Should You Advertise on Pandora or Spotify?

“Why aren’t we advertising on Spotify instead?”

I’ve gotten that question here at Balcom more than once, usually in a meeting about a digital media buy when I’m giving the ad specs to the creative team.

“Yeah, everyone I know is switching to Spotify,” someone else might chime in.

Spotify certainly has seen a ton of growth since it launched in 2006, but when it comes to advertising with online music services, the numbers still heavily favor Pandora.

The Difference

• Pandora is like a radio station, great for discovering new music. You choose a genre or artist and it serves up related music.
• Spotify is a streaming service; it allows users to build their own playlists and listen to exactly what they want.

Pandora Still Wins the Numbers

• Pandora has twice the total users. 86 million monthly unique visitors vs. 43 million for Spotify.¹
• Pandora has three times the number of monthly mobile users. 73 million Pandora vs. 28 million Spotify.¹
• Pandora users listen longer. About four times longer, across multiple platforms.² That includes mobile millennial users, who listen about 2.5 times longer on Pandora than on Spotify.¹
• Ads reach 96 percent of Pandora’s audience, vs. only 75 percent of Spotify’s. Spotify has a higher percentage of subscribed (ad-free) users, which is good for them, but not so good for advertisers.^3​