With juggernauts like Apple launching their own music streaming service and with massive resources at their disposal, it isn’t surprising that the competition is feeling the pressure. This is despite the fact that Apple Music is still a relatively young service, but based on the figures it looks like Apple is playing catch up and fast.In fact it seems that over in Australia and New Zealand, it looks like one of Apple Music’s rivals will be closing shop. In a confirmation to Billboard, it seems that Pandora will be shutting down their operations in the region. What this means is that the US will be the only market in which Pandora will be operating in, whereas before that Australia and New Zealand were the only international countries that Pandora was available in outside of the US.
There was no specific reason given behind the shut down, but according to a statement provided by a rep, “While our experience in these markets reinforces the broader global opportunity long-term, in the short-term we must remain laser-focused on the expansion of our core business in the United States.”
It has been estimated that Pandora has about 5 million users in the Australia and New Zealand market. As The Verge notes, Pandora wouldn’t be the first to close its operations in the region. Prior to this other streaming services such as Guvera and Deezer had also opted to exit the Australian market.