Internet music service Pandora just announced its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2013. The company had a total revenue of $80.8 million, a 58% increase year-over-year. Out of these $80.8 million, $70.6 million came from advertising revenue and $10.2 million from subscription revenue. Advertising revenue increased 62% year-over-year and subscription revenue increased 38%. Despite its increased revenue, Pandora still reported a net loss per share of $0.12 and Non-GAAP net loss of $0.09 per share.

Pandora currently has $80.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. That’s down $10 million from the last quarter. The company’s cash used for its operating activities increased significantly from $2.8 million in the year-ago quarter to $10.6 million.

Looking ahead, Pandora is raising its expectations for the full fiscal year. The company now expects to make between $420-427 million in revenue for its fiscal 2013, resulting in a net loss per-share of between $0.07 and $0.11.

More Listeners, More Advertisers

Overall, the company’s active users reached a record 51.9 million this quarter, up 53% year-over-year. Pandora now has a 71.7% share of the top U.S. Internet radio services and commands almost 6% of the total U.S. radio listening market. According to Pandora, this means that advertisers are also getting even more interested in its services, as “They are moving quickly to speak with their target customers across the Pandora platform, with the majority of the top 50 digital advertisers in the U.S. already having bought multiplatform advertising on Pandora. “

Miami-based streaming music startup Senzari, which aims to take on Pandora by targeting the markets Pandora misses (i.e., the rest of the world), has just closed an additional round of funding totaling $1 million. The round includes investors in both Miami and Silicon Valley, including, notably Dave McClure’s 500 Startups.

The company had previously raised $2 million from undisclosed angels in Silicon Valley and Boston (mainly friends and family) and a private equity group in Southern California.

Senzari, the fourth startup from serial entrepreneur Bill Hajjar, offers an online music streaming radio service with a catalog of 11 million songs – a big jump over Pandora’s 900,000. As a radio service, Senzari is not trying to compete with startups like Spotify, Rdio or MOG, which let users program playlists and download tracks for offline listening. Instead, its value proposition is that it has a bigger database containing the “right” songs (meaning, the good ones), and, most importantly, that’s it’s available outside the U.S.

Also unlike on-demand services, Senzari doesn’t have to make deals with record labels to gain access to music – just distributers like SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC in the U.S., and others in different countries.

The company rolled out into beta in Spain back in February of this year in partnership with MTV, following its beta launches in the both U.S. and Brazil (where VH1 is its partner) in December 2011.

Another unique feature to the service is how it integrates social. Using Facebook’s Open Graph, Senzari aims to do for streaming music radio services what Spotify did for on-demand music services – that is, it will help you discover what your friends are into. Of course, Pandora offers some Facebook integration too, but Senzari plans to go further, not just showing you who listened to what, but combining data from both your own listening habits and those of your friends to serve up personalized music recommendations.

It also offers something called “Around Me,” which combines check-in data from Facebook to algorithmically suggest tunes based on what people at a particular location (like a bar, coffeeshop, etc.) tend to listen to. In other words, a social, local, Facebook-based radio service.

The new funding will be officially announced tonight as the Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) Latin American Tour kicks off in Miami. The 10-day tour includes stops in Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires.

“We are excited about joining the 500 family as it allows us to leverage its impressive mentor network and global relationships,” says Senzari COO Demian Bellumio. “As a matter of fact, we created a special section in Senzari with radios for each of the stops of the tour with music that represent current and classic hits.”

The company plans to use the funding to expand its core team, strengthen and add features to its service, and continue its rollout to other regions. Although Senzari won’t reveal its expansion goals right now, the company will announce more countries and partnerships in June at the LeWeb Conference in London.

Ever since I met the Songza guys at New York Tech Meetup, I’ve wanted to learn more about the app. It’s the first music service that I’ve been excited to use, mostly because it removes the work entirely. I’ve been curious about a few things, like how Songza plans to combat the big boys, namely Pandora, and how exactly these guys are making any money. Remember, Songza has no audio ads, no limits, and is free to download.

Co-founders Elias Roman and Eric Davich sat down with me to discuss this and more, saying that the only way to enter into a space as crowded as streaming music is to bring something totally different to the table. They said that they see a really big gap between music subscription services and radio services, in that using a Spotify can be hard for some people and Pandora can get stale. What Songza does is eliminate the mental math of figuring out exactly what you want to listen to.

But the possibilities extend far beyond that. Songza is collecting tons of data on the way we listen to music and what we’re doing when we choose a particular genre or playlist. Since Concierge is meant to get smarter the longer you use the feature, this data should be invaluable in fine-tuning the app even more.

Internet radio giant Pandora Media just reported fourth quarter results. The company posted revenue of $81.3 million, which was up 71 percent year-over-year. Non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.03. Analysts expected a loss of $0.02 a share, with revenue coming in at $83 million.

Advertising revenue was $72.1 million, a 74 percent year-over-year increase. Subscription and other revenue was $9.2 million, a 51 percent year-over-year increase. For the fiscal year 2012, total revenue was $274.3 million, a 99 percent year-over-year increase. Total advertising revenue was $240 million, a 101 percent year-over-year increase. Total subscription and other revenue was $34.3 million, an 87 percent year-over-year increase.

Pandora says total listener hours for the quarter were 2.7 billion and grew 99 percent year-over-year. Fiscal 2012 total listener hours were 8.2 billion, up 109 percent year-over-year. Active users reached a record 47 million in the quarter, up 62 percent year-over-year.

For the first quarter, revenue is expected to be in the range of $72-75 million. Non-GAAP net loss per share is expected to be between ($0.18) and ($0.21). Non-GAAP net loss per share excludes stock-based compensation expense, assumes minimal tax expense given our net operating loss position, and 164 million weighted average shares outstanding for the first quarter fiscal 2013.

“The fourth quarter was a strong finish to fiscal 2012, which was highlighted by record revenue, radio market share, listening hours and active users,” said Joe Kennedy, Chairman & CEO of Pandora in a release. “Reflecting on our first fiscal year as a public company, we have many accomplishments to be proud of and much to look forward to in the year ahead. Pandora continues to rapidly disrupt the radio industry and has only just begun to realize the potential of our $37 billion U.S. market opportunity.”

Although competitors like Spotify and Echo Nest are entering the market, Pandora doesn’t seem to be too worried. As co-founder Tim Westergren told Fast Company recently, Pandora has 125 million registered users and the average user listens to radio service for more than 18 hours a month.

In December, Pandora announced that they would be launching a series of free, live concerts for some of their listeners.

