blake II announcement of 'fall into country'
Pandora is embarking on an ambitious marketing campaign to attract country music listeners that will include concerts by A-list artists like Blake Shelton at smaller, intimate venues.
The goal is to grow the company’s already robust country audience of 60 million people who use Pandora’s free or subscription platforms. And company executives hope the effort leads to more country fans signing on as subscribers for its advertising-free online radio service or its recently launched on-demand streaming platform.
The campaign is being pitched as a digital country music festival called Fall Into Country. Fans will be targeted through social media and offered an array of new and exclusive content from mainstream country artists. In addition to Shelton, Luke Bryan, Kelsea Ballerini and Darius Rucker will also headline Fall Into Country.
Shelton will kick off Fall Into Country at OZ Arts Nashville on Nov. 3.
For the opportunity to attend the event, fans can listen to Blake Shelton Radio on Pandora beginning thursday.
Pandora has long had ties to Nashville, but Fall Into Country represents its latest and most robust effort to lure country music fans in the competitive landscape of streaming. Over the last year, Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music have bulked up their Nashville offices in efforts to build relationships with Nashville's music industry.
In an exclusive interview with The Tennessean this week, new CEO Roger Lynch said country music has excellent growth potential for Pandora. Already, country is the second most popular genre on Pandora behind hip-hop.
“Country music is really important for Pandora,” Lynch said. “We have over 60 million country listeners of all ages. It’s also I think a segment that has been under-represented in streaming. So I think it’s a big opportunity as things continue to move forward in streaming for us to continue our leadership position in country.”
But Lynch cautioned that the goal is not merely to add new subscribers. He said the ad-supported tier of Pandora is crucial to the company’s success. Pandora has over 76 million monthly users compared to 4.86 million paid subscribers. By comparison, Spotify has 140 million users and 60 million global subscribers as of July.
Lynch was named CEO, replacing Tim Westergren, amid a company overhaul that saw new board members added and satellite radio giant SirusXM invest $480 million in Pandora.
“Our fundamental goal is to connect people to music,” Lynch said. “I like the fact we have a portfolio of ad-supported and ad-free radio as well as on-demand. Really we’re interested in growing across the portfolio so we’re very happy to have people on just the ad-supported service. That’s still the majority of our revenue and we’re interested in growing that business.”
Pandora makes a dent on Music Row
Fall Into Country represents the inroads that Pandora has made with Music Row executives. Beville Dunkerley, industry relations director for Pandora’s Nashville office, said the company combined marketing campaigns that were already in the works to form the foundation.
“Specifically for Fall Into Country, our marketing team took all these huge events we had lined up for the fall and just packaged them together,” Dunkerley said. “It all started with Blake Shelton. His camp actually came to me saying Blake wanted to do something special around his next album release.
“His career was founded on that close connection with the fans. Even though he’s an international superstar, he’s an everyday guy. And they wanted to do a show that reflected that and brought him back on an intimate level, so they came to Pandora.”
Shelton said he "can’t think of a better way to celebrate the release of my new album than with a show in Nashville. This is where it all started for me and where I lived for many years, so Nashville always feels like coming home to me."
Dunkerley said the increasingly competitive streaming space in country music makes securing such promotional deals a challenge. Pandora is going head to head with Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google to strike deals for promotion partnerships and new music.
Dunkerley said she goes into her sales pitches armed with data — the 60 million country listeners on Pandora certainly helps — and that the company does not demand exclusive content. In addition to Dunkerley, Pandora's country division strengthened its connections on Music Row when it hired well-regarded veteran Rachel Whitney as its country music curator.
The company also believes its track record of helping fans discover new artists is beneficial. Pandora was built on the music genome project, which put music discovery based on listening tastes at its foundation.
Plus, Pandora is hardly a newcomer. Although its on-demand service launched in the last year, the internet radio platform is 17 years old.
“Pandora has been a staple platform for finding country music for the last 15 years, and our fans know and trust them,” said UMG Nashville President Cindy Mabe. “Pandora has a bigger percentage of country listeners across the streaming landscape contributing as many as 20 million weekly streams for Luke Bryan alone. No one else comes close to that."
Mabe said Universal has several country artists on its roster in the “billions” for streams on Pandora.
“Because they have had such longevity, they have had the benefit of collecting data on our fans and they allow the artists through their artist marketing platform to reach back to that fan with targeted messaging that is highly effective and keeps the artists engaged with their fans directly,” she said.
Fall Into Country pitched as digital country music festival
Pandora vice president and creative director Julie Scelzo said the online marketing campaign was conceptualized like an app showing the lineup for a star studded country music festival.
Fans of the top artists will be able to navigate the platform and, as the campaign unfolds, learn about special performances, curated playlists and some new music. Details were not released, but the company has a special event featuring Bryan in the works.
Through existing country music fans and the social media followers of the artists involved with the campaign, Pandora will used targeted ads rolling out on Thursday. The Fall Into Country campaign also added a feature for fans to donate to the victims of the Las Vegas shooting and their families.
“This is not our first rodeo — forgive the pun — but we’ve always been great at connecting country music with country fans,” Scelzo said. “For the back half of the year, we really wanted to make a bigger deal about it and give people a feel like they’re going to the best country music festival without having to put on their cowboy boots.”