Pandora vs Apple iTunes Radio: We're Doing Fine, Says Pandora

Pandora faced some scary times after Apple unveiled the new iPhone 5s and iOS 7, which included a potential competitive service in iTunes Radio; For example, soon after millions began upgrading to iOS 7, Pandora's stock took a dive. But now it seems the more established streaming radio service is shaking the dust off, showing encouraging numbers to investors.

Pandora released some impressive figures recently, showing that Pandora listeners listened to a total of 1.47 billion hours in the previous month, which is up by 18 percent from the previous year.

Those figures were released on Monday at Pandora's investors conference in San Francisco, according to CNET, and they included this interesting statistic: listening hours on Pandora increased by 9 percent after iTunes Radio was unleashed. And even though Pandora's 72.7 million monthly active users dipped to 70.9 million in September, according to the AP, it's still the top radio service, even after Apple joined the competition.

iTunes Radio was released in September, and in short order, 20 million users were listening to a billion songs.  Apple's product is very similar to Pandora, mimicking its "thumbs up, thumbs down" station customizing feature and allowing users to purchase tunes they like - except in Apple's case, of course, only through the iTunes Store.

However, says CNET, analysts have found the impact of iTunes Radio on Pandora to be small. A survey by Canaccord found that 92 percent of people who tried using iTunes Radio still preferred to use Pandora.

Perhaps Apple's radio service will eventually pose a threat, but as Latinos Post previously reported, iTunes Radio's cross-referenced catalogue of songs is still too undeveloped to customize a station in a way as satisfying as Pandora's Music Genome Project allows. Basically, Apple's smart radio is still too dumb.