Miami-based streaming music startup Senzari, backed by $2 million in angel funding, is continuing its international rollout today with an entrance into its third market since its U.S. launch into private beta last December. Today, the company is announcing that it’s dropping the invite-only status as it moves into Spain, where it has signed a strategic partnership deal with MTV Spain.

The site has also been redesigned with a “mobile first” approach that will help the company transition to smartphone and tablet devices in the near future. As a part of the redesign, an “Around You” feature taps into Facebook to help users discover the music popular with those that frequent a particular location. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Senzari’s plans for social recommendations. The company is just two months away from the launch of a new algorithm which will help build stations based on data gathered from Facebook’s Open Graph, among other things.

Senzari is the fourth startup from serial entrepreneur Bill Hajjar, whose background is in wireless, mobile and the location-based service industries. The idea for his new streaming radio service is to take on Pandora by attacking some of users’ biggest pain points – namely international access and a larger catalog.

In December, Senzari began beta tests in the U.S. and Brazil, with a catalog of 10 million songs, as compared with Pandora’s 900,000. Today, Senzari COO Demian Bellumio estimates the catalog has grown to 11 million. But radio is programmed differently than something like Spotify, he says, it’s not necessarily about building the biggest catalog, it’s about ensuring Senzari has the right songs.

Like Pandora, Senzari is a radio service, not a download service or an on-demand one like Rdio, MOG, Rhapsody or Spotify. It doesn’t have to make deals with record labels to gain access to music, just distributers like SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC in the U.S., and others in different countries.

The company also wants to work with a partner as in enters new markets. For example, it previously partnered with RED Viacom (which represents ad sales for other Viacom properties, like Nickelodeon, VH1, MTV and Comedy Central). In Spain, Senzari lined up MTV Spain as a key ally. MTV will feature Senzari links on its website and promote the service to its 2.5 million followers on Facebook, Twitter and Tuenti (the “Spanish Facebook”).

But while the Spain launch is big news for the company, what’s perhaps more interesting (at least to those of us stateside) are Senzari’s plans for social. Although competitor Pandora already taps into Facebook users’ friend list for its “music feed” section as well as other social recommendations and sharing mechanisms, Senzari plans to go a bit further.

For example, with today’s redesign, the service has added an “Around Me” feature which combines check-in data from Facebook to algorithmically suggest tunes based on what people at a particular location (like a bar, coffeeshop, etc.) tend to listen to. That’s something no one else is really doing right now – a social, local, Facebook-based radio service.

In two months, Bellumio tells us that Senzari’s new recommendations algorithm will be ready, which will also tap into users’ Facebook social graph in new ways. While he’s keeping cagey on the details for now, it seems that recommendations will be powered by Facebook’s Open Graph, collecting data on what you listen to on other music streaming services as well as what your friends like. It’s the Spotify for Pandora users, in other words. This social data will be combined with other sources of information about your music listening habits, Bellumio says.

And as for the battle with Pandora, the now public music radio giant? Bellumio admits that being available outside the U.S. is key. “A big selling point in those markets is that there’s no Pandora,” he says, mentioning that he respects Pandora enormously, but that Senzari is after the first mover advantage outside the U.S.

Plus, he adds, “Senzari’s experience is lot cooler, and a lot richer…Pandora feels like it’s for a grandmother,” he boasts. “We’re for a younger generation that wants very sexy apps.”

In addition, “we can be a lot more innovative than Pandora,” he says, “given that we’re a small company and a pure startup.”

Those are big, bold claims, but stirring ones. Of course, it’s too soon to tell if the startup will gain the traction it needs to really take off, but building on top of Facebook is a good first step in building up the potential for virility.

The newly redesigned Senzari is available now to all U.S., Brazilian and Spanish users, no invite needed. HTML5 mobile apps will arrive next month, with their native counterparts to follow.

Update: Tickets are now sold out. Be sure to keep your eye out for ticket giveaways and for when we release our next batch of tickets.

The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.

For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App, the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.

There are some pretty good match-ups this year. Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline for Best Social App, along with the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0). The Kindle Fire is competing with the iPad 2 for Best New Device. And Pinterest, Turntable.fm, Nest, Fab, and Codecademy are all vying for Best New Startup (even though two of those were complete pivots). LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is up for Angel of the Year. His seed investment in Zynga is worth 160 times what he paid for it. But AngelList founders Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi are also finalists in the category for helping to democratize angel investing, along with Conway, Rabois, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, and Kevin Rose (who has a killer portfolio that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, and Square). Who will win?

Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote. The rules state that you may vote once per day, per award category, until voting closes on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:59pm PST. There are 20 award categories open for voting, recognizing the top accomplishments across a variety of fields and roles. If you are one of the finalists, create a badge and get your community excited about this honor and get them to vote for you. Winners will be announced on January 31, live at the Crunchies.

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

Best Technology Achievement (2010 winner: Google Self Driving Cars)
Lytro (Related posts)
NFC (Related posts)
OnLive (Related posts)
Siri (Related posts)
Tesla Flat Pack Battery (Related posts)

Best Social Application (2010 winner: DailyBooth)
Facebook Timeline (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Google+ (Related posts)
The New New Twitter (Related posts)
Path 2.0 (Related posts)

Best Shopping Application (2010 winner: Groupon)
Birchbox (Related posts)
Fab (Related posts)
Gilt Groupe (Related posts)
Lot18 (Related posts)
Warby Parker (Related posts)

Best Mobile Application (2010 winner: Google Mobile Maps for Android)
Evernote (Related posts)
Flipboard (Related posts)
Pandora (Related posts)
Spotify (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)
TaskRabbit (Related posts)

Best Location Application (New category for 2011)
Airbnb (Related posts)
Foursquare (Related posts)
Grindr (Related posts)
RunKeeper (Related posts)
Uber (Related posts)

Best Tablet Application (2010 winner: Flipboard)
djay (Related posts)
Eventbrite At the Door (Related posts)
Fotopedia (Related posts)
GarageBand (Related posts)
Netflix (Related posts)
StumbleUpon (Related posts)

Best Design (2010 winner: gogobot)
Gojee (Related posts)
Orchestra (Related posts)
Path 2.0 (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Quora (Related posts)

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010 winner: addmired)
Github (Related posts)
Imgur (Related posts)
Instapaper (Related posts)
Onesheet (Related posts)
Tap Tap Tap (Camera+) (Related posts)

Best Cloud Service (New category for 2011)
Asana (Related posts)
Box (Related posts)
CloudFlare (Related posts)
Dropbox (Related posts)
Okta (Related posts)
Twilio (Related posts)

