Factors Affecting Pandora Media And Steps To Improve Using Pestel Analysis

Pandora Media

Pandora   media Inc was founded by Tim Westergren, Jon Kraft and Will Glaser as Savage Beast Technologies. The main objective of its formation was to develop a separate, personalized radio station for individual users. The personal station is supposed to be music which the user loves and have no music that the user does not likes. By 2001 the company had ran out of money since it was operations with its initial funding of $2million.  To continue its operations 50 employees of the company were convinced by Tim Westegren to work for two years without pay until the company was stable. It is also called the Pandora Internet Radio . it is a music streaming station  through the internet. It is designed to play the music with similar traits. The users are given the opportunity to give their feedback regarding their experience with the station (Digmayer, Trevisan, and Jakobs, 2015).

Pandora Company uses the data collected from the listeners and the content programming algorithms to build the power to predict the music preference of the listeners, introduce the new music with hope that listeners will love it. They engage a lot of resources, time and efforts in ensuring they satisfy the interest of each individual listener. The company labors in empowering artist through connecting them with their fans, helping them grow the audience as well as providing valuable data to help them in their career. Pandora is available as an on demand subscription service which is known as Pandora premium, a radio subscription service (Pandora plus) and finally as a ad-supported radio service. It has been found that most of the listeners use their mobile devices to access Pandora service. Pandora generates most of its revenue from the adverts made through their ad-supported radio services. Both national and local advertisers are given the opportunity to reach their targeted audience through video, audio and display advertisements (Lind,  Bieschke,  and Rios, 2016). In the recent past subscription offerings are also increasing the company’s revenue. Since 2005 when the ad-supported service was launched more than twelve billion stations have been created by the listeners. Through the ad-supported service the listeners can access live streams, comedy broadcasts and musical catalogs by using the personalized system to generate playlists in all delivery platforms. Over the years the station has been transforming   and evolving to consider the reaction of the listeners rather than just using data science to determine the content they pick. Unlike majority of other competitor companies, listener  of Pandora have the ability and the right to rename  stations as well as add varieties to a better personalized services.   Listeners are also offered the opportunity to have temporary access on demand experience Trinkle, Crossler, and Bélanger 2015).  

Pandora plus also called subscription Radio services is a version of Pandora radio service with an ad-free paid subscription. It offers services such as long timeout listening, quality audio on backed- up devices, offline listening, additional skipping music and replays.   In this platform the more listeners interact with it the more the content recommended to them is tailored. On top of other relevant services, Pandora offers its listeners in the Pandora plus premium access.

Factors Affecting Pandora Media

Politics are an integral and crucial part of any business. The success of any business in any particular country is dependent on the state of politics.  In the case of Pandora, It is a fact that politics play a big role in determining its long term plans and success in Australia. As a broadcasting media, Pandora is exposed to different political seasons, moods and contracts which influence its success. The different political environments expose the company to some big risks. A performing media house should predict and survive in any risky political environments. Some of the few political factors that affect the Pandora media in Australia is the political stability in the country, proper and good taxation laws, respect and freedom of the media, minimal interference and bureaucracy in broadcasting etc. Pandora can take advantage of the political stability and the respect for the law in Australia and expand their business to great heights.

Since its establishment in 2000, Pandora has faced quite a number of economic challenges. At some point the organization went out of operating funds and other times forced to get into big financial debts to achieve their development plans. Some of the few factors influencing the operations of Pandora are interests rate, inflation rate aggregate investment into the economy and the foreign exchange rate. Pandora has been considerate issues like government interventions, business cycle stage, unemployment productivity and labor cost in the Australian economy and finally skill level and qualification of all its employees in radio industry as they seek to give their customers the best services (Braxton, 2013).

