Pandora CTO: Half of Americans don’t pay for music

Pandora CTO Tom Conrad unveiled an interesting tidbit that explained how half of Americans don’t pay for music. Conrad mentioned that his company plans to capitalize on this statistic by monetizing the vast majority of listeners who pay little or nothing per year for music, this was said today at GigaOm’s RoadMap conference in San Francisco.

He then broke down some interesting points, which included how Pandora planned to accomplish such a feat. According to Conrad, 40 percent of the population only pay about $15 a year, which is the cost of an album or two. With that being the case the company will target 10 percent who are willing to pay more, and stick the majority (who don’t pay for anything) with advertisements, which is a smart move most music companies should follow suit.

Now when the Pandora CTO was pressed about the threat of Spotify, he brushed it off saying “I see Spotify as largely complementary to what Pandora does. Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek says he thinks Spotify is the future of the record store, and that Pandora is the future of radio.”

Honestly, he should be worried about Spotify, especially seeing how fast the UK-based music streaming company has grown. That said, he mentioned some pleasant future improvements in regards to integrating the services to every part of the household. This is something I’m all to familiar with, because I use Pandora on my Roku 2 box now.

[via TechCrunch]