McAndrews: Research Shows Pandora 'Clear Market Leader'

Pandora began measuring market share on its own, because no third-party measurement firm could provide accurate market share numbers across web and connected devices, according to CEO Brian McAndrews.

He told analysts on Thursday's earnings call that their estimates, which include third party data show ots share of total U.S. radio listening increased from 7.04% a year ago to 8.9%. "We are pleased to say that now several third-party measurement sources are available. Specifically, Triton, comScore and Edison published estimates at Pandora’s audience," stated McAndrews.

"Edison Research’s inaugural share of the year report estimated Pandora’s overall radio market share at 9.2% of total broadcast satellite and Internet radio listening, slightly above our own estimates. The most recent comScore multiplatform top 100 properties report has Pandora at 81.8 million monthly unique; and finally Triton Digital top 20 U.S. ranker has Pandora at an all-time high market share for U.S. Internet radio at 77.6% of the top 20 properties."

McAndrew acknowledges that all of these pieces of research have slightly different methodologies and objectives, but he said "they all lead back to the central theme, that Pandora is the clear market leader in Internet radio and a growing force in radio overall."

"As our market share and hours streamed have grown, our focus on monetizing listening hours has continued to drive strong results and as a result RPMs are on the rise despite much higher volumes of hours to monetize."