Pandora: 34m active users, and 60 per cent mobile usage

Streaming radio service going from strength to strength, although its losses have increased.

US personalised radio service Pandora has published new statistics on its growth and financials, as it prepares for its upcoming IPO. The numbers reveal strong growth, including mobile usage of the service.

Pandora says it had 94 million registered users at the end of the first quarter of 2011, having added 41 million in its last calendar year. Of those 94 million, 34 million are classed as 'active users', up from 18 million at the end of Q1 2010.

Total listener hours in Q1 this year were 1.6 billion, with Pandora saying that its users access the service from their mobile phones 60.3% of the time, up from 50.5% in 2010, and 23.5% in 2009. That's a sign of how the company's smartphone apps have lit a rocket under its growth in the last year.

Is all this paying off? In terms of revenues, yes. Pandora made $51 million in the first quarter of 2011, up 131% from the $21.6 million it made in Q1 2010. However, in the same time period, the company's quarterly losses grew from $3 million to $6.8 million, with 58% of its revenues being spent on royalty payments.