• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 24, 2013

How does Pandora founder Brian Westergren see growing competition in online music, especially with Apple launching iTunes Radio? Speaking at OMMA Global, he calls Apple the first formidable company in the space. He says online raid has been notable for a lack of competition, mainly because of high royalty rates that keep a lot of companies out of the buisines. Rhapsody, Spotify and other services focused on on-demand offerings. Same goes for Google’s All Access Music service, according to Westergren.

While Apple would compete more directly with Pandora, he estimates its impact will be modest because people listen to Pandora on many other devices and operating systems besides the iPhone. Over a 1,000 different devices. Even so, he said the key is creating playlists, and keeping them fresh hour after hour and month after month. With its music selection informed by 36 billion "thumbs up" and "thumbs down," he believes Pandora has built up a big advantage in knowing what people want to hear.