We know that people are forever listening to EDM via the Internets—be it SoundCloud, YouTube, or Spotify streams, or via apps that play everything from iHeartRadio to Sirus / XM stations. Now I'm not sure about the DAD readership, but it's rare that I speak to or run into people who are listening to Pandora, either for EDM or anything else. You might not even know this, but Pandora does have EDM on it. And while we might not personally know people who are running to Pandora to get their EDM fix, they must be out there, as the music streaming and recommendation hub recently pulled stats showing the top EDM songs being played—per state—over the first few weeks of October.
Now keep in mind, these stats only show the "over-indexed spins for each song per state" from the dates of October 1-15. From the map that Pandora drew up (which you can see in full HERE), it looks like there's a low-percentage of Pandora listeners in each state are actually listening to EDM; no state shows over 1% of Pandora listeners spinning EDM (with states like Nebraska, California, and New Jersey showing the highest EDM listenership percentages). While EDM.com is calling this data "incredible," this feels anything but.
And out of those small percentages, the actual breakdown of songs per state references a very narrow playlist of songs being played by this very small number of listeners. For example, 19 different states have Alesso's "Heroes (We Could Be)" as the #1 played song, while Keys N Krates' "Are We Faded" got the top spot in 13 states. Dillon Francis' "When We Were Young" was #1 in Iowa (and only Iowa, apparently), and Route 94's "Tell You Why" topped the chart in Chicago (which surprisingly makes sense, considering Chicago's the home of house music). Honestly, the only true surprise is Lil Silva topping a chart in Maryland, but it might be due to the Banks collaboration—or maybe he just made an impact in Maryland.
Why this information was sent? Who knows. Maybe Pandora wants get more people listening to their EDM stations? What it really looks like is no one who is really into EDM is checking for Pandora—hell, I listen to dance music on the regular and I don't think I've searched out EDM on Pandora before. Part of that is being stuck in my ways of SoundCloud/YouTube streaming, but another reason might be that people don't believe Pandora is a hub for EDM. And while you could say that those 19 Alesso-loving states might just represent this Def Jam-released single being very popular, the lack of song variety overall in these 50 United States could also mean that Pandora's EDM stations are just narrow. If only a handful of songs are making it, what ELSE is being listened to? And are these a large number of "listeners," or could these plays just be from a person or persons who are listening to EDM on a consistent basis? It's hard to say; there's not much else in the way of information, and what's there isn't astonishing.
Ultimately, you'll glean that there is some EDM on Pandora. Will this batch of data have you checking the app/website to make sure you're locked in for the next time Alesso's "Heroes" drops? We doubt it. Here's the full list of EDM songs, per state, that were popping on Pandora, provided by Pandora: