Q&A with Tim Westergren

Do you love repetitive melodic phrasing or extensive vamping? Or maybe you’re more into synth swoops and four-on-the-floor beats. Whatever. There’s something for every pop music listener on the program-it-yourself Pandora Radio, which was developed by Tim Westergren, who grew up in Excelsior before playing club hockey at Stanford. In 1999, he created the “music genome project” with three college buddies—they broke down thousands of songs according to music-geek-identifying “genes” to make it easier for a listener to discover new music. Now Pandora, with more than 48 million subscribers, is a major player in Internet radio.

Musicologist Theodor W. Adorno wrote that pop music is “pre-digested” before it gets to the listener. Advertisers don’t want people too excited because they’ll change the channel, but they want them stimulated enough so they listen to the ads.
There’s a growing amount of audio commercials on Pandora, but it’s a tiny fraction of our revenue.

How do you make money? 
It’s advertising based. On a computer, the lion’s share of revenue comes from visual advertising. We have a subscription model too.

But instead of broadcasting, you’re casting to one person at a time. 
It’s called “unicasting.” The unique thing the web does is it’s literally a single stream to each individual. That’s a dramatic change from the broadcast world, where one channel is streaming to many—which leads to the “pre-digested” playlists you described earlier. Traditional radio stations don’t have a choice; they find a common denominator for a large audience to attract advertising dollars. So, naturally, they play music that will retain that audience. The web is different.

In the past, a band like The Beatles would write a hit, and thousands of bands tried to recreate it. Will music be produced differently now that it’s competing for an audience of one? 
That’s a whole different paradigm: We’re delivering millions of individual radio stations that are tailored. Any one station itself isn’t going to be the lifeblood of a musician, but as you grow and you reach ultimately millions and maybe billions of people, you have the makings of a sort of musician middle class.

You’ve liberated musicians from competing for that big hit? 
Yeah. We have a little over three-quarters of a million songs in our collection—about 90,000 artists. Almost 90 percent of those songs were played last month, so it’s a very different proposition.

How would you categorize Pandora’s listeners? 
In the early going, it was someone who was fairly technically savvy and more of a music aficionado or enthusiast—one of the two or both. Now, it is everyman. We strive to build a service where, no matter who you are and what your predisposition is, when you come to it you feel welcome. So if you like Yanni, Pandora is not going to come after you with the usual music snobbery. We’re going to talk to you like that is the most important thing in the world and find other things we think you’ll like.

Will people ever become comfortable with the cyborg future and relinquishing privacy? 
Privacy is something everybody needs to take seriously. Users need a clear and easy-to-understand choice about how and where their information is shared. In our case, we know age, gender, zip code, and the music you like. We use that data to help deliver more relevant advertising.

Musicians hate to be labeled. But labels are useful. Why? 
Labels bother people because they’re generally inaccurate. Under the sort of heading of “blue collar” you have an enormous variety, and the term itself means different things to different people. But, practically, so many things need to be categorized, like a politician running for office or a company selling a new car; you can’t act unless you have some ability to organize your audience. It’s sort of the best available alternative.

Theodor W. Adorno said we’re going to end up with a “like-dislike dichotomy.” Do you agree? 
You have to separate theory from practice. I think about Pandora in pretty simple terms. The vast majority of people love music and don’t have an easy time finding new music they like—that’s not good. There’s endless evidence that Pandora is getting a lot of people reinvigorated about enjoying music and discovering new bands. It’s injecting music back into their lives in a way that’s great.

Why do you think music makes people happy? 
That’s a big question.

It is. 
My theory is that music is our memory. Music is the one artistic expression that really brings us back to places. It can emotionally and spiritually transport us through our memories, which is a very powerful part of who we are. Music contains our memory in a way. And so it’s a force that makes us feel different things. It’s one of the few things in life that are sublime.

5 Things You Didn't Know About Tim Westergren
1. Instrument he played as a kid: bassoon.
2. Name of his first band: Faze.
3. Band that inspired him the most: The Beatles.
4. Center of his own music genome: Ben Folds.
5. Favorite concert: Simon & Garfunkel reunion show in 1982 at Wembley Stadium in London.