Pandora continues to increase its capabilities to penetrate the local market. There is intense competition from other radios especially those dealing with audio advertisement and have very strong connections with the advertisers.  Pandora is working very hard to convince the advertisers use their advertising market, develop a compelling solutions to various products and penetrate the local advertising markets as it looks forward to attracting  more demographics to its listeners base. Although there is no guarantee of effectively monetizing listeners inventory through the connected and mobile devices within a certain time  frame to improve  the business, the effects  put in place will significantly  change the manner of doing things hence increasing the revenue from adverts (Jarvis, et al 2018). 

Such strategic moves will demand a lot of resources focused on areas like increasing the effectiveness of the market, accelerating the cycles of product development, managing the cost of the content  and more strategic growth areas. The organization restructured the management and designed it in a way to prioritize the initiatives of strategic growth as well as overall business performance. Most of the resources have been shifted to developing the audience and at the same time helping the company to improve its leverage over time. The action helps the organization to become more effective, efficient faster in execution and smarter to outdo the competitors (Allen  2015).

The society is a key determinant of success in any business. The   culture, traditions, norms and how things are perceived or done have a great impact on the business environment. People share different attitudes and beliefs which have a significant role the entire operations of Pandora media. For example, the beliefs and attitudes determine how the marketing messages are designed for different demographics. It is the culture of a people  helps the  company to develop some  great  programs  in  order to attract more listeners and advertisers .in developing its program, the leadership of Pandora  media is  very vigilant  on some key  factors such  the  target  groups and their skill level in the  society, leisure interests, attitude  of people to things like the environment and health, gender role in a community , creativity and innovativeness of the people and the education  level and standards of individuals (Quintana et al 2014).

Political Factors

Pandora media has had some very hard times in trying to reach some areas and communities in Australia where people have been marginalized for a very long time. For example, it has been hard  for Pandora to get many listeners in communities  such as aboriginal  where the level of education  are still low and have very distinct  culture.

Pandora is an important provider of modern audio adverts and it looks forward to utilizing the monetization expansion available to it. The new technology development will propel the improvements in the company which are a aimed at achieving optimized prices, increased adverts capacity and improve sell through. The digital music and audio is a very big market that is growing fast and quite competitive hence the need to focus on efficiencies and execution (Denniston, et al 2013).  Technology is the heart of Pandora since all the services are centered on it. For example, the organization is proud of a playlist generating algorithms and a music Genome project. The music Genome project of the organization is a database with more than one million examined songs and over two hundred and fifty thousand artist. The database also contains over six hundred and sixty sub-genres and genres developed by a team of well trained and qualified musicologists. This database is a subset or a portion of the entire catalog that is created to be played. The music analyst in the company must objectively examine every song before it is included in the Genome database (Svendsen, and Askey, 2014). Some the things looked at are the tempo, tone emotional intensity, vocal texture and the lyrics. Over the years the services have been evolving through the use data science to create a playlist algorithm which gives the listener a more personal experience. The same technology has been integrated into the Pandora premium and on-demand music service in order to help the listeners to search and play the music of their choice. In order to give the listeners best of services, the organization employees music analysts who have a degree in music theory. They are then taken through some intensive training on  how the Music Genome  Projects to help the to execute their duties effectively (Hope et al 2014).

With new technology developed daily to increase effectiveness in generally all industries, media is no exception.  It is essential to note that adopting the latest technology in its operations will give any media company a upper hand over the competitors. Each day advertising technologies emerge therefore increase the need for media houses to be updated on the latest technology in the market. Such modern advertising technologies data –driven and internet advertising .most  of the adverts are shifting to the technological channels  for advertising  which puts Pandora  media ina good position to beat the competitors. The data drive adverts a low people to focus their advertisements towards some particular consumer groups to get the delivered message (Montalva et al 2016). The programmatic ad-buying services offered by the Pandora media are  behind the times if compared to those offered by other advertising platforms such as Facebook and  Google when it comes to ease   of use  and functionality. The company is making some big investment to develop  more advanced  programmatic  advertising  strength  and data  drive  adverts  for both the video and audio advertising. Although there is no surety of timely success  of the ad-buying systems, or even their competitiveness in the  in the market the company remains optimistic. If the company does not develop a competitive   programmatic  ad-buying services, as well as improve and advance in other necessary technologies, the interest of advertisers in the company’s services may decline. If such a thing happens then the business outcome and particularly advertising revenue will be adversely affected (Bachman, and Chaudhri, 2014).  

