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| Jim Cady |
“We’ve been able to monetize users with free accounts
without placing limits on how many hours you can listen to radio content before
getting capped,” said Cady in an interview with VentureBeat. He’s referring to
the new restrictions Pandora implemented in late February, which limits users
with free accounts to a 40-hour-a-month listening cap because the company’s
copyright licensing costs are too high to maintain. It’s a curious move, as
anyone who uses Pandora often enough to reach the listening cap is obviously a
dedicated user, and normally, you’d want to keep such people happy so they
wouldn’t venture to other competitors.
“There’s been record growth since February, and we’ve
definitely seen an uptick in users around March,” Cady told Tom Cheredar at
VentureBeat. “At a certain point, you just have to put two and two together and
realize that Pandora users are leaving [for Slacker].”
Slacker provides free, ad-supported custom smart radio
stations composed of over 13 million songs and talk radio programming. The
company also offers two tiers of premium subscription services, which gives
users ad-free listening, unlimited song skipping, access to ESPN and ABC News
radio, and more for $4 or $10 per month. So basically, it’s a slightly altered
streaming music service than Pandora.
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