What is the music genome project and how did this lead to the launch of Pandora?
I started the music genome project about nine and a half years ago trying to build a really smart recommendation and discovery tool. The idea itself grew out of my own experiences as a musician. I spent my twenties trying to make my living as a musician, both as a performer, in rock bands and also as a film composer. I began in 1999 and we hired this team of ultimately about 60 musicians to start building this enormous database. We were collecting the musical equivalent of DNA and we spent about five years building that. We tried out a whole bunch of different business models none of which really worked but just kept building that database and eventually figured out that, radio is a perfect use for this thing.
When did you decide to create a radio site?
We launched the radio site itself in November 2005. We just realized it was the perfect use of this database, which was a song-based system for a way to connect music. It just fit like a glove as soon as we started building it.
And what was the process like of getting the site launched ? Was it easy to actually get it off the ground?
There’s kind of two chapters in the company — there’s the pre and post-Pandora chapters. The first part of the company, which was built in the genome, was awfully hard to fund. Those five years, we spent about three of them working without salary because nobody would invest in the idea. It was terribly hard. And after we had launched Pandora and it grew as fast as it did, it became a lot easier to raise money. We’ve been able to attract a handful of investments since we launched. And that was really based on this rapid growth we were experiencing and continue to experience. So we kind of had different phases in terms of our ability to raise money.As Chief Strategy Officer, what is typical day on the job for you?
There’s no such thing, a typical day for me. I wear a lot of hats. I do a lot of speaking and interviews and public relations for the company. So I’m always out and about meeting with listeners and investors, journalists and industry people and going to conferences and representing the company. I’m also on the board, part of the core part for how we set strategy. So I think a lot about the company vision and company direction and where we should be taking it and where the opportunities are. And I help run the company itself on a day to day basis.
Do you feel any of the strain in the current economic situation right now, given that you ’re advertising-based?
Pandora is actually doing very well compared to the market. We’re growing in users and in revenue pretty quickly. So I’m not intimidated at all by the environment. I think the environment is going to reward companies that have built real products and real audiences and real advertising platforms and it’s really going to punish those who haven’t.
What are your favorite parts of the site and what are you looking to develop more?
Well, obviously I like the music. We choose music because it is fundamentally really good. I also think it’s really simple and easy to use. We have people on Pandora who are 100 years old and people who are 13. They’re listening to different kinds of music and using it in different kinds of ways, but they’re all using it easily. I’m really looking forward to the features that will help musicians with the audiences that are discovering them on Pandora. There’s so much that we haven’t done that we can do.
By Jillian Gordon
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