Within minutes its share price reached a high of $26.
On Tuesday night Pandora made its initial public offering with 14.7 million shares up for grabs, at $16 each, valuing the company at $1.9 billion.
Pandora filed its papers with the SEC in February with an 11-year history of net losses: in the first quarter of 2011, it reported a net loss of $6.7 million, while in the first nine months of 2010 it reported a net loss of $328,000. In fact, Pandora nearly shut down a few years ago amidst a battle over Web royalties.
However in the leadup to today's IPO, Pandora apparently invested heavily in infrastructure. It added 10,000 comedy clips from over 700 comedians, like Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart. That month Pandora also registered its 10 billionth "thumb" rating, a site feature that lets users quickly recommend a song.
Founded in 2000, Pandora is powered by the Music Genome Project, an in-depth taxonomy that analyzes hundreds of musical "genes," enabling it to play songs that sound alike. The service now has over 800,000 songs in its collection, and about 95 percent of those are played in a given month.
Tech stock is in high demand (while sparking the usual "bubble" fears) ever since LinkedIn's shares almost doubled on its first day of trading in May. However, since then the company's shares have dropped 19 percent, opening at $76 on Wednesday.
Groupon has also filed papers for an IPO, and rumors abound about Zynga's IPO any day now. Facebook is expected to go public in 2012.
For more, see PCMag's review of Pandora Radio (2011).