Pandora's popularity is unquestionable. The leading online music service provider served up 67 percent more hours of music to listeners in 2012's third quarter than it did the year before. But its profit outlook is ugly, and the level of competition it will soon face for our ears is even worse.
The centerpiece of Apple's recent product announcements was its new music social network Ping. The core technology from Ping appears to be have been built by the team from Lala.com, the music streaming startup that Apple acquired in January 2009. But without the streaming music model, Ping is half the service Lala used to be. It's not a bad product, it's just not terribly transformative.