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Internet radio company Pandora has launched its new on-demand streaming service, Pandora Premium. Like Spotify, Apple Music, and Rdio before it, the new service will let you pick and choose from millions of songs, however you'd like, for $10 a month.
Considering how popular the on-demand model has become in recent years, common wisdom would suggest that Pandora is entering the game too late. But as this chart from Statista shows, Pandora does have one advantage: It's still very well-known. According to a recent survey of 2,000 people by Edison Research, Pandora is the most listened-to audio streaming service in the US, and by a good margin at that.
That doesn't erase the red flags, however. That margin is shrinking, and though Pandora has amassed roughly 80 million subscribers with its free, radio-centric service over the years, Spotify now has a 50 million subscriber head start in the on-demand market. Pandora's status as the original audio streaming service gives it as good a shot as anyone, but given that Spotify still can't turn a profit, it's not clear if Pandora Premium will be a big moneymaker even if it is a hit.
Statista