Pandora announces March 2013 audience metrics

Pandora is an online streaming music service that has turned out to be one of the most popular music streaming services online. Pandora has been offering up audience metrics each month to give fans an idea of how quickly the streaming music service is growing. The company has now offered up its latest audience metrics for March of 2013.

Pandora reports that listener hours for the service during March totaled 1.49 billion. That number of hours represents a very significant increase compared to March 2012 when listeners spent a total of 1.07 billion hours. That means listener hours for March of 2013 represents a 40% increase compared to the previous year.

Pandora reports that its share of total US radio listening for the month was 8.05%. Interestingly, the growth compared to March 2012 for the share of total US radio listening doesn't show the sort of growth as you might expect with such a major increase in listener hours. In March of 2012, Pandora had 5.73% of the total US radio listening audience.

Pandora also had 69.5 million active listeners at the end of March 2013. That number is 36% higher than the 51.2 million listeners for the service in March of 2012. It's worth noting that these metrics for March of 2013 offers the US radio listening market share data based on a trailing 28 day basis at the end of the month. Pandora says previous reports used a trailing seven-day basis at the end of the month. The company says that moving to the 28-day trailing basis will give a more accurate idea of the services monthly market share. However, the company did figure the comparative data for 2012 using the new formula for its March metric comparisons.

[via Pandora]