Music's Big Winner for 2009: Pandora

Online music services faced a lot of upheaval in the second half of 2009. iLike, iMeem and Lala were all sold and Spotify pushed back its US lunch until sometime in 2010. But Pandora bucked the trend and turned in a banner year. The company finally because profitable in the 4th quarter and increased its subscriber base to more than 40 million. By the end of the year, Pandora was adding 600,000 users each week.

The engine of this impressive growth is the smartphone, especially the company's popular iPhone app. Over 10 million people have added the free iPhone app and more than one half of the new Pandora subscribers are mobile users. This surge in usage, combined with more reasonable streaming rights, negotiated with the labels last year, has made Pandora the big winner in online music.