FollowPandora has been the best internet radio service since several years. However, after the arrival of iTunes Radio, the stocks of Pandora have fallen by ten percent. The reason behind it is that the Cupertino company has managed to attract over 11 million unique internet radio listeners.
According to the recent stats, Pandora has got around 72 million active listeners. However, it came down to $24.26 at the end of the day at New York. On the other side, the shares of Apple have doubled than the previous year.
Apple is all set to challenge Pandora through its iTunes Radio that was introduced for the first time through the new iOS7. The iOS7 was released on Sept 18 and since then more than 200 million devices which includes iPad, iPhones, and iPod Touch have been updated with the new operating system upgrade. Also, Apple has managed to sell nine billion new iPhone handsets over the weekend.
According to one analyst, whenever Apple releases a new product, it completely takes control over the market. Bothe Pandora and iTunes Radio can make profit through ads that are delivered to the listeners. As of now Pandora still has control over the user base but iTunes Radio seems to be a very tough competitor.
Pandora plans to give good competition to other radio stations by investing around $15 billion in local advertising. To achieve it, the company has launched sales offices in nearly thirty cities of US. The company is so serious about its advertising move that they have hired veteran digital advertising personality, Brian McAndrews as the CEO.
It is predicted that Apple will be adding 294 million iTunes Radio users by the end of the year. It has taken thirteen years for Pandora to build 72 million active listeners. However, Apple iTunes Radio continue to add on new listeners even if quarter number of iOS7 year listen to streaming media service, it will be able to pick more listeners than what Pandora has built in thirteen years. If you add desktop listeners to the count, the number will surpass Pandora’s count in no time.
Apple’s iTunes Radio offers similar features that can be found on leading internet radio stations like Pandora and Rido. iTunes Radio can be customized in such a way that you will be able to create your own personalized radio station by choosing a song, artist or genre.
Like the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down feature on Pandora, you can also use a similar feature on iTunes Radio called ‘Play more like this’ and ‘Never play this song’ selection and you can also add any song that you listen to iTunes wishlist. It gives you access to vast music library.
To make sure the internet radio service from Apple plays songs according to your preference, it offers a feature that lets you to personalize stations to the core. It make sure songs played are according to your choices, it offers ‘Tune this station’ feature that comes with a slider that allows you to select from Hits, Variety and Discovery.
iTunes Radio has got some new features and has the backing of Apple which can easily let it overtake Pandora. Still, it is too early to predict that it is better service than Pandora. Apple is definitely going to introduce new features soon. The internet radio station war is getting fiercer. Let us wait little more to know how much user base iTunes Radio will be able to build.
