Sensor Tower data shows Pandora dethroned Netflix as top grossing non-game app on US App Store and Google Play in Q3 2017 with $80M revenue, up 142% YoY
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a changing of the guard one quarter in the making: in Q2 2017 Sensor Tower had Netflix's app revenue up 233% YoY to $153M across both stores, the highest-grossing app overall, and now Pandora takes the US non-game crown with $80M, up 142% YoY.
What makes Pandora's climb notable is the base it grew from — its active-listener count had already slipped from 81.1M to 79.4M in early 2016 even as total revenue beat estimates — so the Q3 spike points to more revenue per remaining user rather than audience expansion.
First-order effects
- Netflix loses the US top-grossing non-game slot a single quarter after holding the #1 position overall, while Pandora's paid push turns a flat-to-shrinking listener base into $80M of quarterly store revenue.
Second-order effects
- The crown proves rotational, not permanent: Netflix regains the worldwide lead by Q3 2018 at ~$243.7M, up ~90% YoY (its biggest quarter yet), and Tinder then passes Netflix globally in Q1 2019 at $260.7M — music, video, and dating now trade the same top-grossing position quarter to quarter.
Third-order effects
- The fight Pandora and Netflix staged in 2017 scales into a structural pillar of app-store economics: by 2021 the top 100 non-game subscription apps generate $18.3B globally, up 41% YoY ($13.5B of it on the App Store).
- With private subscription companies disclosing little, Sensor Tower's quarterly rankings harden into the de facto public scoreboard for who is winning mobile monetization — every player above now has its trajectory set by these reports.
The trend: Subscription media — music, video, dating — is migrating its billing onto the app stores, turning the top-grossing non-game ranking into a rotating battleground measured almost entirely through third-party estimate firms.