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Pandora Helps Tour Routing
Pandora and musicians have had their differences, but the streaming music service is offering an olive branch of sorts that could help musicians figure out how to route their tours.
Pandora is offering musicians a way to take a peek at where their audience is, so they can route their tours appropriately, with the launch of Pandora AMP.
Pandora announced the launch of AMP (Artist Marketing Platform) Oct. 22. The free service allows musicians to see who is listening to their music and, more importantly, where those fans are. It’s not the first company to provide analytics like this, with Spotify and Next Big Sound teaming up to provide such info, but it is the biggest company to do so.
Pandora reports an audience of 76 million users who listen about 20 hours a month. In June alone, that meant about 1.6 billion listening hours. Pandora founder Tim Westergren has been losing favor with musicians because of Pandora’s apparently paltry attempt at royalty distribution. But Westergren was once a touring musician and says AMP will be a boon to those who still play in front of audiences.
The idea of AMP is simple: it shows on a map where an artist’s music is being played, and that artist should probably book a show there.
“When I was in a band, we had a rented van, a box of fliers, and a couple staple guns,” Westergren said. “The challenge faced by artists trying to find and build an audience was part of the original inspiration for Pandora. With AMP, the goal is simple: we want to harness the power of our scale and data to make artists’ lives easier.”
Ben Singer of SMG Entertainment, which manages Andy Grammer, called it a “game changer.”
“Our research shows us that the majority of Andy’s fans consume music on Pandora. To have access to these analytics will only help us better serve his fans as the music industry continues to evolve.”