. Steve estimates that Pandora will have more than 100 million registered users this year.
But while Pandora is undoubtedly the biggest personalized radio station that exists today, it could face stiff competition from Apple down the road. Yes, Pandora has three assets: 1) huge distribution 2) killer recommendation engine 3) great relationships with music labels. Apple, however, also has huge distribution and great relationships. It's just a matter of building out its recommendation engine technology that it acquired with the purchase of Lala last December.
Why Google and Pandora complement
Once Apple gets serious, it "will be challenging to stay a stand-alone" company, said Steve, in this interview, suggesting that Google would be a logical and likely acquirer. "Pandora and Google, I predict, will be very cozy over the next couple years."
Indeed, Google might find that Pandora gives it something it wants. Part of Google's vision is to bring the Internet to you, or to be able to help you discover what you don't know. Pandora does just that - for music. Pandora is an endless stream of pleasant surprises.
Steve predicts that Pandora's latest valuation is somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 million pre-money, and that its acquisition price could be impressive at a half-billion.
Watch our interview for more on that prediction. For more analysis by Steve, check out our interviews below about Zynga and Chegg.
Below is more analysis from Steve's blog - The World According to Carp - about Pandora's revenue and its risks.
Pandora Makes Money, Pennies At A Time
Pandora has three tiers of service, 40 hours/month of free ad-supported music, $.99/month for unlimited listening after 40 hours, and $36/year Pandora One, and it makes a little off of affiliate fees from track downloads- but nearly all of its revenue comes from advertising.
Based on revenue and average user numbers released by the company in 2008 and 2009, and using simple ratios, I estimate the company will average just over 70MM registered users for the year and generate close to $.15 per user per month, on average, or $1.75/year, up from $.138 and $1.66 respectively last year. To be clear, this is not to say that Pandora will average 70MM listeners over the year. This is clearly a scale business since royalties are variable with each hour listened and there is little margin for error.
Traditionally, CPM’s for Internet and radio have been the lowest compared to every other form of advertising, other than outdoor. Online, audio, and mobile (another low CPM medium) are the three advertising channels available to Pandora. While a home page takeover can garner a $20 CPM, an audio ad can be as low as $4, and a little banner on the iPhone $.50 CPM.
The company has stated that they are getting average CPM’s of between $8 and $10. ((https://vator.tv/news/show/2009-05-26-pandora-sees-revenue-up-80-this-quarter) But not all ads are created equal and early mobile advertising has been in the $1 to $2 range. Depending on where a user listens, ad type and frequency, sell-thru rates, and frequency caps, Pandora is generating different CPM’s by the hour. I assume the company will run two ads per hour with some being of “high quality” CPM’s of $10, some of “medium quality” of $7, and some of “low quality” of $4 across its inventory to get the following chart:
Based on those assumptions, I project the average Pandora listener who listens to 11.6 hours a month generates $.228 in revenue and $.0767 in gross margin. Depending on the customer lifetime value (how many months the average customer listens), this does not leave a lot of money left over to spend on marketing to acquire new users.
There are passionate Pandora customers that easily surpass the free 40 hour per month limit. Because of the chart above, you can see that if the company does not monetize its heaviest users smartly, it could literally go bankrupt from the variable royalty fees. I assume that when a listener pays the incremental $.99 she is likely go to way over. Based on my analysis, Pandora breaks-even on its royalty fees at 120 hours a month (4 hours every day).
Pandora Is Still At Risk
Despite reaching nearly 100MM by the end of 2010, the company still faces many challenges:
Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.
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Pandora, the leading internet radio service, gives people music they love
anytime, anywhere, through a wide variety of connected devices: laptop and
desktop computers, smartphones, connected BluRay players, connected TVs,
etc. Personalized stations launch instantly with the input of a single “seed” –
a favorite artist, song or genre. The Music Genome Project®, a deeply
detailed, hand-built musical taxonomy, powers the personalization or
Pandora. Using this musicological “DNA” and constant listener feedback
Pandora crafts personalized stations from the more than 800,000 songs that
have been analyzed since the project began in January 2000.
More than 75 million people throughout the United States listen to
personalized radio stations for free on Pandora through their PCs, mobile
phones and devices such as the iPad, and connected in-house devices
ranging from TVs to set-top boxes to Blu-Ray players. Mobile technology has
been a significant factor in the growth and popularity of Pandora, starting
with the introduction of the Apple app store for the iPhone in the summer of
2008. Pandora instantly became one of the most top downloaded apps and
today, according to Nielsen, is one of the top five most popular apps across
all smartphone platforms.
Pandora is free, simple and, thanks to connectivity, available everywhere
consumers are – at the office, at home, in the car and all points in between.
In 2009 the Company announced that Pandora would be incorporated into
the dashboard in Ford cars via SYNC technology; GM has already followed in
announcing plans to integrate Pandora into its vehicles and Mercedes-Benz
introduced their Media Interface Plus device that works with the
free Pandora iPhone app to provide direct control of Pandora from in-dash
stereo controls. This was all great news for the millions of Pandora listeners
who had been plugging their smartphones into car dashboards to listen to
personalized stations while driving. More than 50 percent of radio listening
happens in the car, making it a crucial arena for Pandora.
Today tens of millions of people have a deeply personal connection with
Pandora based on the delight of personalized radio listening and discovery.
These highly engaged listeners reinforce the value Pandora provides to: 1)
musicians, who have found in Pandora a level playing field on which their
music has a greater chance of being played than ever before; 2) advertisers,
who benefit from the multi-platform reach of Pandora, as well as its best
practices in targeting consumers for specific campaigns; 3) the music
industry, which has found in Pandora a highly effective distribution channel;
and 4) automobile and consumer electronics device manufacturers, who have
noted that incorporating Pandora into their product makes it more valuable
to consumers.
Pandora continues to focus on its business in the United States. The radio
arena has never been hotter, thanks to technology that enables radio to be
personalized to the individual and more accessible than ever before. Right
now millions of people listen to Pandora in the United States and we hope
someday to bring Pandora to billions of people around the world.
Timeline:
• 2000 – Tim Westergren’s Music Genome Project begins.
• 2005 – Pandora launches on the web.
• 2008 – Pandora app becomes one of the most consistently downloaded
apps in the Apple store.
• 2009 – Ford announces Pandora will be incorporated into car
dashboard. Alpine and Pioneer begin selling aftermarket radios that
connect to consumers’ iPhones and puts the control and command of
Pandora into the car dashboard.
• 2010 – Pandora is present on more than 200 connected consumer
electronics devices ranging from smartphones to TVs to set-top boxes
to Blu-ray players and is able to stream visual, audio, and interactive
advertising to computers, smartphones, iPads, and in-home connected
devices.
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