Pandora Launches Premium Music Streaming Service For USD9.99/Month; Can They Still Catch Up With Spotify, Apple Music?

Pandora on Monday debuts its new on-demand Premium Music Service for USD9.99 a month, which will allow any user to play a song or album off its archives and use the service’s and use new playlist creation features, USA Today reports. This service is a long-awaited one for Pandora users who are unable to choose a specific song to play in its music streaming platform. According to the company, it will be sending out invites about the new Pandora Premium starting Wednesday to selected users, and will offer this option to all users in the following weeks.

The move, on the other hand, appears to be one of the many strategies of company CEO Tim Westergren, who is reportedly dogged by shareholders to put up Pandora for sale, the New York Post said. Although Pandora lost a whooping USD343 million last year, Westergren maintained that the company is not for sale.

One stockholder told the news org, “Everyone still wants them to sell, but only once they show a bit of traction. Tim has done everything possible since he became CEO. He got label deals done quickly, changed [the] CFO, laid off 7 percent of the staff and realized he shouldn’t compete with Facebook and Google on ad revenue — that he should be competing with radio.”

Although Pandora is a bit late in the game, Nelson Granados for Forbes said the company needs to “offer something remarkable” in order to get the market traction they need to compete against market leaders Spotify and Apple Music, who also offers similar services for the same price. Granados said a better strategy would be converting its existing 90 million listeners into paying customers or offer a discounted price to new users. Even with better technology and interface for its platform, Granados said Pandora has a long way to go.