Industry News

Pandora cuts workforce to save cash

Pandora, which lost $250m in its sale of Ticketfly last year, has downsized its workforce in a bid to save $45m (£31.8m/€36.2m) annually.

The struggling digital music business has got rid of five per cent of its total staff as it moves to focus on ad-tech, product, content, partnerships and marketing.

Pandora said that it expects operating expenses, excluding subscription commissions, to represent a lower percentage of revenue in full-year 2018 than in 2017.

Pandora still runs its Artist Marketing Program (AMP), in which allows artists to collect data on their audience to assist the decision-making process when looking at where to advertise or tour.

“Pandora is the largest music streaming service in the US. People spend more time on Pandora than any other digital platform in the country, and as our dynamic industry evolves, we must also evolve,” said Roger Lynch, chief executive of Pandora, according to Music Business World.

“As I shared last quarter, we know where and how to invest in order to grow. We have an aggressive plan in place that includes strategic investments in our priorities: ad-tech, product, content, partnerships and marketing.

“I am confident these changes will enable us to drive revenue and listener growth.”

In the first nine months of 2017, Pandora posted a cumulative net loss of $473.6m, while its global official active listener base at the end of September 2017 declined to 73.7m – its lowest point for over three years.

Pandora

Last summer, the platform passed more than a billion impressions. Pandora launched the platform in 2014 and it has since been used by more than 11,000 artists who have produced 14,000 artist audio messages, which are direct messages to fans, that have been “heard by Pandora listeners a billion times”.

The milestone was reached soon after Pandora launched its Promote Show feature that uses the programme to endorse live appearances, as well as Promote Single that attaches a message to a featured track.

Image: w:Pandora