Best International Startup (2010 winner: Viki)
Badoo (Related posts)
Klarna (Related posts)
Peixe Urbano (Related posts)
Rovio (Related posts)
SoundCloud (Related posts)
Wonga (Related posts)

Best Clean Tech Startup (2010 winner: SolarCity)
Alta Energy (Related posts)
Array Power (Related posts)
EcoATM (Related posts)
EcoMotors (Related posts)
Hara (Related posts)

Best New Device (2010 winner: iPad)
Galaxy Nexus (Related posts)
iPad 2 (Related posts)
iPhone 4S (Related posts)
Kindle Fire (Related posts)
Nest (Related posts)

Best Time Sink (2010 winner: Cityville)
Modern Warfare 3 (Related posts)
Quora (Related posts)
Skyrim (Related posts)
Turntable.fm (Related posts)
Words With Friends (Related posts)

Biggest Social Impact (New category for 2011)
Charity: Water (Related posts)
Khan Academy (Related posts)
Kickstarter (Related posts)
Practice Fusion (Related posts)
Twitter (Related posts)

Angel of the Year (2010 winner: Paul Graham)
Ron Conway (Related posts)
Paul Graham (Related posts)
Reid Hoffman (Related posts)
Keith Rabois (Related posts)
Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi (AngelList) (Related posts for Naval) (Related posts for Babak)
Kevin Rose (Related posts)

VC of the Year (2010 winner: Yuri Milner)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz (Related posts for Marc) (Related posts for Ben)
Matt Cohler (Related posts)
Vinod Khosla (Related posts)
Aileen Lee (Related posts)
Yuri Milner (Related posts)
David Sze (Related posts)

Founder of the Year (2010 winner: Mark Pincus)
Leah Busque (Task Rabbit) (Related posts)
Brian Chesky (Airbnb) (Related posts)
Jack Dorsey (Square, Twitter) (Related posts)
Susan Feldman & Ali Pincus (One Kings Lane) (Related posts for Susan) (Related posts for Ali)
Drew Houston (Dropbox) (Related posts)

CEO of the Year (2010 winner: Andrew Mason)
Dick Costolo (Twitter) (Related posts)
Daniel Ek (Spotify) (Related posts)
Phil Libin (Evernote) (Related posts)
Mark Pincus (Zynga) (Related posts)
Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn) (Related posts)

Best New Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Quora)
Codecademy (Related posts)
Fab (Related posts)
Nest (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Turntable.fm (Related posts)

Best Overall Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Twitter)
Dropbox (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Gilt Groupe (Related posts)
Spotify (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)
Tumblr (Related posts)

5th Annual Crunchies Awards
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

Internet radio service Pandora has posted its November listening stats in the top ten radio markets in the U.S. The company says that it has seen Average Quarter Hour (AQH) gains in each of the top ten U.S. radio markets since September.

Pandora says the gains ranged from 13 to 25 percent listening increases in each market with the biggest AQH gain of 25 percent occurring in the New York metro area. An AQH rating of 1.0 means an average of one percent of a target population was listening to Pandora for at least five minutes within a quarter hour window between 6.00 a.m. and midnight.

In November, among adults 18-34 in the top ten markets, Pandora’s weekly cumulative audience (the measure of the total unique Pandora listeners in each market) reached more than 19.9 percent in each metro survey area. For adults 18-49, the weekly cumulative audience for November for the first time had more than one million unique listeners in both the New York and Los Angeles metro survey areas.

Pandora reported stronger than expected earnings in Q3, with users listening to 2.1 billion total hours of radio for the third quarter of 2011. And the company announced that it has 40 million active users and 66 percent of the country’s internet radio market.

Looking forward Pandora is eying local radio ad dollars, and increased usage in local radio markets is only going to help the company attract advertisers and revenue.

This afternoon at The Web 2.0 Summit, Pandora Co-founder Tim Westergren sat down with Fortune Editor Adam Lashinsky to talk about what’s going on at everybody’s favorite personalized radio platform. For those who may have missed it, Pandora recently enjoyed a relatively high-profile IPO, putting its “P” ticker symbol right smack in the middle of “IPO” — and the NYSE. And its stock has remained pretty high, both literally and figuratively, pricing at over $16 a share on its opening day, and is today trading around $15.20 per share. So far, so good.

Furthermore, today the company counts 37 million active users and, as Westergren has said on multiple occasions, is finally hitting scale. Part of the reason that the co-founder believes that the company has been able to reach scale, and continue to grow across mobile and the web, is due to the fact that the entire industry is shifting from broadcast/terrestrial radio to personalized radio.

Of course, Westergren is wont to say that this shift is endemic to an entire industry, as Pandora has really been at the forefront of pushing personalized radio across different forms of media. And, based on its mobile adoption in particular, where Pandora reaps 70 percent of its users, it doesn’t look like Westergren is wearing rose-colored glasses.

Another interesting statistic the co-founder mentioned today was that Pandora currently has over 900,000 songs in its repertoire, and the majority of those songs were played last month — one of the biggest differences between traditional and new radio, where the diversity of the musical catalog is far smaller.

Therein lies Pandora’s value proposition: Allowing listeners to personalize their radio experience, as well as exposing listeners to a wider breadth of artists, songs — and, in turn, giving artists a far longer reach than ever before. To this point, Westergren said, “new” radio is helping the long-tail, by playing more songs.

And, it’s important to note that Pandora pays to performers. While this may hamstring the platform a bit financially, it’s great for musicians. Terrestrial (or broadcast) radio only pays publishing fees, which go to composers and record labels, but not to performers. Musicians rejoice.

But, what about Spotify, you ask? Revenue from subscribers only made up about 15 percent of Pandora’s revenue in 2011; the majority of its revenue is based on advertising. While Westergren said that the company needs to do a better job of monetizing through advertising in the long run, so far most of its users are cool with listening to the free, ad-supported version rather than subscribing to take advantage of ad-free listening.

Spotify, on the other hand, is predominantly subscription-based, but Westergren said that he thinks there’s room for both companies to survive and do what they do best. Ideally, he says, a Pandora power user “would find some songs they like on Pandora, and then go buy them on iTunes or listen to them on demand via Rdio or Spotify and use them in tandem,” he said. “It’s not 100 percent distinct, there’s obviously some overlap, but I think at a high level the place where we operate in the minds of users.”

Spotify, with its Facebook integration, has been exploding in the U.S., but for those looking for a one-button, low maintenance way to discover music based on their own distinct tastes, Pandora remains one of the best options out there. We’ll see what the future holds, but I’m willing to bet that both services will be around for at least a few years.

