Pandora claims they really impacted “the everyday working band” in 2014. This is debateable. What isn’t debatable is the fact that investors are not happy with the company’s progress over the past year.

Pandora released fourth quarter and year-end financial results yesterday. Following this, shares plummeted from $18.39 to $15.01. As of 2 PM EST shares are at $15.31.

Revenue in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $268 million, up from $200.4 million in 2013. $220.1 million of this revenue was from advertising, and $47.9 million of the revenue was from subscriptions and other sources. Reuters reports that ad revenue was lower than expected, and growth is slowing.<!–/*
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Pandora had 81.5 million active listeners in the fourth quarter, up from 76.2 million last year. Listener hours in the fourth quarter were 5.2 billion, up from 4.5 billion last year.  Analysts reportedly expected 79 billion active listeners and 5.4 billion listener hours.

Listener hours for the year were 20 billion, up from 16.7 billion the previous year.

Pandora expects to bring in $220 – $225 million in the first quarter of 2015, which falls short of expectations.

 

Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @nine_u

Graph: Yahoo Finance

The post Pandora Releases Financial Results, Shares Plummet appeared first on Digital Music News.

Source: Industry News

Jay-Z is buying Aspiro AB, the company behind hifi streaming services WiMP and Tidal. Aspiro accepted Jay-Z’s offer because they feel it will give them enough resources to carry out their “strategic plan”.

Apparently that “strategic plan” includes world expansion. Tidal has announced that they’re expanding to 22 new countries this quarter. This will bring Tidal up to 30 countries total.

Tidal will be expanding to Austria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, South Africa, and Turkey.<!–/*
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Aspiro’s overall paying subscribers fell from 512,000 to 500,000. They say this is due to a reduced telecom partnership in Scandinavia.

The company’s music division had a 28 percent revenue growth over last year. In 2014 they made SEK 288.6 million ($35 million).

 

Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @nine_u

The post HiFi Streaming Service Tidal Is Expanding to 22 New Countries This Quarter appeared first on Digital Music News.

Source: Industry News