Pandora's iPhone App Gets Concert Listings — Through An Ad

picture-28Pandora had the top downloaded iPhone app for all of last year, and it continues to be a big success for the company, even helping them make some money. Now there’s another avenue to potentially do that with personalized concert listings within the app thanks to a partnership with SonicLiving.

The feature, which is already live on the web, shows you concerts you might like based on music you have rated, bookmarked or stations you’ve created on Pandora in the past. It shows you these concerts based on your location. But there’s a catch. It’s not actually a part of the Pandora app itself, but rather is an advertisement, sponsored by Amstel Light, you can click on to be taken to the personalized listing of concerts. From there you can buy tickets to shows.

This seems like a smart play for both Pandora and SonicLiving as this type of ad should lead to a solid number of click-throughs. The concert recommendation space has been heating up recently, with Livekick going live and Songkick launching a large update to its service. But using Pandora’s music recommendation data, which millions of people already use on a regular basis, through its API, seems like it could be a better way to recommend shows.

Of course, I’m not really sure how this is going to work for Pandora One users, who pay a yearly fee not to see ads — including those on the iPhone.