I used to work for Pandora, so I'll express a preference up front, but I always bought into founder Tim Westergren's position that the platform had huge potential for undiscovered bands.
The Rocket Stars EP went live on Pandora on January 5th, and the first two weeks' data from the Pandora Artist Management Platform (AMP) seems to prove this potential. While many complain that streaming music revenue is tiny – the performance royalty on this many 'spins' will be around $40 – this misses the point; the power of having close to 36,000 listeners exposed to The Rocket Stars' music, and this data being available for review, is immense.
The website saw a spike in traffic the day after the songs went live, and if only a fraction of these spins and clicks convert to sales, this still provides the lowest cost-to-exposure ratio available (there is no fee for submission to Pandora, you simply need a free Pandora account and a link to songs available through iTunes or Bandcamp).
Meanwhile the additional data, including location of listeners, age and gender breakdowns, is an invaluable marketing aid. While the first 14 days' info shows the expected spread of major cities, a few months from now there should be more nuance, and as a result planning a US tour just got way simpler.
So, while we'd love to see the Stations Added number increase (hint: US readers can add a station here), Pandora's claim of a level playing field for the musicians' middle class is an exciting reality.
