Pandora didn’t have the best year in its history in 2015.
First, the good news: Last year was the first calendar 12 months in which the company’s revenues grew beyond a billion dollars.
Total annual sales hit $1.164bn, up 26.4% year-on-year.
And then, the bad: net annual losses were multiplied five times on the prior year, sinking to $169.66m, compared to a loss of $30.41m in 2014.
One abnormal hole in Pandora’s 2015 finances was the effect of the $90m the company agreed to pay the major labels and ABKCO for use of pre-1972 recordings on its service.
The first and second installments of this money – $60 million and $7.5 million respectively – were paid in October and December 2015.
The remaining amount will be paid in three equal installments of $7.5 million from April, 2016 through October, 2016.
Pandora’s total revenues in 2015 were assisted by $10.17m income from Ticketfly, which it bought for $480m last year. Revenues began to trickle in from the new subsidiary in Q4.
Annual revenue from ad-funded streaming grew 27.4% to $933.3m, but income from subscriptions to Pandora One only grew 17% to $220.6m.
Interesting to note that for Spotify‘s last annual fiscal results for 2014, the story was the other way round: the Swedish company pulled in €98.8m in subscriptions and €982.9m in subscriptions – with the latter taking 90.1% of its total income.
Active listeners on Pandora fell again, which could freak some investors on the New York Stock Exchange today.
The monthly active listener figure stood at 81.1m in Q4 2015, a rise on Q3 but down on the 81.5m recorded a year before.
Total listener hours grew 3% to 5.37 billion for the fourth quarter of 2015, compared to 5.20 billion for the same period of the prior year.
Total listener hours grew 5% to 21.11 billion for the full year 2015, compared to 20.03 billion for the same period of the prior year.
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