NEW YORK, Sept 25, 2018 (News Wires) - SiriusXM charges users monthly subscription fees while Pandora offers free music streaming with advertisements or monthly ad-free paid subscriptions for $4.99 and $9.99. SiriusXM has some 36 million subscribers across North America and 23 million trial listeners-mainly from automobile buyers who get a free trial subscription. Pandora, launched in 2000, designed itself as a radio network with stations based on genre and, more recently, automatically personalized around listeners' selections. But it was forced to evolve as customers gravitated to the on-demand model led by Apple and Spotify. In 2016, Pandora said it would launch an on-demand subscription platform following the model of Spotify in letting users select any song at any time. Pandora has struggled in recent years and in 2017 co-founder Tim Westergren stepped down as chief executive and from the board of directors as SiriusXM invested $480 million as part of a strategic partnership. On-demand streaming has reshaped the music industry and now accounts for some 75 per cent of overall US revenues, according to a report this month from the Recording Industry Association of America.
