Pandora Stock Surges 25% After User Data-Based Marketing Push

An anonymous reader writes: Pandora's stock had its best day ever on Wall Street, rising more than 25% after reporting their subscription and other revenue had surged 61.3 percent to $104.7 million. Previous users have apparently been lured back with targeted marketing touting a new service that lets users briefly play their favorite songs on demand if they'll watch a short ad. "Pandora said it ended the quarter with 5.63 million subscribers to its Pandora Plus and Pandora Platinum paid services, which was 19 percent higher than the same period a year ago," reports one Silicon Valley newspaper. March saw more former users returning than in the same month a year ago -- for the first time in 18 months.

And an important factor was switching from brand-based marketing to data-based marketing -- that is, "using the information that Pandora has on users' listening preferences." Pandora's Chief Executive brags to MarketWatch that "We really have world-class data-science capabilities. We just never used them in our own marketing."
Engadget reports: Revenue for the quarter rose to $319.2 million, up 12 percent over the first quarter of 2017... But Pandora is still losing money. The company posted a net loss of $131.7 million, a slight improvement on the $132.3 million loss in Q1 2017. Overall engagement is down year-over-year, with active listeners dropping 4 percent to 72.3 million. Listener hours dipped from 5.21 billion to 4.96 billion.

Do they still...

[Type44Q]

Do they still prevent listening to specific songs??

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[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is Slashdot, home of "we don't read the articles", but it is literally right in the summary: "lets users briefly play their favorite songs on demand if they'll watch a short ad."

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[TheRealMindChild]

No. Simply search for a song in the search box (stupidly labeled "Create Station") and you can play it

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[Anonymous Coward]

my experience is that you search for a song, it may or may not play it, the staiton you create plays great similar songs and genres for a few hours, then the "pandora Drift" takes place. by the third or fourth hour of listening, 1970s soft rock has become jimmy buffet style country/party music, late 1970s funk, or 1960s doowop. Pandora drift ensures no station plays what you want or expect for very long.

Favorite songs?

[b0s0z0ku]

I can play my favorite songs on demand WITHOUT ads. Why? Cos I have them stored locally on my device. Imagine that, Pandy-Pandora.

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[b0s0z0ku]

Mine work without data access! HAH!

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[Hognoxious]

Mine work without electricity.

25% nice but not enough

[Nkwe]

I purchased some Pandora stock about two years ago when it appeared to be at a low and had good prospects. Yesterday's 25% increase now only has me down 24%... This is not a complaint as this sort of investment is a high risk gamble; rather it's an observation that while a 25% increase in a stock price sounds exciting, it has to be taken in context. After yesterday's pop it's about $7 a share. In 2014 it was nearly $40 a share.

Can't use Pandora anymore

[Kargan]

I primarily listened to Pandora on a web-enabled Bluray player, up until they re-did their site. Now the built-in Pandora app won't connect.

Oh well. Their loss, I have a ton of music to listen to that doesn't require Internet at all.

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[skids]

That's pretty funny... I stopped listening and didn't renew my payed subscription for the exact opposite reason... they were spending all their time developing apps for everything under the sun, and no time improving their supposed core product, which had stopped finding much new-to-me music I liked no matter how much feedback I put in or how many times I started fresh.

Re: Losing money and trading at only $6.89

[oic0]

The deal with Tesla is it COULD make money. They don't have any trouble selling cars, theyre just investing heavily in growth. To investors that looks like prime time to get in.

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[LynnwoodRooster]

No, Tesla loses money PRIOR to capital expenses. COGS and operations puts them at a net loss; R&D and capital expenses/facilities comes after that.

Tiny revenue. No profit

[DogDude]

Who in their right mind would buy this stock? You've got to be an idiot to invest in this company.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? I mean literally, other than stock salesmen, who cares?

When I need to buy stock, I go down to the stock store and buy something they have in stock that fits my budget.

I don't care if it's user-data powered, pump-and-dump powered, or fairy dust powered. A stock is a stock is a stock.

Still waiting for Cortana Integration

[nadass]

I use Windows and I use the Harman-Kardon Invoke (the one with Cortana integration) the Pandora skill has been "Coming Soon" since last summer... I would be using it all the time if the skill was available already. PANDORA: Release the skills and suddenly your usage metrics will increase (or don't and hope that I actually renew my subscription despite using the service less and less every single day).

I like Pandora

[93 Escort Wagon]

For the types of music I listen to most - jazz, big band, swing - they’ve been great. Their predictive algorithm matches my tastes better than either Spotify or Apple Music.

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[Hognoxious]

More like old bastard music. Don't ask him about that time he went to Shelbyville.

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[93 Escort Wagon]

More like old bastard music. Don't ask him about that time he went to Shelbyville.

Thanks for asking!

So there was this one time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.

Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style

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[Hognoxious]

I hope, for the sake of your sanity and mine, that you copy-pasted that and didn't do it from memory.

[aside] Not that he can even remember what he had for breakfast.

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[93 Escort Wagon]

Haha no, I don’t even remember seeing it. But I saw “Shelbyville” and figured it was a Simpsons reference. And, since it was about old people, I figured it had to be Grandpa. The rest was DuckDuckGo.

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[AmazingRuss]

Youtube red has a pretty good algorithm too. Unfortunately the don't have a hard line between official and uploaded stuff, so you get crappy audio sometimes.

Pandora? WTF?

[Hognoxious]

WTF is it, apart from an Italian sponge cake?

Meh

[thejynxed]

I gave up on them after they never really played anything I liked, even in the genres I do like. My wife still listens to it when she's taking a shower or eating lunch at work. For my needs Spotify, Google Play Music, etc have all been a better option when on the go and at home I have a massive NAS-stored digital file (.FLAC of course) + cd + vinyl collection.

Speaking of genres, that is another thing they need to spend more time fixing the accuracy of. Every now and then even my wife comments about how poor