Report: Dissatisfation With Pandora Increasing

Dave Van Dyke

Since 2006 Bridge Ratings has been tracking the growth in use of Pandora, the company that produces customized Internet radio stations.

In 2010 Dave Van Dyke, President of Bridge ratings Media Research, published the first analysis of consumer use of the Pandora service over time and discovered that the longer the Pandora users in our study had been using the service, attrition in the number of times per day using the service and the amount of time spent during each occasion.

Bridge Ratings updated the study again in 2-13 and 2014 and you can read more about that here.

The 2016 update of this study is now rolling out to our clients. Van Dyke shared some stats in a LinkedIn Pulse posting for the weekend, The following are part of that update:

Through a self-reporting process, each year of the study our panel of over 3000 Pandora Prime users were asked how long they were using the service and if they were Highly Satisfied, Somewhat Satisfied or Not Satisfied with their Pandora listening experience.

Satisfaction Over Time

The following chart displays the results of analyzing the Satisfaction levels over time. It compares responses from January 2015 and January 2016.

In January 2015 75% of Pandora users who had been using the service for six months or less were highly satisfied with their listening experience.  In January of 2016 72% were highly satisfied.

Over time satisfaction levels decrease consistently.

The following charts reflect Pandora usage covered in the 2014 study and the 2016 study.

Over time, the number of daily listening occasions is decreasing.

This attrition of use over time is also evident in time-spent listening per session.

Across all sextiles time spent per occasion with Pandora is decreasing.

Interviews indicate the following are impacting time spent with Pandora:

• Generally, high dissatisfaction levels with the Pandora service over time.
• Pandora song repetition, lack of song and artist variety for the user's tastes.
• Increasing time spent with alternative music streaming platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music.