Popular personalized radio service Pandora, which went public in June, has just announced that it’s rolling out its overhauled, HTML5-based music player to everyone. The service has been testing the player since July, and it’s a huge improvement over the old Flash-based experience. Everything looks much more modern, it’s faster, and it’s easier to use.

The other big piece of the news: Pandora is removing the cap on how much music ‘free’ users can listen to every month. Historically Pandora has let users stream 40 hours of music a month, at which point they were prompted to upgrade to a premium ‘Pandora One’ account (which run $36 a year). Starting today, that cap is gone, so users can listen to as much as they’d like. There’s still a significant incentive to upgrade though, as Pandora One users never have to deal with ads.

It’s also worth pointing out that the player is launching the day before Facebook’s f8 conference. Pandora was among the first services to sport Facebook’s ‘Instant Personalization’, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it’s deeply integrated into whatever Facebook is launching tomorrow. Pandora is also making its own social features more prominent, with the integration of a new social feed as part of today’s update. From the Pandora blog:

Discovery of Music with Friends – Enhanced listener profiles and a new music feed offer a centralized place to find, like and comment on what friends and like-minded listeners are discovering and enjoying on Pandora. The music feed will roll out slowly over the course of the coming days. In addition to the prominent new “share” button, stations now have their own URLs, making it super easy for listeners to share favorite stations via Twitter, Facebook, or email.

Pandora announced a significant redesign this morning, and paired with this announcement comes a number of user milestones for the music streaming and personalized radio service. The company now has 100 million registered users and 36 million monthly active users across its platform.

The company is announcing these stats at its first Analyst Day, a month after the company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. As we initially reported, Pandora got a strong start in the public markets but shares quickly fell to below the company’s initial pricing of $16 per share. But Pandora’s stock was able to rebound recently, and closed at $19.26 yesterday afternoon.

Pandora says that it ended 2010 with 2.3 percent market share of all radio listening in the United States, and has increased its market share to 3.6 percent of all radio listening in the United States.

It’s not surprising that Pandora is growing rapidly, especially following the IPO. Debuting in the public markets is a marketing campaign in itself, and because Pandora was one of the heavily hyped IPOs toe debut this year, the company got a ton of press.

In terms of financials, revenue numbers are increasing but the company has yet to make a profit. Now that it has more cash to play with, it should be interesting to see how Pandora will begin to monetize off of its products.

Perhaps you noticed that TechCrunch went through a bit of a redesign yesterday. Well, we’re not the only ones undergoing a major facelift this summer. Another site you all know and love will soon look completely different. More importantly, it will soon function much better. It’s a change that will affect millions. Get ready for New Pandora.

Yes, after years of familiarity, Pandora will begin a massive metamorphosis on the web this week. At first, subscribers of the Pandora One service will begin to get access to the new site (on a rolling basis). And over the next several weeks, everyone will. The transformation is pretty stunning — and I mean that entirely in a good way. New Pandora is beautiful. I cannot think of a single thing I like better about the old site.

“I’ve been looking at it for seven years. I was ready to give it a fresh coat of paint,” is how Pandora head of product and CTO, Tom Conrad, sets up the change as we sit down to go over the new site. “We started on it about a year ago. But even earlier than that, we’d been talking about it. There were core navigation problems that needed fixing. At first, we had been talking about more incremental changes, with the site still operating in Flash. But then last summer, it became clear that browsers with full HTML5 capabilities had gained enough support. We realized we could do the full Pandora experience without Flash,” he says.

That’s right, another site once completely reliant on Flash is breaking the addiction.

“Back in 2004, web browsers didn’t natively know how to play music. There was QuickTime, Real Player, and Flash. Flash was so ubiquitous back then — it was an obvious choice,” Conrad says. “Fast forward to last year, everything was changing. I had begun to get worried about site performance on the client side. The backend is fast, but as we kept adding features, everything would slow down for users. If you try to load Pandora right now on the web with a moderate amount of stations, it takes something like 10 seconds. By any reasonable standard, it’s an eternity,” he continues.

Conrad then brings up New Pandora and shows me how quickly it loads compared to the old site. By my count, it takes 2-3 seconds and then music begins playing. It’s an insanely faster onboarding experience.

And the site itself is stunning, yet familiar. “We wanted the experience to be completely fresh. But we didn’t want to force our listeners to completely re-learn the Pandora experience,” he says, noting that while things look much cleaner, the same basic layout remains largely intact. “We keep many of the same progressions from the old site,” he continues. “There are a bunch of great features on the new site, but we continue to be really committed to the idea that Pandora wants to be a simple solution.”

Conrad says that it was also about a year ago, as mobile growth was exploding, that he began to realize that Pandora’s app for the iPhone and iPad were actually closer to the essence of Pandora than the web version was. So it should be no surprise that New Pandora takes its design cues from the iPad app Pandora first built last year (this is similar to the way in which “New Twitter” was influenced by Twitter for iPad).

You’ll notice that along the top of New Pandora, there’s now a music control bar that stays in place as you navigate through the site. This is key. “Content on Pandora is deeper than most people realize. We needed a better way to present it,” Conrad says, showing me that you can now visit any page on Pandora while your music continues to play. And unlike the old site, where elements would open in new windows or clunky Flash overlays, everything is fluidly displayed using HTML. This alone will drastically alter the way many use the service — it will likely be much more of a source of music information to aid discovery.

Then Conrad’s eyes really light up. “Oh! The back button finally works!,” he exclaims. Due to the limitations of Flash, Pandora has long been crippled by natural back button usage in browsers. But not anymore. Want to go back from where you just came? Just click the back button. Again, the music in the top control bar will keep right on playing.

Conrad is also clearly excited by the fact that you can share an actual URL now thanks to the HTML usage. Previously, you had to rely on the share widgets to dynamically create an URL that would work for the Flash-wrapped site.

Lyrics also now expand on the homepage of songs for the first time. And comments finally feel native to the site. “We’ve got millions of people leaving comments on the site, but they never got surfaced. We might see a real explosion,” Conrad says.

“Another core change is the way the station creation process works,” Conrad says, showing me that when you click in the new “Create a New Station” box, a drop-down appears to help you. As you type, you’ll get suggestions for stations to create. These include bands, artists, genres, even comedians. And it’s not just keyword-based. Pandora will dynamically serve you recommendations based on the music genome core, your own voting and listening history, and social elements of the site.

