Can IPhone music sales save Pandora?
I don’t think so. Techcrunch has a recent article about Pandora’s IPhone app rapidly increasing total song downloads. Supposedly, Pandora is selling around 1 million downloads per month. But here’s the problem: Pandora only gets 5% of the total sales revenue (basically just $0.05 per song). So that’s $50,000 per month, or $600,000 per year. This is clearly not enough to sustain a business like Pandora over the long run, even if these numbers do grow.
A better solution is to simply charge for the IPhone app. Sell it for five or ten dollars, and get some money upfront. Many other music streaming sites are suffering. If Pandora starts running out of cash as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave this model a try.
Pandora also recently raised $35 MM to help tide them through tough times. They are definitely positioned for growth now.
Archive for the ‘music streaming’ Category
Can IPhone Music Sales Save Pandora?
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009Seeqpod Saved?
Saturday, June 13th, 2009Seeqpod, a digital music streaming site, was recently sued by the major labels and forced to shutdown operations. Its too bad, because Seeqpod really did have a pretty great user interface, and was quite popular with the younger crowd.
But Techcrunch recently reported that Seeqpod may be resuscitated. There are some rumors that the company’s assets may be sold to Microsoft. Microsoft’s deep pockets may be just what Seeqpod needs to get back on its feet.
The problem is that the digital music space is in complete chaos right now. Imeem recently had to recapitalize, and Pandora is struggling with its business model as well. I don’t really understand Microsoft’s motivation to explore this mess until the clouds clear a little bit.
Imeem Updates
Friday, May 8th, 2009Last month I wrote about music streaming site Lala, and how I thought they had a good chance of success relative to some of the other music companies out there. This week, Techcrunch released new articles with some very interesting updates on Imeem, one of Lala’s major competitors.
A few months ago, it looked like Imeem was going to shut down. Now, Techcrunch reports that Imeem has received a new cash infusion, and has also renegotiated its contracts with the music labels. Evidently Imeem will be able to survive a little bit longer.
However, Techcrunch also reports that Warner Music has declared its position in Imeem (and Lala for that matter) totally worthless. Imeem owes Warner Music around $4 million in debt, which Warner assumes it will never collect.
One thing’s for sure: Imeem’s a really tough company with a great vision. I certainly hope they make it to profitability, but its not an easy road ahead.