Pandora Way Ahead Of Terrestrial Radio’s Streaming Efforts
— Pandora has a nearly 4-to-1 lead over CBS Radio in terms of unique streams, according to metrics quoted by AdAge. The personalized Internet radio service has over half a million people listening at any given time. Here’s the relevant section from the article:
“On a monthly basis, Pandora has seen unique streams grow from 251,000 in November 2009 to more than 585,000 in November 2010, the most recent month measured by online radio metrics firm Ando Media. That’s enough to give Pandora a major edge over terrestrial competitors like CBS Radio, which reached a monthly average of 165,833 listeners during November 2010, and Clear Channel’s streaming network, which reached 125,498 average monthly listeners during the time period.”
Ando Media tracks Internet streaming of broadcasters like CBS Radio and Clear Channel. It does not track their terrestrial broadcast listeners.
Pandora just announced it reached 75 million registered users near the end of 2010. Given the unique streams figure from Ando Media and the self-reported registered user figure, we can arrive at a figure that represents the percentage of registered users who are listening at any given time: 0.8%. Since Pandora was under 75 million users in November, I used a conservative number (70 million) for the registered users in the equation.
That number requires some clarification. “Unique streams” is another term for “average active sessions.” In Ando Media parlance this refers to a webcaster’s number of listeners during any given 15-minute period of time. So, more than 1% of registered users are listening on any given day. But at any given time during the day, about 1% of users are listening.
( Torrent Freak)
Amazon Acquires Lovefilm Movie Streaming Company
— Amazon has acquired European movie streaming company Lovefilm. The company paid an estimated £200 million ($US 317 million) for the 58% of the company it did not already own. Lovefilm has 1.6 million subscribers, has a business model like that of Netflix (mailed CDs, streamed video) and operates in the U.K., Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Amazon, which already streams movies, has acquired Lovefilm to improve its DVD business. Netflix is expected to launch an international service later this year.