Pandora’s CEO says Apple Music hasn’t, and probably won’t, show a meaningful impact on his company’s streaming music service.
Brian McAndrews remarked that due to Apple Music launching on June 30, there’s been “no impact yet,”according to Business Insider. The company lost $16.1 million overall during the June quarter, but revenue was $285.6 million, beating forecasts. Advertising grew 30 percent year-over-year.
“Going forward, we feel really good about our trajectory and competitive position,” McAndrews said. “With any big launch like this and the noise in the marketplace, there could be some users that experiment with it and there could be some short term impact… But we don’t believe that there will be any long-term impact.”
Pandora does have the advantage of having been around long enough to attract some 79.4 million listeners, and the service is available for smart TVs, set-top boxes, video game consoles, and even automobiles, in addition to the usual mobile devices and computers.
While most of Apple Music’s services are of the on-demand variety, Pandora is strictly radio, although users can customize stations based on artists, and songs, and vote on their favorite tracks as they play.
Everyone will be keeping an eye on Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio station to see if it has any meaningful impact on services such as Pandora.
