Company News · December 19, 2011

Setting The Record Straight On Pandora

By Edison Research

Today’s Inside Radio featured a grossly inaccurate story about how Edison Research is measuring listening for our client, Pandora (the entire article, like the rest of Inside Radio, is behind a subscriber paywall). Amongst the article’s many sins was this line:

“The Edison reports converted Pandora server-side log file listening data into local audience reports using AQH metrics that ranked Pandora alongside local radio stations in Arbitron market reports. [Cumulus COO John] Dickey says he’d like to see Arbitron to ask Pandora to reveal details of how it is calculating its audience estimates.”

No attempt was made to contact Edison about the “facts” in this article, which are of course patently untrue. While we await a correction from the typists at Inside Radio, let us be clear: Edison has never (as in never) reported anything other than the AQH figures for Pandora – full stop. We defy Inside Radio or any interested party to come up with a “ranker” from Edison that compares Pandora “alongside” any terrestrial radio station. Not only have we never produced such a report, we have never allowed a third party to produce such a report. A report comparing Pandora’s AQH measures with those of Arbitron subscribers would, amongst other things, violate Arbitron copyrights. We do not have the legal right, nor the desire, to produce such comparisons.

Also, Mr. Dickey need not pressure Arbitron to ask Pandora how these audience measures are calculated. Should he, or any other radio executive, care to find out, they need merely ask Pandora themselves, and they’ll be happy to provide the complete methodology for these figures, which are not, as Mr. Dickey intimates, “estimates;” rather, they are the actual listening data from the population of Pandora listeners.

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