Tim Westergren

Sep 18, 2007 by Candace Lombardi

What will it take to create the middle-class musician?

It’s an idea Pandora founder and Chief Strategy Officer Tim Westergren thinks about a lot. Westergen has been campaigning for more Internet radio listeners for both Pandora and musicians in general.

Pandora uses the Music Genome Project, a tool that compares musical genetic codes of songs, to create personalized radio stations. You tell it what you like; Pandora plays those artists and others that have songs with similar musical qualities. With music from both big record labels and independent artists, listeners get more selection and increased knowledge about music.

Despite a much-publicized standoff with organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America over royalty rates, Westergren (also Pandora’s chief strategy officer) says Internet radio will actually bridge the gap between the pop superstar and the working-poor musician. He says it may even create a new consultant and services business model for record labels.

I interviewed Westergren in 2007 when Pandora was in the throes of a legal fight for its life.

Q: You had an unusual launch with Pandora. Explain that.
Westergren: We started off by just making it available to friends and families to just give it a trial run. Not long after, these “friends and family” wound up spiraling to around 5,000 or so within a few weeks. That was a first sign that we had something people were interested in.
We wound up launching it in October, but as a paid service for three bucks a month…We were able to get people to sign for 10 hours of the intro Pandora for free, but few people were actually registering.

Q: People would use 10 hours for free and then delete the cookies?
Westergren: Exactly. After 10 hours they would log off, delete the cookies and then log back on and refresh their profiles so we don’t recognize them. We made a dent and people were using it a lot, but they didn’t want to pay for it…So we went free in November ’05…I think we had 250,000 people come to Pandora.

Q: In one week?
Westergren: In one day. The day after we launched I think probably we had that many. In the first week we were adding I think 50,000 or 60,000 new listeners a day. That lasted for a few weeks and then it went down a little bit and then a steady rise ever since.

Q: You used to compose music for movies. Explain how that process has trickled into Pandora.
Westergren: When you’re a composer your job is to figure out someone else’s musical taste, to pick up the director’s musical taste. I call it a musical Meyers-Briggs test…You kind of home in on what they like and you’re trying to translate their feedback into musicological information you can use to create a new composition. So the genome was really born of that process.

Q: Originally you were called Savage Beast and sold the Music Genome Project engine as a service?
Westergren: We would license access to our tool, so people could use it to make recommendations on their respective Web sites. You know, ‘If you like this song, you will like this.’ Then we very, very briefly thought about being an online musical retail site, but we never raised enough money to make that mistake.

Q: Is it true you made 348 pitches before you got $1.5 million in initial funding?
Westergren: Yes, in March of 2000. Then in March 2004 we got $8 million…$12 million in ’05…and we did another round the following year, but haven’t disclosed that figure yet.

Q: But you’re still not making money from Pandora?
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