Pandora Finally Turns A Profit

For the first time since it was launched in 2005, the automated music recommendation service Pandora has managed to turn a profit.

“We became profitable for the fourth quarter of 2009, and now we’re shooting for profits for the entire 2010 [period],” said Pandora CTO Tom Conrad in a recent chat with technology wonk Om Malik.

Conrad fails to specify exactly how much profit the company pulled down, but given the embattled, post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the modern music industry, it’s impressive that Pandora isn’t deep enough in the red to give Sissy Spacek traumatic prom flashbacks.

Personally I adore Pandora, if only because its ability to show me new music that I actually dig is rivaled only by former MTV VJ Matt Pinfield. Since he’s been booted from the network in favor of reality shows about greasy Italian stereotypes, I’m praying to every eldritch horror that ever occupied a corner in one of Lovecraft’s fever dreams that Pandora lives forever.

“Through strange eons, even death may die,” and all that, right?

(Image: James Ryman)