MUMBAI: Users of online radio Pandora can stream unlimited hours of music for free from 1 September. Pandora listeners at present can use the service for just 40 hours each month.
Pandora credited the development to the rapid progress of its mobile advertising. According to eMarketer, Pandora is now the third largest generator of mobile ad revenue, behind only Google and Facebook.
In a statement issued on 22 August Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren said, “We’re pleased to once again maximize free listening for everyone on The more than 70 million listeners that tune in every month will now have more time to hear the music they love, and thousands of working artists will reach more fans.”
Pandora is available through more than 1,000 consumer electronic devices and will be installed in approximately one-third of all new cars sold in the United States in 2013.
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The limit on free mobile listening was introduced in March 2013 to manage rapidly increasing royalty costs. While in place, this affected fewer than four per cent of total monthly active listeners. The company continues to utilise multiple additional levers to carefully and effectively manage its content cost.
The company put a cap on how much of music free users could listen to was instituted in February in an effort to curb the royalty costs.
However, it caused a 12 per cent drop in listener hours. The cap did bring Pandora’s royalty fees to 52 percent in the second quarter, down from 59.8 per cent the year before, report said.
Pandora has also put a new limit on the number of songs free users can skip; previously, free users could make six skips per station per hour, but now they are limited to 12 skips in a rolling 24-hour period.
The company has also introduced a ‘sleep timer’ that shut Pandora off for mobile users after a predetermined period of time.
