Talking in layman’s terms it is not completely there yet. It has some social media features…but it doesn’t necessarily fulfill one of the main concepts of social media, and this is to link people. Pandora does not connect you with other people like mainstream social media does.

You listen to music on Pandora, but you don’t really communicate with others. It’s not the place where you’d go to find other people or share your own thoughts online. In fact it is a platform that people who “stay away from social media” use frequently.

Until several years ago was not even close to being really considered as part of social media but they have been going to that direction.

Pandora has allowed users to maintain profiles for years. It allowed each user to even create a Facebook-like profile page where friends can leave comments and launched activity feeds where you will see what people are listening to, talking about, or rating. Back in 2016, Pandora raised stakes even higher when it comes to the artist-to-fan communications sphere for musicians aiming at better targeting its users. Back then, they, as a music streaming company, launched a service called AMPcast — a service which allows musicians to “speak to their fans” by way of audio messages that they can record quickly on their mobile phones and post to run in conjunction with their music streams.

Pandora is the place that you go to get away from other people or drown out the sounds around you in favor of listening to music that you like. It comes with a set of features that bring it close to the social media side, but it still has some way to go to become a fully fledged one.

Even we take Spotify in the equation. It also keeps getting closer to becoming full-fledged social media, so it is a thing in the niche, but it is way ahead than Pandora especially with their acquisition of podcasting outlets such Gimlet, Anchor, and Parcast.

Podcasting is a form of social media, it’s a way to put content online that communicates with and informs other people—the same as video, photos, and text.

Or we can observe Soundcloud as well. It has been the social media for rappers and digital music composers for a while now. But, when Soundcloud rappers and music producers get big enough they branch off to YouTube and Instagram to reach more people, so they need the social media powers to reach and maintain the next level.

Pandora still solely functions as a radio and paid music subscription service. Why? Because they have yet to invest in a community that benefits their platform.