Pandora is wildly popular. Everyone knows this. And now they’ll know just how popular the Internet radio service has become, as Pandora announced Tuesday that it reached the 200 million user milestone.
That means Pandora managed to double its user base in two years, with some 140 million people listening on mobile devices. The fact that the company launched in 2005 makes its recent rapid growth even more notable.
In announcing its 200 million milestone Tuesday, Pandora revealed a few other fun facts about its listeners in the form of an infographic. Namely:
- Listeners stream more than 200 million songs before 8 a.m. in the morning.
- Last month, Pandora streamed nearly 1.5 billion hours of music.
- One in three smartphone users listens to songs on Pandora every month.
Pandora
Registered users aren’t the same thing as active users, though. Last month, Pandora announced that it had about 67 million monthly active users. It’s still at the top of the heap, but other streaming music services are nipping at its heels.
Pandora, which offers a free ad-supported version and an ad-free version for $4 a month, is no longer the only game in town. Take the increasingly popular Spotify, which had 24 million total users and 6 million paid subscribers in March, according to ReadWrite. Rdio and Slacker Radio are also competing for a share of the market, though neither have reached the popularity of Pandora or Spotify.
So how does Pandora hold on to its crown, attract even more new users, and make some money? The company will likely start by hiring a new CEO. In March, Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy announced he was leaving after nine years guiding the company from Web-based start-up to king of the music mountain. Kennedy is staying with the company until the board of directors chooses his successor.