Pandora announced Thursday it will no longer enforce mobile listening cap as of Sept. 1. At the same time, the company revealed two new cost-saving measures, a sleep timer and a limit of song skips within a 24-hour period.
The cap was Pandora Media Stock Slides 13 Percent
Pandora has also debuted a “sleep timer” in version 4.5 of its mobile app automatically shuts off music after a predetermined period of time. Introduced Thursday in a blog post, the sleep timer is touted as a consumer-friendly feature and one of Pandora’s “top-requested new product features from listeners.” But the cost-saving usefulness is obvious.
CFO Mike Herring credited “the continued strong growth in our advertising revenue” with Pandora’s decision to drop the cap and implement the other measures. Pandora’s mobile advertising RPM, or revenue per thousand listener hours, jumped to $33.90 in the second quarter from $23.23 in the first quarter and $23.51 in the fourth quarter.