Speaking of social, that’s another key to this revamp. ”I wanted to use the clean sheet of paper as an opportunity to rethink how you interact with music socially,” Conrad says. “We have tried lots of different angles on social over the years. Email, profiles pages, commenting, embeddable widgets for MySpace. Twitter, Facebook — then deeper Facebook integration. It just felt to me that we hadn’t gotten the formula quite right in all those attempts,” he continues.

With New Pandora, the social experience is much more central to the site. Right next to “Now Playing” is your “Music Feed” which shows you the activity for all of your friends on Pandora. Every like, every listen, every comment. It’s a bit like Apple’s Ping, but a Ping people will actually use because it captures what everyone already does on Pandora — again, mainly listen to music and give “thumbs up” ratings.

There is also a “My Profile” area to keep track of what you’ve been doing on Pandora. These profiles have actually existed for some time, but few used them as they were very static and uninteresting. Now they look great and are useful. Clicking on any users’ profile allows you to easily see their activity and to follow them. Their activity will then appear in your “Music Feed” stream.

When you click on the “Share” button for each track on Pandora, you’ll still have the standard options to send to Facebook and Twitter, but the default is now to simply share on Pandora itself. For example, you can share what station you’re listening to and send that right to your music feed for all of your Pandora followers to see. “Pandora now has its own follower/following system,” Conrads notes. “We talked to our listeners and found that the vast majority are very conscious about spamming their friends on their other social networks. They’re more reluctant to share than I would have imagined,” he continues. “My hope is that as people develop followers on Pandora itself, they’ll become more comfortable with sharing in general.”

“I like to think of sharing inside of Instagram as training wheels for the other networks,” Conrad continues. What he means is that people at first are only comfortable sharing images with their contacts within specific apps, but eventually the gain confidence and branch out to share with other social networks.

“What I’m excited about is that this environment is a starting point for us to further evolve the social aspects of music. You can imagine all types of content flowing through our feeds,” Conrad says. “We could port in when artists that you like have new albums, for example,” he says.

Conrad is quick to point out that Pandora still has private profiles as well. If you choose to make your profile private, you’ll basically be invisible to the service at that point, he says.

So what do all of these social endeavors mean for Pandora’s relationship with Facebook? After all, they were one of the initial Open Graph partners — and Facebook is about to launch their own entry into the music space, supposedly with a number of partners. “We’ve had a really, really close working relationship with Facebook for many years. We continue to talk regularly about things. Mark [Zuckerberg] himself has called me with ideas for how to make Pandora more social over the years,” Conrad says. “Clearly, Facebook is the center of the world for social today. We’ll continue to be a part of that.”

That’s all Conrad would give me with regard to Facebook. So I guess we’ll just to wait and see if they’ll be one of the Facebook Music launch partners.

Going back to HTML5, clearly Pandora is making a bet here that this is the future of the web. But that’s an easy bet to make at this point. Still, they’re thinking bigger too. “HTML5 is the only technology that has a shot at being a ubquitous solution across a wide range of computing experiences — tablets, TV, automobiles, etc. We still have along way to go, but it’s possible,” Conrad says.

“I’m not ready to predict our answer for things like tablets will be HTML5 down the road. But it’s nice to have the infrastructure in place,” Conrad notes, while saying there’s still a lot to love about native apps as well. “We’re devoted to delivering the best possible experience.”

And while over half of Pandora’s listeners now come from mobile devices, Conrad notes that the web will always have a place in their heart — it’s where Pandora began. And now it’s where Pandora is evolving.

Again, to be clear, this initial roll out of New Pandora will begin with Pandora One subscribers first. The idea there isn’t to bring in more Pandora One subscribers, Conrad promises. Instead, they simple would like a smaller group to test the new site with (as well as reward those paying members). Pandora is also hard at work to perfect the advertising that will be the a part of the free version of Pandora, which most users use. You can expect this to be largely the same as it is now on the current Pandora site — large ads splashed in the background.

Conrad credits his “incredible engineering team” for pulling off this transition from Flash dependance to HTML5. And while it’s clear that the Flash addiction has been kicked, Conrad notes that they continue to have fall-back Flash elements for browsers not fully HTML5-compliant.

Conrad says the work on New Pandora really touched everyone at the company. There have been well north of 100 people working on this project by this point, he says. Compare that with the 8 to 10 people who built the original site. And remember, they were building this in secret while also going through an IPO!

“It’s the best work we’ve done,” Conrad says simply of New Pandora. Upon using it myself for the past several days, I have to agree. It’s brilliant.

You can find out more about New Pandora here.

LINKEDIN (NYSE:LNKD)

Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After pricing its IPO at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn began trading at $83.00 per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation.

But these high stock prices didn’t sustain and LinkedIn’s value per share dropped significantly over the next month, dropping as low as $63.71 per share. However, the company’s stock rebounded last week, with shares rising as high as $95.50 on Friday, eventually closing at $94.54. That’s a 110 percent increase from its initial pricing.

PANDORA (NYSE:P)

Similar to LinkedIn, music streaming service Pandora also drew considerable attention to its IPO, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the desirable, single character symbol ‘P.’ The company priced its IPO at $16 per share (valuing the company at $2.6 billion), but opened at $20 per share on June 15 (up 25 percent), valuing the company at $3.2 billion.

In the two weeks following the IPO, Pandora’s stock took a bit of a dive, reaching as low as $12.16 per share. But like LinkedIn, Pandora’s shares saw an uptick over the past week, closing at $20.04 on Friday, which is up 25 percent from the company’s initial pricing in June.

YANDEX (NASDAQ:YNDX)

Russian search engine Yandex, which began trading on the NASDAQ on May 24, priced its IPO at $25 per share, but opened at $35, giving Yandex a market cap of roughly $11.2 billion. That’s a bigger market cap than both LinkedIn and Pandora.

Yandex has experienced highs and lows in the past month with the value of its stock, but the fluctuations have not been nearly as extreme as some of its contemporaries in the tech IPO market. Yandex’s stock dipped to a low of $29.73 in mid-June but rebounded quickly and closed on Friday at $35.69, which is a 40 percent increase from its initial pricing.

FUSION-IO (NYSE:FIO)

Fusion-io, the developer of flash- memory technology for companies, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on June 9. The company priced its IPO at $19 per share, valuing Fusion-io at $1.5 billion, but opened at $25 per share, giving the company a nearly $2 billion market cap.

Fusion-io’s stock has performed fairly well over the past month, reaching a high of $36.32 last week. The company’s shares closed at $31.19 on Friday, up 64 percent from its initial pricing.

