Pandora and Spotify duel over ad audience sizes and time spent on new Nielsen numbers
The major music services Spotify and Pandora have issued competing statements pushing their digital audience numbers under the new combined mobile/desktop Nielsen numbers.
Pandora is touting its leadership in the time spent per person at 2 hours and 36 minutes, well above its rival on 2 hours and 4 minutes, while Spotify is touting its supremacy in unique audience with 2.222m, according to the new numbers – well above Pandora on 880,000.
For the first time, Pandora also shone a light on the size of Australian free-advertiser-driven service with Pandora revealing 95% of subscribers in Australia are on the ad-supported model, putting their advertising-based audience at somewhere in the order of 836,000 people.
Rick Gleave, director – business development ANZ, acknowledged Spotify’s larger unique audience but argued that advertisers should focus on engagement, saying: “Time spent is a true measure of engagement for advertisers and we’re seeing listeners spend more time with Pandora compared with other players in the industry.”
“It is even more important when you consider that, unlike our competitors, around 95% of Pandora’s audiences are engaged via our ad-supported model.”
Spotify would not be drawn on the precise Australian breakdown of its paid subscribers versus free-ad-supported subscribers, but noted global statements which put the breakdown at 25% paid and 75% ad-funded which would put Spotify’s ad-funded audience at 1.6m Australian.
“We have a significant music streaming service lead in terms of the amount of users listening to Spotify locally. Even from the Nielsen data, Spotify’s listening minutes are double that of the nearest competitor,” said a Spotify spokesman.
Spotify also said engagement is an important metric, claiming music streaming had a better engagement than radio.
“Unlike radio, our users actively curate their listening experience. Over 45% of streams on Spotify are user initiated by a user. When we consider engagement, how active our users are within the app is just as important as minutes listened,” said the spokesman.
The radio industry has long refused to acknowledge the music streaming sector as a legitimate competitor, with Commercial Radio Australia arguing that the two are a different listening experience.
iHeart Radio, which is owned by radio operator ARN, had a unique audience of 300,000 Australians and a time spent per person of 2 hours and 3 minutes.
The Nielsen numbers are also interesting to compare with numbers put out by rival Commscore back in February, which put the unique monthly visitors for Spotify at 2.985m and Pandora at 976,000.
Commscore does not have a human mobile panel in Australia.
Nic Christensen
How do they compare with other streaming platforms like Vevo?
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Pandora is being disingenuous here, comparing apples and oranges. From what I’ve seen of Pandora’s site it is merely Internet radio dishing up what they want you to hear. A bit like those old fashioned music radio stations I haven’t listened to for many years. Spotify on the other hand allows you to pick what you want to hear from a huge record library. No wonder Spotify is so far ahead. When it comes to a decision between compulsion and choice I know what I want.
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It’s kinda natural that Pandora would have a higher ‘time spent listening’ as it’s a lean-back radio product – more listening, less choosing.
Despite that, whats surprising that Pandora has a 1m ad-listening audience that’s getting pretty close to Spotify’s (estimated) 1.6m.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Pandora finally releases their On-Demand product they have eluded to.
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With all the connection problems and other issues Spotify has been having over the last few years there is a confidence issue that they need to overcome. ie I have no confidence that paying them any money will guarantee a error free experience.
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Excluding VEVO from these numbers is a huge error … by focusing on the streaming services we are missing the big player almost entirely.
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