What Everybody Ought to Know About Pandora and Spotify’s Use of Instagram

For the last two weeks, we’ve explored the dos and don’ts of social media through the lens of Pandora’s use of different platforms. In my first post, we looked at what Pandora is doing right on Instagram and in my last post, we widened the scope a bit to analyze all the ways Pandora could be stepping up their social media game across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This time we’re going to take it a step further and see how Pandora stacks up against their competitor, Spotify. Let’s take a look, focusing on their Instagram accounts:

Numerically Misleading

At first glance in comparing these two music streaming services, the numbers clearly point in favor of Spotify. On Instagram, Pandora has a mere 363,000 followers compared to Spotify’s 4,800,000, and this holds true across their other two social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook Pandora has 7,439,979 likes versus Spotify’s 22,225,497 and on Twitter 530,200 accounts follow Pandora in comparison to 3,300,00 following Spotify.  In terms of actual users, Spotify reports having almost three times the number of monthly listeners that Pandora has — 217 million to their 72.4 million. This means that 2% of Spotify’s and 0.5% of Pandora’s monthly listeners are actually following them on Instagram.

That being said, follower count isn’t everything. Post engagement is another factor we should take into account. On average, one of Pandora’s posts on Instagram pulls in around 500 likes and 4 comments. These numbers are quite laughable when Spotify gets roughly 20,000 likes and 100 comments per post, but that’s really just to be expected when there is such a difference in the number of users actively following their content. 

Essentially Twinning

Above: Spotify’s feed. Below: Pandora’s feed.

To help make the comparison of Spotify and Pandora’s use of Instagram beyond the numbers, I read my classmate Sarah’s post, which analyzes Spotify’s Instagram account. The first thing that both of us noticed about the accounts we audited is that neither of them engage with their followers on Instagram. According to Hootsuite’s “14 Social Media Best Practices You Should Follow in 2019,” it’s extremely important to respond quickly to comments and mentions on your social media in order to humanize your account and prevent your followers from perceiving you as lazy. Both Spotify and Pandora missed the mark here as neither of them responded to a single comment left on any of their posts. 

What Do You Think?

In my opinion everything seems to point towards a tie between the two companies. While Spotify might have a slight edge when it comes to the numbers game, Pandora makes up for it in terms of their actual content. Who do you think is doing better on social media? Is there a third, more superior streaming platform that I overlooked? Leave a comment below and let’s talk about it!