Pandora Unveils The One Day Pass

Pandora Media last week hosted the first analyst day since its IPO. During the event, the company detailed its plans to capture share of the potential $150 billion digital and radio advertising market. Pandora highlighted its goals to drive listenership and improve monetization.

Pandora has confirmed plans to launch a new 1-day pass that’ll provide users with 24 hours of ad-free listening for around $0.99. Unveiled to investors, the option is expected to be available “later this year.”

Paying for Pandora by the day seems like an expensive way to enjoy the service, but, according to technobuffalo.com,  if you don’t listen all that often — or you don’t mind listening to ads most of the time – it could work out to be cheaper than a $4.99 monthly subscription.  It’s also ideal for those who just want to ditch the ads for a limited time in the event of a party or other social gathering.

“Pandora is committed to delivering an effortless, personalized experience and we recognize some consumers may want an ad-free experience but don’t necessarily want to commit to a subscription,” Pandora explained to GigaOM.

“This offering will allow consumers to choose and explore what is right for them or suits a particular event or experience. Pricing and exact timing are yet to be determined but we expect it to be available later this year.”

In addition to removing ads, a Pandora subscription provides users with 192 kbps playback on the web — which is higher than the 64 kbps bit rate you get for free  – and more skips per day.

This and other strategic moves outlined by Pandora are getting upbeat reviews by analysts, according to investors.com,  amid a report that Apple will launch its music-streaming service based on Beats technology in June.

Apple will debut the streaming music service at its World Wide Developer Conference in June, says a TechCrunch report.

Pandora also faces stiff competition from Spotify, which has recently forged deals with car rental service Uber and Sony, for its PlayStation gaming console.

"The company stated that it may explore an on demand product, directly competing with the likes of Spotify," said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital, in a research report. "As of now this is merely a possibility, but could make Pandora an interesting one-stop shop for users' acoustic demands."

"Most investors who were hoping to get an update on progress of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) process, which will determine what Pandora would pay for about 90% of its content, will be slightly disappointed," Mahaney said. "We admit that any update at this time was a remote possibility, and we believe there will not be any material answers until the end of the year."

A CRB ruling is expected in December. In the meantime, Pandora stock has fallen by more than half in the past 12 months.