Facebook music entry may pose threat to Pandora

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While Pandora Media says it competes with AM, FM and satellite for listeners and revenues, what it really fears is head-to-head competition with the Internet giants. As reported, Facebook is about to enter the online music arena.


Here’s what Pandora had to say in its quarterly report filed with the SEC:

“We believe that companies with a combination of financial resources, technical expertise and digital media experience also pose a significant threat of developing competing internet radio and digital audio entertainment technologies in the future. In particular, if known incumbents in the digital media space such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook or Google choose to offer competing services, they may devote greater resources than we have available, have a more accelerated time frame for deployment and leverage their existing user base and proprietary technologies to provide products and services that our listeners and advertisers may view as superior. Our current and future competitors may have more well-established brand recognition, more established relationships with consumer product manufacturers, greater financial, technical, and other resources, more sophisticated technologies or more experience in the markets in which we compete.”

RBR-TVBR observation: It appears that Facebook isn’t jumping into online music streaming with its own product, but rather by teaming with established Pandora competitors Spotify and Rdio. That may be small consolation to Pandora and its investors, given Facebook’s huge footprint in the online space.