By Justin Berka | Published: October 07, 2008 - 09:17AM CT
The Pandora personalized radio streaming service was already a popular destination before Apple's App Store launched over the summer, but the launch of the Pandora iPhone application has apparently caused the site to really take off. Founder Tim Westergren spoke about the iPhone's effect on Pandora and a variety of other topics during his keynote at the Digital Music Forum West conference and, according to paidContent, revealed that the device has caused a substantial increase in the amount of new Pandora users.
Sure, Pandora may still be stuck between a rock and a hard place if it can't reach a webcasting royalty agreement and gets stuck with a large bill for streaming radio to so many listeners, but the fact that the service is growing rapidly is a good sign for the company. In the case of the iPhone, the Pandora application's availability on the App Store has doubled the amount of new users that Pandora is getting every day, from 20,000 up to 40,000. In terms of the total number of iPhone users, Silicon Alley Insider says that there are just shy of 1.5 million iPhone owners using Pandora, representing a bit less than ten percent of the total number of listeners.
Westergren also spoke a bit about iTunes, saying that he listens to music via iTunes more than he listens to Pandora. He used this to illustrate his point that people won't switch to Pandora and completely stop buying music, since many people don't want to have to fool with Pandora playlists and the like just to listen to some tunes. In fact, the iTunes Store may even benefit from things like the iPhone Pandora client, since the software exposes people to new music that they may later buy from Apple, so it seems to be a mutually beneficial relationship for the two companies.
