SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — People listened to Pandora’s Internet radio service for a collective 1.47 billion hours in October, up 18 percent from a year ago, in the face of the launch iTunes Radio.

The figure, released by Pandora Media Inc.’s Chief Financial Officer Michael Herring at an investor conference Monday, is Pandora’s second-highest monthly level. It had 1.49 billion hours in March, the last month before it imposed a 40-hour-per-month cap on free listening on mobile devices.

It lifted the cap on Sept. 1, two weeks before Apple Inc. launched iTunes Radio.

Pandora’s active listeners fell to 70.9 million from 72.7 million in September.

About a month after its mid-September launch, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that 20 million people had used iTunes Radio to listen to more than a billion songs.