Pandora Taking Over Your In-Car Music Listening Experience

[xcel]

Ford, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Buick and Lincoln are but a few already onboard.

Wayne Gerdes - CleanMPG - Oct. 26, 2011

Pandora is quite literally the elephant in the room and it is just now gaining traction.

The latest makes and models installing Pandora as a standard feature include three luxury models from both Lincoln and Buick. The MKZ, MKZ Hybrid and the Navigator include it now while Verano, Regal and LaCrosse will have it later this year.

Lincoln makes Pandora available via the SYNC system, using the AppLink feature, which is compatible with Android, BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones. Signature functions of SYNC AppLink include voice control over the Pandora smartphone app allowing drivers to change stations or give a song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down with simple voice commands. In addition, drivers can control Pandora through dashboard and steering wheel-mounted controls.

Pandora will be integrated in Buick IntelliLink, the marques in-car infotainment system that uses Bluetooth or USB to connect the driver's smartphone to a new 7- or 8-inch, high-resolution, full-color touch screen display radio. The system offers three methods by which drivers can access and navigate their personalized Pandora stations, including controls on the touch screen display radio, buttons on the steering wheel, and voice commands.

How Big is Pandora?

Pandora is “Hot”! Webcast Metrics, an online listener tracking company uses a proprietary platform to track audience data and convert it to audience metrics that can be easily understood by stations, publishers and advertisers is revealing some explosive numbers that advertisers are quickly comprehending.

First however are some definitions:

• "Average Active Sessions" (AAS) is defined as Total Listening Hours (TLH) divided by hours in the reported time period.
  
  
• "Session Starts" (SS) is defined as “the number of different requests for streams (i.e., stream requests) with a duration of at least one minute in total within the reported time period.”
  
  
• "Total Listening Hours" (TLH) is defined as the total number of hours that the station/publisher has streamed during sessions with duration of at least one minute in total within the reported time period.
  
  
• "Average Time Spent Listening" (ATSL) is defined as “the average number of hours for each session with a duration of at least one minute in total within the reported time period. Calculated as total time spent listening divided by active sessions.”

The following is September Rankings with Pandora's "Average Active Sessions" and "Sessions Starts" growth particularly notable with new records for Pandora. Sessions Starts in particular grew from 316 million to 343 million in just one month!

Online Listening Rank

The numbers are simply astounding as I type this up listening to my own Nickelback Radio Station on Pandora through my PC.

[msirach]

This is a welcome addition! Proprietary indash navi units will go extinct hopefully.

[WriConsult]

And when the car is 5 years old and Pandora is no longer the hot music app, then what? Or if Pandora needs to change the interface specs with their app, which by that time will be considered ancient? At least this allows you to use your own smartphone rather than having everything built into the car, but still ...

Plus the idea of using a cellular connection to provide music in the car kind of irks me.
- Carriers are tightening, rather than loosening, their limits and fees on the use of cellular data. No WAY are you going to use this even a little and stay within the 200MB monthly limit for standard AT&T connections, for example. Streaming music in the car is going to explode your data usage.
- It's only going to work where you have a cellular signal. No big deal for you Easterners, but out here we have mountains, vast areas with light population and thus large gaps in coverage. Check out Verizon's vaunted coverage map and you'll see. Might work in town (oh, except for you New Yorkers where AT&T has serious coverage problems) but on roadtrips away from I-5 it may not work for long stretches. At least satellite radio works everywhere except deep canyons and particularly dense tree cover, and usually only cuts out intermittently in those areas.