If you had one eye on after-hours trading Thursday night you saw Pandora's stock drop about 20% after the company reported earnings. It was a "unique" quarter for Pandora according to CEO Brian McAndrews, who said the company "held its own." Pandora had to withstand an attack from the release of Apple Music, which received tons of free publicity for its launch, in addition to all the marketing money Apple spent. And that may have had an impact on Pandora's ability to grow listener hours which were up only 3 percent in Q3. Active listeners were up 2 percent, to 78.1 million. A year ago, total listening hours grew 25 percent and listeners were up 5.2 percent. So without that listener growth, Pandora's alternative to increasing revenue is increasing the number of commercials it runs. So will every hour of Pandora soon sound like radio?