HOMEAWAY (NASDAQ:AWAY)

Vacation home rental service HomeAway debuted its IPO last week, pricing at $27 per share. HomeAway, which listed on the NASDAQ, saw its shares pop over 30 percent in initial trading last Wednesday, giving the rental service as valuation of $3 billion.

HomeAway’s shares have maintained its value, relatively speaking, in its first week of trading, reaching a low of $34.92 and a high of $42.30. On Friday, HomeAway’s shares closed at $38.42, a 42 percent increase from the stock’s pricing.

RENREN (NYSE:RENN)

Chinese social network Renren actually went public before LinkedIn, pricing its IPO in early May at $14 per share, with a total offering size of $743.4 million. The company was pitching itself as a “Facebook” like site for the Chinese market, which resulted in an increase in the share price range from the initial $9-$11 to $12-$14. That increase resulted in a boost in the deal size to $743.4 million from the original price of $584 million.

RenRen opened at $18 per share, but the stock has since plummeted to as low as $6.23 per share. On Friday, RenRen closed at $9.25 per share, which is a 34 percent drop in value from the initial pricing.

BANKRATE (NYSE:RATE)

Bankrate provides free rate information to consumers on more than 300 financial products, including mortgages, credit cards, new and used automobile loans, and more. The company priced its IPO at $15 per share, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. The company’s shares, which began trading in mid-June, have remained fairly steady at this price, reaching a high of $17.89. Bankrate closed at $17.13 per share on Friday, up 13 percent.

Who’s Next Up To IPO

Zillow: Real estate listings giant Zillow filed its S-1 in April, so we could be seeing the company hit the public markets in the next two months. Zillow wants to raise $51.75 million in the offering, and while revenue has grown for the company year over year, Zillow has taked a loss for the past three years. Zillow will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “Z.”

Kayak: Travel search engine Kayak filed its S-1 last November, aiming to raise $50 million. No word on when the search engine is planning to IPO, but Kayak did reveal revenue growth in the past year, however net income is down. The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “KYAK.”

Groupon: Daily deals giant Groupon just filed its S-1 in June, aiming to raise $750 million in the public offering. Though the company has an impressive revenue run rate of $2.6 billion for 2011, but has drawn criticism for a lack of profits and the fact that the founders have taken a significant amount of money off the table. The company is looking at an IPO in the Fall.

Zynga: Zynga just filed for its $1 billion IPO this past Friday, revealing impressive financials. Revenues grew 392 percent in 2010, up from $121.5 million in 2009. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, the company’s revenues reached $235 million (or a $940 million revenue run-rate), which is up 134 percent from the first quarter of 2010. Both Zynga and Groupon may be rushing to IPO ahead of Facebook, which is expected to file in the coming year.

Not Yet Filed, But Champing At The Bit:

Facebook: We know an IPO is in the works for Facebook, it’s just a matter of when. The company has been meeting with bankers to discuss IPO size and time frame for an offering. And the company just added Netflix founder and CEO (and an IPO veteran) Reed Hastings to its board. It’s been thought that the social network will go public by April 2012, but it could happen before this date.

Glam Media: We’ve heard Glam Media, one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is planning to file for an IPO as early as this Fall. The company has hit $100 million in annual revenue, reaches 90 million people a month in the U.S., and is in the process of hiring bankers to lead its offering.

Yelp: Online reviews and daily deals giant Yelp has its sights set on an IPO, but the timeline is unclear. Yelp is now at 50 million unique visitors per month, mostly in the U.S., and has raised $56 million in funding.

Disclosure: My husband is an employee of Groupon.

LinkedIn, which opened at $83 per share in May, has hovered between $60 and $75 per share for the past month, dipping as low as $60 per share. Over the past few days, LinkedIn stock has climbed upwards, closing at $89.94 yesterday. And today, stock reached as high as $94.99 this morning, giving LinkedIn a $9 billion valuation.

Pandora, which opened at $20 per share, has dropped as low was $12.10 per share, and has hovered between $12 and $15. Today, Pandora’s stock rose as high as $21.20, giving Pandora a $3.4 billion valuation.

We’ll see if Pandora and LinkedIn can sustain these stock values beyond today.

For basis of comparison, LinkedIn’s IPO popped by 100 percent on its first day of trading, and has also settled below its opening trade of $83. LinkedIn is currently trading at $72 per share.

Some have said that Pandora’s IPO was priced correctly, as opposed to LinkedIn, which was underpriced and thus witnessed a significant pop in trading. But dropping below the initial pricing amount is probably not a good sign.

For background on Pandora’s road to the IPO, read ‘Pandora Puts The “P” In IPO — Our Talk With Them On The Big Day.’

Three years ago, I got a phone call — Pandora was about to die.

Things were not going well for the Internet radio service at that point. The economy was collapsing, Sequoia would soon give its infamous “RIP, Good Times” presentation, and most importantly for Pandora, it was starting to look like the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) may not lower their rates. This led founder Tim Westergren to suggest that they may have to shut the service down. And we wrote that sadly, it was looking like Pandora may have to be a “sacrificial lamb“.

That’s what makes today so fascinating — and perhaps the feel-good tech story for this generation of web startups. Pandora IPO’d this morning, listing itself on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. While the orignal IPO share price had been set at $7 to $9, the company revised that to $10 to $12, and then set it yesterday at $16. The stock opened today north of $20 a share, where it remains. The market cap is now over $3 billion. Again, this was a company that was going to die.

I got the chance to speak with Pandora head of product and CTO Tom Conrad about the big day — as well as the amazing backstory of the company.

“It’s a beautiful day in New York,” Conrad says with a laugh. When I tell him that’s on the record, he laughs again. “It rained yesterday, but not a cloud in the sky today.” He’s in a good mood, obviously. And he should be. He got to take the company that he has poured his life into for the past seven years public today. He says he’s speaking to me from either “deep in the basement or way up up in a tower” at the NYSE.

“It’s a really exciting time for Pandora. We’re growing really fast. And we’re excited about the opportunity for all the new listeners we have,” Conrad kicks things off by saying. I ask him to back up and start at the beginning.

Pandora was founded in 2000, but it wasn’t known as “Pandora” at the time. Instead, the company was focused on their Music Genome Project, which aimed to extract the DNA from music, as it were, and find commonalities to perfect recommendations. When Conrad joined in 2004, the company was known as Savage Beast — yes, a truly awful name that invokes Savage Garden. In fact, here’s an early blog post from Conrad about Savage Beast that he probably won’t be pleased with me sharing.

