Pandora Bets On Podcasts To Increase Listening

Pandora is looking to add more non-music programming to its streaming service, said Chief Operating Officer Sarah Clements during Pandora’s Q2 earnings call Thursday.

Variety reports the company could use podcasts and other non-music content to retain and regain audiences, and further grow listening hours without the expenses that come with music licensing.

Pandora has already been experimenting a bit with non-music content in recent months. The company began to stream “This American Life” and “Serial” in November, and has since streamed a total of 20 million episodes of the two shows combined, according to Clemens.

“Half of Pandora users are already consuming non‐music content weekly on alternate platforms,” she said.

Pandora views this as incremental listening, since people tune into non-music programming during different hours of the day than into music stations. What she didn’t say is that podcasts are often a lot cheaper for streaming services, since they don’t require royalty payments to music rights holders — something that has been eating up a good chunk of Pandora’s revenue.

Listening hours grew to a total of 5.66 billion for the quarter, growing 7 percent year-over-year, but monthly active listeners declined slightly to 78.1 million, down from 79.4 million.