Tracking Pandora downloads 22
PreCentral forum member sixerztres is a cool dude in our book - he’s taken the time to mark down how many downloads the webOS version of Pandora has logged every day for the past month and even put it into a handy graph for easy visual consumption. There are a few interesting take-away points that sixertres noted:
- Pandora downloads tend to spike during the weekend.
- Downloads during the period were highest during the first two weeks of August (after Palm ramped up its advertising campaign). During this week downloads averaged 3054/day.
- The average day netted 2825 downloads of the Pandora app.
- Pandora is not available to users in Canada, so download numbers should reflect only US users.
During sixertres’ observations, Pandora was downloaded approximately 96,000 times, prior to that around 225,000 times. It’s not known whether the App Catalog download count include update downloads or replaced phone backup downloads. In other words, we don't know if tracking these downloads can map well to guessing at the number of sold Pre phones (cue sketchy analyst investor note in 5, 4...), but it might be possible that the dip in late August is not a good sign for Palm and Sprint.
Those caveats aside, Pandora is a fairly ubiquitous app and we can assume that a good number of Pre owners have downloaded it. As of this writing Pandora’s logged over 321,000 downloads.
So we've got to ask, how do you use Pandora?
22 Comments
I used to use it, but i like the net2stream app alot better so i use that daily
There was a point I was addicted to Pandora, but lately I just don't listen to music as often. I still listen to it on the trip to and from work on occasion.
I used to be a huge advocate for Pandora but once they put the 40 hour limit per month I hit that in the first week. I refuse to pay .99 cents a month - yes I know I'm cheap and it is mainly the principle for me. I have gone to other platforms to listen to my music now. I would not be worried about the late August drop because that is when Pandora put their 40hr/month time limit into effect.
NANplayer >pandora
I thought I would use Pandora to discover new artists that sounded a little bit similar to the artists I already liked. It turns out XM/Sirius is still going to be better for that sort of thing, even though it's supposedly not as targeted to my tastes:
1. Maybe it's because their "music genome" or whatever they call it requires a professional musician to laboriously review every track they add, I don't know. But whatever the reason, Pandora seems to heavily favor not only major-label acts, but hits compilations by major-label acts.
2. There are many artists Pandora has listed as available, but if you put their names in, you'll seldom if ever hear their music on the channel created in their name. Often, the music they play for those artists is related only by year of release or other non-musically-related qualities.
3. They'll find a way to put Coldplay on almost any channel you create. Beatles? Coldplay. Early Genesis? Coldplay. U2? Coldplay. Ben Folds? Coldplay. Grandaddy? Coldplay. Radiohead? Coldplay. Early 80s synth pop? Coldplay. Obscure late 70s prog-rock bands? Coldplay. Black Sabbath? Well, I haven't heard Coldplay yet but I assume it's coming.
4. If you dare to make a channel out of a single song, or add a single song to an existing channel, it seems to have the same effect as a "randomize" button. I assume this is because a single song doesn't have enough traits to produce meaningful links to other music.
So, I was originally eager to pony up 12 bucks for a year of new music discovery, maybe even 36 bucks a year for more skips and no ads (not that there are many), rather than the 10 bucks a month I spent on XM before I let it lapse. But now I'm thinking maybe XM wasn't so bad.
I do have to say, though, that even using my Pre on an OTA network connection and playing through a cheap FM transmitter that goes in my lighter jack, Pandora actually sounds better than the XM that's built into my car stereo.
The purpose of tracking the Pandora downloads is to use it as a surrogate for adoption rates of the Pre. So, telling us what your music streaming preferences really doesn't add much to the discussion. Of course, Palm could make this speculation inconsequential by announcing the sales numbers. One has to think that they would be doing so if they had something to crow about. Are sales trending down now that the Pre isn't the new thing that everyone is talking about?
I bet this data doesn't allow for one or more returns due to faulty hardware, etc. A percentage of the same Pre folks have downloaded Pandora more than once.
Ummm...I'm in Canada and downloaded the app just fine.
Only problem is that no where on the app page did it say it was only good for the USA.
Which means when I launch the app is says sorry....you only live in North America but I only work in the USA....lol.
