Pandora: iTunes Radio will be great – for Pandora

By Dana Sedgwick

I was skimming through my afternoon newsfeed and this report from CNET caught my eye… the bravado of Pandora is fairly impressive! While it’s true that iHeartRadio did little to threaten Pandora’s internet radio domain, one should remember that Apple is a horse of a different color.

Not only does Apple have a far larger global reach with iTunes Radio (over 100 countries) than does Pandora (3)… it will also be conveniently preloaded onto iPhones/iPads operating iOS7 and intrinsically embedded into what is already a familiar music listening platform, iTunes. Although frequent Pandora users may stick with it, certainly newcomers to the mobile radio game will be naturally inclined to play with something already located on their device.

Another crack in this argument is the collective grumbling from publishers and artists who have taken Pandora to task for its attempts to renegotiate licensing agreements and pay less money to performing rights organizations. iTunes Radio could find advantage in being the lesser of two evils and catch some good light while its competitor deals with the backlash.

Full article below…

Pandora says it isn’t sweating the coming of Apple’s iTunes Radio later this year. In fact, it’s looking forward to it.

“I think there are a lot of benefits” from the introduction of iTunes Radio, Chief Financial Officer Mike Herring said Wednesday at the Canaccord Genuity Growth Conference in Boston, Mass. iTunes Radio will bolster the exposure of digital radio and accelerate the move to it from traditional broadcast radio, he said.

Herring also compared the entrance of Apple’s long-awaited radio product to the introduction of another behemoth’s online music service: iHeartRadio from the country’s biggest broadcast radio network, Clear Channel. “When iHeartRadio launched a couple years ago, we had the same questions,” he said. “We’ve gone from 50 percent market share to 70 percent market share, and they’ve stayed flat. … We won’t do much different.”