Online music service Pandora could hit $100 million in revenue this year, which would represent more than twice as much revenue as the company pulled in for 2009 and potentially set the stage for an IPO.
The new estimate comes from a Wall Street analyst quoted in a New York Times profile of Pandora, a company that has narrowly escaped all but certain death several times since its inception in 2000. The Times credits much of Pandora’s rise to its wildly successful iPhone app, which doubled signups for the service overnight.
Much of it also has to do, however, with the new licensing deal that the company was able to achieve last year that brought royalties down to a much more affordable level that Pandora offsets with both ads and subscription revenue.
As for whether these rising tides might lead to Pandora going public, the Times reports that nothing is imminent, but notes that the company recently hired a CFO -- the same one that was at the helm of Salesforce.com when it made its Wall Street debut.