So the download count can be 'off' as we can download, but no use.
Derek -- How many unique homebrew users do you estimate there are on Precental today? That would give us a good indication of how close a proxy Pandora downloads are for the total Homebrew base.
Does anyone know how many updates have been pushed out by Pandora since the Pre was launched on june 6th?
95+% download rate for Pre owner-answerers - that's pretty dramatic.
Total downloads on the order of 300,000?
Doesn't bode well for Pre sales.
Oh wow -- I forgot Pandora was not a homebrew app but part of the App Catalog -- so this is worse than I thought. You are right. If the percentages of surveyed Pre-owners here is representative of the general population this is not good news.
Worse yet, if the downloads include Pandora updates then the number of unique users is even lower.
There has got to be a flaw in our logic, no? Anyone, Bueller?
The flaw is that we are representative of the total Pre user community. We are not. People come to PreCentral for two reasons - they are power users or they are users in search of help. Power users are more likely to read articles and answer polls, and more likely to download apps like Pandora.
Some believe Precentral readers/posters ARE representative of the general Pre owner population still - that is, the Pre has NOT sold into the general population in any significant amount.
I'd like to see real stats to support either POV.
Some believe Precentral readers/posters ARE representative of the general Pre owner population still - that is, the Pre has NOT sold into the general population in any significant amount.
I don't understand why anyone would believe that. How many BlackBerry users do you think read CrackBerry.com? As someone else said, the only people who visit these sites are the hardcore fans and people experiencing problems.
Your emotional opinion noted.
I'd like to see real stats to support either POV.
Your emotional opinion noted.
It wasn't really an emotional opinion. I simply pointed out that thsi site has a limited audience. It's a fan/support site, essentially. I think the logic behind that assertion is sound.
However, as it turns out, the download stats don't come from PreCentral.net. They come from the App Catolog, so that's not relevant.
A few things might make the stats misleading:
1) Updates are counted as new downloads.
2) As was noted in the post with the chart, not everyone who buys a Pre downloads Pandora.
3) The distribution on the chart is essentially meaningless, since (as also noted on the post with the chart) you don't necessarily download Pandora on the day you get your Pre.
Unless we know the ratio of Pre owners to Pandora users, tracking sales by Pandora users doesn't mean much. It can't give us a minimum or maximum for sales.
I think the only way you get sales numbers from download numbers would be to track the number of unique hits on the App Catalog across all applications. I think that's the safest bet, since we can probably assume that every Pre user has hit the App Catolog to download something at least once. Unfortunately, I don't think you're ever going to get within a hundred miles of that kind of data. Users don't want their unique identities tracked, and its in Palm's interest to inflate the number the same way Apple does.
How was that emotional? Your comment just comes across as a poor attempt to discount Brian's opinion. You should have just left off the first line of your response.
Ha ha, Derek. The running availability of "you're an insensitive clod" options in the votes is cracking me up... You. Insensitive. Clod.
I live in Austria, and we do not have the palm pre here... not yet (although i am craving for it). I think you should add another option: the "I-really-would-like-to-use-all-the-great-features-but-I-am-restricted-to-the-emulator-so-don't-be-so-cruel-with-the-votings"-option...
I live in Canada and downloaded this app, but it doesn't work here. Of course I didn't know that until I downloaded it.
In fact there are a lot of apps that are designed for the US only. Realizing that the US is Palm's largest market (for now) they should really do one of two things 1) let us know that it is a US app only 2) make them universal apps....or at the very least true NA apps.
I would imagine that when the European version of the Palm Pre comes out, there will be a whole different app store avaiable to them.
The Accu Weather app is #1 in the app catalog, so if you want a (very rough & unscientific) estimate of Pre sales, than the AccuWeather app would be a better estimate than Pandora.
I figure most but not all Pre owners have downloaded AccuWeather, then there are the people who got the phones replaced, or for whatever reason deleted and re downloaded the app. Im not sure if multiple downloads from the same person count again or not, but if they do, then everything may cancel out and the download count is a reasonable ballpark figure for Pre sales to date. 380,000 - 390,000 sales to date???