When Conrad came on board, the company had just taken its first real venture capital investment (from Walden Ventures) and Joe Kennedy had just been hired as CEO. The idea was to transform the Music Genome Project from a cool piece of technology that was licensed out to the likes of Best Buy, and (our parent) AOL, among others, to a consumer-facing product. That effort began in December 2004, with design work leading up to that. By the late summer of 2005, the product was ready to go.

And here’s where things get really interesting.

“TechCrunch is a part of this,” Conrad says. “We launched, and the first Barcamp was the following Saturday. I got out of bed that morning and almost didn’t go. But at the last minute, I threw my laptop in the car and drove to Palo Alto,” he says. “By luck, Mike was in the room.”

He means, of course, Mike Arrington.

“He got up when it was over, went to a Starbucks, I think, and wrote a post about Pandora. That was the starter pistol for our early growth,” Conrad says. And thanks to the magic of the Internet, you too can see that post from August 20, 2005 right here (note the part where Arrington tries to give out invites from his personal email address, then gives up due to massive interest).

Conrad notes that TechCrunch itself was “about 45 days old” at that point. And he fondly remembers Arrington being annoyed with him that the Pandora launch wasn’t given to him as an exclusive. “At that point, he was just some blogger to me,” Conrad says with a laugh.

But that didn’t stop Conrad from showing up at Arrington’s house over the next several months for the BBQs Arrington used to host in his backyard. Conrad recalls that Pandora music streaming from his laptop would often be the musical entertainment for the evening “while we stood around his little campfire”.

From that point on, Pandora “grew at a pace that exceeded my expectations,” Conrad says noting that millions of users were coming on in just the opening years.

But then the CRB decided the royalties for this new form of radio, Internet radio, needed to be set. Conrad notes that after Pandora was live for about a year and a half, those rates were revealed — and they weren’t good. “It was economically unsound,” he says. “And it wasn’t just us that was affected; Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and a lot of smaller guys too.” At that point, Pandora entered into a two-year-long process of negotiating with the record labels over royalties that led to the situation described at the beginning of this post. “This was a complicated period for us,” Conrad says.

But there was also a ray of hope that emerged during this time. The App Store.

Conrad notes that when the iPhone OS 3 (remember, it wasn’t “iOS” at the time) launched in the summer of 2008 and brought the third-party-friendly App Store for the first time, everything changed. “Broadly, the smartphone category accelerated everything for us,” he says, noting that the App Store was the catalyst.

“What we’re really trying to do is re-invent radio. It was consumed everywhere, but least of all at work, and the web browser changed that,” Conrad says. “But the mobile devices took it out of the browser and out into the world,” he continues. Now over half of Pandora’s usage comes on smartphone devices, he says. And that’s incredible since Pandora had been on feature phones for about a year prior to the App Store, but it wasn’t going anywhere. With the iPhone, “the consumer expectation of what they could do with their phone changed drastically,” he says.

Conrad also points out that Nielsen had a recent study which put Pandora in the top five apps in terms of usage on major devices — iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry. He believes they’re the only company in the top five on each of those devices.

So the App Store helped Pandora’s mood in an otherwise bleak time. “The timelines do overlap in an interesting way,” Conrad says. But at the same time, he says that he was never too concerned for Pandora having to completely shut down. “The [royalty] rates were so irrational that we were very confident through the period that we would come to a compromise with the rights’ holders,” he says. At the same time, he credits the “incredible outpouring of support from our listeners” as the thing that really motivated Congress to start looking into the situation.

“It was frustrating that it went on for so long, but we thought rationality would prevail,” Conrad says. And even after “RIP, Good Times”, hit in late 2008, he wasn’t too worried because “we focused on the monetization of the product from the beginning.” “Other companies were behind the eight ball, but we were starting to see the rewards from that attention to revenue,” he says.

And then in the middle of 2009, the clouds broke. Pandora (and other Internet radio services) reached an agreement that would lower royalties to the point where the business could work. “Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates,” Conrad told us at the time.

“A real period of growth started then.” And today, Pandora has over 94 million registered users.

I asked Conrad about the reports leading up to the IPO that while revenues were strong, the company was having trouble in the profits arena due to costs (and royalty costs, in particular) rising as they become more popular. Conrad, who again is the head of product and technology, declined to comment on those specifics. But he did say that, “the growth of our service is really exciting, and we do have the ability to monetize.” “We’re confident,” he concludes, noting that they’re also not too worried about the stock price right now. “At the end of the day, the investors now control where the stock prices goes.”

In terms of Pandora today, Conrad says there are two key areas that excite them right now: cars and comedy.

“47 percent of all radio listening happens in the car,” Conrad says. “That’s been largely off limits to us. But when Pandora is fully mature, a huge percentage of listening will happen in the car,” he continues, pointing to partnerships they already have with GM, Toyota, BWM, and others. “That is a big area of focus for us.”

In terms of comedy, this is a new vertical Pandora has launched that also takes advantage of their Genome project. “Bill Cosby is really excited about it!,” Conrad says almost giddy.

“You’ll certainly see us do more exciting things,” Conrad notes without going into specifics.

As for the “cloud” music services that have burst into the spotlight now that Amazon, Google, and Apple are in the game, Conrad says they should only help Pandora as they help the entire online music movement. “The figure that surprises most folks is that about 80 percent of music consumed each week comes from music radio. Only 20 percent comes from owned music,” he says. “We’re really focused on defining the future of radio. That’s the mainstream opportunity. That’s how we can change the world in a big way,” he says, noting that he includes Spotify and Rdio in that cloud owned music space as well.

As for the IPO itself, Conrad says that he really doesn’t think it will change where the company is right now at all. The plan has been to ramp up hiring for a while, and that will continue. “But geez, I’m the product guy, who knows,” he concludes.

“I’m spending a lot of time today thinking about how many people helped get us here. Designers, engineers, our partners, our listeners, our investors — and now our public market investors. It’s incredible how many talented and devoted people it takes to build a long-term and enduring company. I just feel really lucky to have been a little part of that,” Conrad ends with.

A great story. A comeback story. And we’re happy that Conrad is willing to openly acknowledge the vital role TechCrunch played. I’m kidding — sort of.

Long live “P”.

The company raised $235 million in the IPO, offering approximately 14.7 million shares of common stock. A total of 6 million shares are being offered by Pandora, with selling stockholders offering 8.7 million shares. In addition, Pandora has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to approximately an additional 2.2 million shares to cover over-allotments.

Pandora initially filed its S-1 in February, creating a ton of hype about the music company’s IPO. A few weeks ago, the company released its most recent revenue numbers, which reflected an increase in both sales and usage for the internet radio service. But the company, which now has 94 million users, has yet to make a profit.

