Since I founded Pandora, we’ve been dedicated to helping listeners effortlessly discover and enjoy music they love. But all along, we’ve envisioned a time when the power of the platform could be put in the hands of the artists. That chapter has now begun. In October we launched AMP – a platform that gives artists insights about how fans are engaging with their music, including data showing where their fans are located and how much they are thumbing certain songs. Thousands of artists are actively using the service.
Now, we’re embarking on an exciting new development: helping artists communicate directly with fans. This week we are launching Artist Audio Messaging, which provides artists the ability to send personalized messages to their fans on Pandora. For now, we’re making this available to a small group of artists as part of our initial pilot, but we’re looking to learn and scale the service over time.
We’re excited by the range of possibilities of what these messages could be: a tour announcement, new album drop, a crowd-funding campaign, the story behind their latest song or simply a thank you to fans for listening.
During this pilot period, we’re working closely with artists to craft the content and delivery of their messages. An Artist currently using this new feature is Lenny Kravitz who sent a message introducing one of his songs.
We’re constantly working with music makers to collaborate on new and innovative ideas that will bring our more than 80 million listeners and the artists on Pandora closer than ever before. Artist Audio Messaging is something we are very excited about, and I can’t wait to watch this evolve as we collaborate ever more closely with artists.
