Millions of adoring fans of podcast rock star Ira Glass will soon get their fix straight from Oakland, California, where Pandora is based and from where the streaming-entertainment “music-discovery platform” will be pumping out “This American Life” via iOS, Android, tablet and over the Web.
Bringing what it calls “the next chapter of binge-worthy entertainment to listeners,” Pandora announced today that the award-winning podcast hosted by Glass will go live on Mondays. The company laid out the plans here:
Whether commuting to work, perfecting your downward dog, food prepping or online shopping, immerse yourself in engaging and informative narratives that bring the human experience to life. Each episode takes on a single theme with a variety of stories, divided into parts so you can skip forward, replay something you missed, or if you need to take a break, you can pick up where you left off.
And, just for fun, Pandora threw in a few reminders of the cool stuff and quality genes that “This American Life” is made of:
5 Fun Facts about This American Life:
Pandora had some other good news in the past few days, when Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter sent out a note to investors calling for Pandora’s shares to outperform the market:
Pandora’s three-tier offering (commercial supported and commercial free Internet radio plus on-demand listening) should provide it a competitive advantage over virtually every other service. We expect investors to embrace this strategy once it begins to show signs of success, which could take a year or more.
And…
We remain fans of Pandora’s long-term business model. We think Ticketfly can generate modest returns (although unlikely to justify the steep price paid), and believe that an integrated on-demand and Internet radio offering is a compelling alternative to Spotify. Should Pandora be successful in integrating Rdio into the core Pandora business, we believe that the company can grow to as many as 10 million on demand U.S. subscribers and to as many as 20 million internationally.
In his note, Pachter cautioned investors that the “development and integration of on-demand will likely take the rest of the year, and international expansion, if implemented deliberately, should take another 2-3 years, so it is likely that investors will not see share appreciation until late in 2016.”
Pandora is scheduled to report first-quarter results this Thursday.
Pandora fans should gobble up “This American Life,” just as they devoured the superstar podcast “Serial” when it was first streamed in October 2014. Hosted by Sarah Koenig and produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago, the season-long true-come narrative captivated listeners for months on end. Starting with that first season, Serial quickly became the most popular podcast in the history of the medium, with over 150 million downloads to date.”
Check out “Serial” here:
http://www.siliconbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/serial-s02-e01.mp3
Photo: The front desk at Pandora’s Oakland office in 2011. (Bay Area News Group archives)
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