Spotify Will Surpass Pandora by 2022

Pandora is the most popular music streaming service in the US. But that will change in the coming years, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast on digital audio listeners.

This year, Pandora will have 75.9 million users in the US, compared with 58.4 million for Spotify. However, eMarketer expects Pandora’s user base in the US to continue to decline slightly throughout the forecast period, while Spotify will see double-digit growth this year and next. By 2022, the market share will have shifted, with Pandora’s user base dipping to 75.3 million users, while Spotify’s will swell to 76.7 million.

“Pandora’s focus on converting free listeners to subscribers, coupled with much stiffer competition, will keep their overall reach from growing,“ said Martín Utreras, eMarketer’s vice president of forecasting. “Meanwhile, Spotify has benefited from being first to market with family plans, offline listening, integrations with other services like Hulu and effective social sharing tools, which have left Pandora to play catch-up.“