![]() ![]() Mel Hart, a seventh-semester songwriting student, was encouraged by Westergren’s words. Each person should ask themselves if they feel prepared to go through that.”Īt the lecture’s conclusion, Berklee students swarmed the Pandora founder to ask additional questions. I don’t think entrepreneurship is for everyone. Then he added, “It’s about your personal tolerance for insecurity and risk. Westergren knew that he would regret trying something and failing less than he would regret never having tried. Westergren told the audience that potential entrepreneurs must take a long, hard, and honest look at themselves before plunging ahead. Now the company aims to “replace broadcast radio with a better experience,” and the numbers suggest it is well on its way to doing so. With a new CEO, Pandora retooled itself as a personalized radio platform, and then connected with Apple and rode the wave of smartphone growth into the ubiquity it now enjoys. A turning point came in the fall of 2005. Still, he knew his company had a compelling product, even if it hadn’t fully figured out the business model yet. “I pitched Pandora to investors 348 times before getting to yes, and that’s no fun,” he said. While Pandora now stands as the biggest radio station in every market of the country, Westergren said, his goals were achieved only after many tough years in which he maxed out his credit cards and struggled with doubts and stress-induced insomnia. Pandora’s employees, many of whom are skilled musicians, curate that system, which Westergren compares to “DNA profiles of music.” “You really need a grounding in music theory to be able to extract this information,” Westergren said of the work behind mapping the relationships between similar or dissimilar songs. A big part of that job entailed presenting directors with options that he could then use to home in on their taste for a project-a precursor to the process behind the Music Genome Project, the system of algorithms that powers Pandora. Westergren’s Pandora experience partly grew out of his days working as a touring musician living in a van-where he saw “a lot of talented trees falling in the forest” due to lack of radio airplay-as well as his work in film scoring and composing for feature films. “I had the brochure and I had my ideas for courses picked out, but I wound up deciding to stay in the Bay Area.” Westergren kicked off his talk by noting that, prior to founding Pandora, he nearly studied at Berklee. Introducing Westergren, Don Gorder, department chair, noted that Pandora, a personalized radio service with 81.5 million active listeners and 250 million registered users, “is clearly the leader in digital consumption of music via streaming.” Zafris Distinguished Lecture for Berklee’s Music Business/Management Department. It may be able to take some hope from Tidal, which just sold a big chunk of itself to Sprint for a reported $200 million.Pandora founder Tim Westergren spoke to a packed house of students at the 22nd annual James G. The company is reportedly looking for a buyer, with Sirius XM rumored to be the leading candidate so far. On top of the $75 million spent on Rdio, it also completely revamped its site late last year and is no doubt spending big to launch Pandora Premium streaming. Pandora data will also be included in Billboard's streaming and formula-based charts, including country, rock, R&B/Hip-Hop, Rap and Dance/Electronica.ĭespite the boost, Pandora announced earlier this month that it had laid off 7 percent of its workforce, due to a big increase in competition from Apple Music, Spotify and other services. That's why Pandora had such an immediate impact, even services with many more subscribers like Spotify and Apple Music already affect the chart. "Pandora is now the number one radio station in 87 US markets and represents roughly 10 percent of all radio listening," says Pandora CEO Tim Westergren. ![]() ![]() Still, it has a very consequential 78 million users and 4.3 million subscribers to its $5 Pandora Plus (not-on-demand) radio service. Though Pandora recently launched a $10 Premium streaming service based on its Rdio acquisition, it won't be available to the public until later this year. Lady Gaga's Million Reasons, meanwhile, is now on the Hot 100 thanks to Pandora, Billboard says. It pushed nine of those up by five or more spots in the rankings, including Sex With Me from Rihanna and Rob $tone's Chill Bill, which leaped 10 places. ![]() Billboard unveiled a partnership with the service for its Hot 100 chart, and says it immediately impacted 35 songs. Despite recent layoffs and the fact that it only launched a streaming service last month, Pandora is a giant player in the internet radio market. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |