Pandora nudges past the billion dollar mark

Pandora has passed a significant moment in its business: it's paid the billionth dollar out in royalties. Music Ally reports:

A big number from McAndrews in the earnings call, claiming that Pandora has paid “over $1bn, yes, $1bn in all-time royalties to artists, publishers and labels”

To artists, publishers and labels, although that's almost certainly not in descending order of size of share.

Still, it's a lot of money. It may actually be a crippling amount of money, as Pandora's losses are heading in the wrong direction:

Witness its latest quarterly financial results, where the company beat analyst predictions, yet still saw its share price fall by 10%. That’s partly due to the company continuing to report net losses: $11.7m in the last quarter compared to $6.9m in Q2 2013. This, despite decent revenue growth: a rise of 43% year-on-year to $218.9m.

If your revenue grows by half, and your losses are damn-near doubling, you might have a pretty fundamental problem. Unless you've got a plan.

There was no news on Pandora’s global expansion plans – “We don’t have anything to announce at this point, but we do see longer-term. Our vision as I mentioned is to reach billions of people around the world,” said McAndrews.

Pandora don't appear to have a plan.