What Pandora Contrarians Don’t Understand

There are many who doubt Pandora’s ability to become a profitable entity like this article that appeared in Inside Radio on 6/9/11.  While it is true that music royalty costs will increase the larger Pandora’s audience grows, what is not understood is Pandora’s ability to generate revenue even given its existing audience.  Pandora had an AAS in the March 2011 Webcast Metrics 2011 Top 20 Ranker (Monday- Sunday 6 AM- Midnight) of 498,135.  Assuming Pandora ran 13 units per hour like terrestrial radio would result in gross revenue of $567,276,4138 (assuming a $10.00 CPM) compared to that reported for the 12 months ending January 31, 2001 of $119,333,000.  While I have assumed the same audience for 24 hours of the day and a $10.00 CPM what I have not taken into account is Pandora’s ability to generate revenue from video preroll advertising and display (both of which it is currently doing).  I would also argue that with Pandora’s ability to target ads CPM’s will be higher than the $10.00 I have assumed.  Consequently just from in-stream advertising the potential revenue is almost 5X that of what Pandora has recently reported.  Assuming a 20% sales cost would result in income  from operations of $334,000,000 rather than the slight loss actually incurred.  Pandora’s business model is not a suicide pact but one that is waiting to blossom and bear the fruit from many years of labor understanding what it’s customers/listeners want.
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