Answer: iHeart Radio, which is growing faster than any other streaming service…
Today iHeart Radio, iHeartMedia’s all-in-one digital music and live streaming radio service, announced via their blog that it now has more than 85 million registered users.
Back in January, DMN wrote about the service hitting 80 million registered users. Now, iHeartRadio has managed to add another 5 million registered users in a matter of a few months. Impressive growth indeed, and something that other streaming services — even Facebook — haven’t quite been able to accomplish.
iHeartRadio launched back in September of 2011, and has since grown into a digital music service that offers a network of traditional radio stations. According to iHeartRadio’s blog, the app has been ‘downloaded more than 900 million times,’ with ‘85 million social media followers’. The service is also said to be ‘available on more than 80 unique platforms’ spanning in-home entertainment to mobile to tablet, with Pandora in a similar platform race.
At last count, Pandora had 250 million registered users and 81 million monthly active users, which is three times the size of iHeartRadio. So, to say the very least, Pandora is considerably larger. But is iHeartRadio growing a lot faster? It most certainly seems to be: Pandora has been crawling on the active user front, though arguably the reason is that Pandora simply dominates (and saturates) the streaming radio market.
Unfortunately, iHeartRadio (and parent iHeartCommunications, formerly Clear Channel Communications) is battling angry creditors and struggling to stay afloat after saddling itself with billions of debt. But, that’s the same case for Pandora, with both companies facing serious financial issues ahead.
Outside of those concerns, iHeartRadio faces continued pressure to innovate and diversify its service, with mega-rivals like Apple, Google and Spotify continuously pumping millions if not billions into their services.
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