In a "meetup" at the Housing Works Bookstore on February 4, 2009, Pandora founder Tim Westergren talked about Pandora's history and their plans for the future, fielding questions from the audience. This article
History of Pandora
Tim Westergren began his career as a musician, first performing around the country, then as a composer for movie scores. He developed a process of allowing his clients to listen to CD’s, then choose the music they felt most meaningful to the mood they wanted to establish in their film.
Westergren had the idea to market his approach, first as an option for websites to match music for their customers in 2000 (as Savage Beast Productions), then, in 2005, as a free internet radio.
How the Music Genome Project Works
Pandora has their staff listen to each piece of music and assign it characteristics such as: major or minor key tonality, male or female vocalist, chromatic or achromatic harmony, etc.
After the song has been assigned its characteristics, it is entered into the database. The listener chooses a song or an artist/band, and, if the song matches the selected song or artist by its characteristics, the Pandora station will play songs in those modalities.
The listener then can give each song a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating, tailoring the music to their individual tastes. The station will then play more or less of that type of music according to those preferences.
These preferences do not “cross-pollinate” , that is, preferences on one station do not affect their preferences on another station.
The listener also has the option of choosing genre stations, or mixing their stations together, as a shuffle function.
International Issues Facing Pandora
Pandora is only legal in the United States. Formerly, the site broadcast worldwide; after legal challenges, the site became national to the U.S. Westergren hopes to reopen the site as soon as it becomes legally possible.
Benefits of Pandora
Westergren discussed his hopes that Pandora would continue to allow independent, unsigned artists to showcase their talents and find a wider audience for their work. He mentioned the testimonials he received, of artists whose iTunes purchases spiked once they were added to Pandora.
He offered that, if anyone in the audience had demo (sample) CD’s of their music, he would take them.
Potential of Pandora with the IPhone
Currently, iPhone users may download a Pandora widget to their phone which allows the site to play music through their iPhone.
Westergren suggested that, with the GPS capability of the iPhone, a listener with a Pandora widget in their iPhone could receive a pop-up when a favorite artist (or artist whose characteristics matched their favorite) was playing near to the listener, thus increasing audience at live shows.
Readers should note that, due to copyright and licensing restrictions, the global market for Pandora is not yet open - most of Europe, for example, cannot be covered by the service - and those users finding themselves restricted might want to give the Last.fm service a try instead.
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