How Pandora’s stock value will fare in the long term is unclear, given both the company’s financials and the mixed performance of tech company stock in the past few IPOs. LinkedIn shares popped 84 percent on the first trade of its offering to $83 per share, but dropped below this number of late (today’s LNKD shares opening at $76 per share).

Yandex shares opened at $35 per share, but have dropped slightly to $31.60 at market close yesterday. And Fusion-IO shares began trading at $25 per share (up 30 percent from pricing) but have leveled off at $23.00 per share.

As Pandora CEO Joseph Kennedy tells CNBC this morning, “the investors will determine the stock price.”

Photo Credit: @tconrad

That club was once reserved for the big blue-chip industrial companies: Chrysler (C), Ford (F), Sears (S), U.S. Steel (X), and Woolworth (Z). Of that list, only Ford and U.S. Steel remain. Chrysler was acquired by Daimler and lost the C to Citibank. Sears lost the S to Sprint Nextel. Woolworth went out of business.

Of course, there are already several tech companies in the single letter club. Agilent Technologies (A), NetSuite (N), Sprint Nextel (S), and AT&T (T). But none are pure consumer-based Internet companies.

Zillow, the real-estate website, applied for the NASDAQ ticker symbol Z in a filing last month. But, it hasn’t started trading yet. Pandora has beaten them in the race.

In the past, the NYSE has said it was holding M for Microsoft (MSFT) and I for Intel (INTC). M is Macy’s but I is open. There are no signs Microsoft or Intel are planning a change.

There was also talk at one time that Yahoo (YHOO) might take the Y spot, which is now at Alleghany. Go figure. Perhaps because it ends in Y.

What about possible stock symbols for Facebook, Twitter, or Groupon. F is already Ford, T is AT&T, and G is Genpact. In Groupon’s filing, they wrote they expect to apply for the symbol GRPN. Symbols don’t usually change unless there is an acquisition, or the company goes bust, so those companies would need to pick something else.

At one time, stock symbols were printed on the ticker tape and handwritten on transaction slips. So, shorter was faster. Today stock symbols have less importance, but the single letter companies can still say they are part of a very exclusive club.

My grandfather used to try to fool people with a joke saying of the thousands and thousands of companies traded on the stock market, how many have a single letter as a ticker symbol? He always enjoyed when someone not thinking clearly might say 50 or 100. He would proudly tell them there can only be 26. With Pandora getting added tomorrow, there will only be 20.

Pandora’s stock will begin trading tomorrow morning on The New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P.” The company expects to raise as much as $235 million in the offerring and will offer 6,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO.

Pandora initially filed its S-1 in February. A few weeks ago, the company released its most recent revenue numbers, which reflected an increase in both sales and usage for the internet radio service.

For example, Pandora is adding a new registered user every second and now has 94 million users. In Pandora’s fiscal year ended January 31, 2011, Pandora streamed 3.8 billion hours of radio listening. In the three months ending April 30, 2011 Pandora posted revenues of $51 million, up from $29.6 million during the same period in 2010.

Pandora follows in the footsteps of Fusion-io, LinkedIn and Yandex, which all increased their pricing significantly prior to going public. And the opening trading price for these companies’ stocks all rose as well. We’ll see where Pandora opens tomorrow.

Update: And here’s their official release on the pricing/offering set for tomorrow:

PANDORA PRICES INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING

OAKLAND, Calif., June 14, 2011 – Pandora Media, Inc. (NYSE: P), the leader in internet radio in the United States, today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of approximately 14.7 million shares of common stock at a price to the public of $16.00 per share. A total of approximately 6.0 million shares are being offered by Pandora, and a total of approximately 8.7 million shares are being offered by selling stockholders. In addition, Pandora has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to approximately an additional 2.2 million shares to cover over-allotments, if any. Pandora will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

The bookrunning managers of the offering are Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC. Co-lead manager of the offering is Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. and co-managers are William Blair and Company, L.L.C., Stifel Nicolaus Weisel and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC. Pandora common stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P.”

According to the filing, Pandora aims to raise as much as $202.6 million in the offerring (up from $141.6 million), and will offer 6,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders are offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO.

Pandora initially filed its S-1 in February and now has 94 million registered users. A few weeks ago, the company released its most recent revenue numbers, which reflected an increase in both sales and usage for the internet radio service.

For example, Pandora is adding a new registered user every second. In Pandora’s fiscal year ended January 31, 2011, Pandora streamed 3.8 billion hours of radio listening. In the three months ending April 30, 2011 Pandora posted revenues of $51 million, up from $29.6 million during the same period in 2010.

Pandora isn’t the only company to up the price range of its stock prior to its IPO. Fusion-io, LinkedIn and Yandex also increased their range prior to their IPO debuts.

So when they can’t dish, what do they do? Hide.

No one wants to mess with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So I should have realized sooner the reason why so many attendees that I usually talk to at conferences seemed to vanish into thin air during the All Things Digital Conference.

The Greylock partners– four of them were here– were all conspicuously absent the last few days. LinkedIn founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman was here….supposedly but I never laid eyes on him. Ditto James Slavet. And John Lilly was around opening night, but I didn’t see him again. I saw David Sze at check in, but he only resurfaced again an hour or so ago looking for a lost phone. It was the first time I’ve ever seen him refuse to stop and chat. Moments later, the Groupon S1 came out and Pandora priced. I don’t know if he ever found his phone, but fortunately he’ll soon be able to buy about zillion replacements.

Andrew Mason was supposed to sit down with us after his fireside chat, then suddenly had to leave immediately. And of course Mark Pincus pulled out of the conference at the last minute altogether, spurring Zynga IPO speculation. This after Hoffman, the Pandora founders and several others politely declined our invitations to speak at New York Disrupt, saying our San Francisco conference was far better timing. (I should note that Marc Andreessen was also nowhere to be seen except on stage last night, but that’s just Andreessen.)

It’s tough days to be a tech reporter trolling the halls for news, when the newsmakers vanish. Nearly all of Groupon’s investors, its press people and its CEO were all in the same hotel with the tech press elite and somehow the story didn’t leak. Score one for the SEC and a big fail for the tech press. I’d resign in shame, if every reporter here didn’t fail just as terribly.

So who was visible in the hallways this week? Two people of note: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg. Indeed both were quite cordial and easy to find, roaming the halls for several days without handlers. In absence of other news coming out of this event, take that tidbit for whatever it’s worth.