Economic Factors

Every country has its own different environmental factors that determine the profitability, operations and the general success of an organization. Different countries may have liability and environment to manage environmental disasters. Every business market as its environmental standards and challenges that must be carefully evaluated. The mass media and radio industry in particular cannot ignore the effects of the environment in their daily operations. Australia has its own unique geographical setting, climatic conditions, weather that largely affect every business within Australia. Such factors influenced the operations of Pandora especially during winter when internet connections face a lot of problems. Some part in the country are still lagging behind due to the terrain hence now enough facilities such as hospitals and schools which may  facilitate more developments in an area. This challenge has been a big for Pandora to get into some areas with a significant population of people( Rogers, I.C. and Kozlov, 2013). 

The organization also aims to reach more people in as many areas as possible and in any environment as long as the place is internet connected. The company   is continuously making its services available through a number of channels. For example, in addition to computer streaming, the company is developing and improving mobile devices applications to help them become more flexible and accessible by more listeners. These applications are used in devices such as tablets, smart phones ,Iphones  Ipad etc. the  mobile apps are distributed to listeners without any charges through the app stores. The company is integrating with  many of connected devices to help the expand their services(Sharifi,  2015). Some of the devices include consumer electronic devices, voice based devices and automobiles. Most of the integrations depend on the smart phones  for internet connections. This move has propelled the company to be available in most of well selling passenger vehicles. the integrations s help the drivers to take charge of the service through the in-dash system.  As part of striving to reach more cars, the company has  developed a support android, for mobile applications. It is expected that the platforms will grow and develop significantly to expand the company’s reach to the consumers and provide them with desired flexible access to Pandora(Streible,  2013).  L

Australia is a developed country in terms of democracy and the rule of law. The constitution has established institutions and legal framework  set to easy how business is done in the country.  The legal frame work also aims to protect property and rights of all the organizations. in its effort to expand , Pandora has been considerate of laws  such as  health and safety law, employment law consumer protection as well as laws guiding partnership.

 The organization is partnering with thousands of consumers voice base electronic devices such as Apple TV, Microsoft Xbox, Google Home, Amazon Echo and Roku to help the reach more  people. This kind of integration is making it easier of the listeners to have personalized experience  music anywhere they choose to listen from (Gressier, 2016) 

Conclusion

The major source of revenue in Pandora is the sale of display, audio and video adverts through computers, mobile devices and other internet connected platforms. This provides the opportunity to the potential   advertisers to reach the audience anywhere anytime The platform gives room for both local and national advertisers to reach and connect with listeners  of different gender, age religion  etc. The ability of Pandora company to improve and grow their business and generate more revenue through adverts largely depend on  increasing and  retaining the active listeners as well as increasing the listening hours. The company must convince its prospective listeners of different benefits of their services and the let the already existing active listeners know the value of the such services. It is quite clear that the more the listening hours streamed, more ad inventory are sold. Additionally, increase in number of listeners  leas to increase in the number of demographic groups  targeted by the advertisers. This helps the company to deliver the adverts in a manner  that increases the advertising customers, demonstrates   effective  advertising solutions  and  create a profitable  pricing structure for the organization.

In case the fails to grow the listener base especially in key demographic groups like adults and the youth , then the revenue from advertisements cannot increase. This can be interpreted to mean that the business will be affected  adversely and materially.  In order to increase the numbers of listeners the company is putting a lot of efforts in some key and critical aspects of business such as; proving high quality services to the listeners, offering the best  personalized and user-friendly experiences, maintaining and  building  a variety of catalog like comedy and music for the listeners , be innovative and keep the most modern technology , build good relationships and  get into partnership with as many advertisers as possible

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