California State University East Bay

The Pioneer

California State University East Bay

The Pioneer

California State University East Bay

The Pioneer

Turf
Filler ad

Pandora Creator Impels Entrepreneurship

Westergren addresses students on how they too can be future innovators.

Tim Westergren, chief executive officer and creator of music recommendation station Pandora Radio, spoke to CSU East Bay students and community members Oct. 19 about the many trials and tribulations of starting your own business but the ultimate joy success brings at the end.
Westergren, the second edition to the “Between the Lines” speaker events, spoke to a packed room to give students a “peek under the hood of what this journey has been like and what has gone into making Pandora the company it is today.”
Pandora, from Greek mythology meaning “gift giving,” allows users to create stations and playlists through their own personal preferences, then suggesting and linking songs, artists, and genres together through a sort of musical DNA.
Pandora Radio has shown to be a huge attraction and gaining in momentum, registering with over 100 million users nationwide.
The creative architect and award-winning composer began with the story of Pandora’s creation, from its humble roots in the Bay Area, notably San Francisco and Oakland, and how a man’s love for music and an even greater love for sharing it with others made the “pretty winding road” worth the very long while.
“My biggest piece of advice is, if you have an idea don’t let it go by,” said Westergren. “Stop and consider it as an option, you owe it to yourself to give it all you’ve got.”
The Stanford graduate, who appeared relaxed and comfortable in his setting as he paced the stage for an hour-long session, entertaining with humor and an apparent genuine desire to engage, Westergren said he always loved music, always knew he wanted to make a living out of it, but was never exactly quite sure how until he actually lived music.
Through many years as a musician in an acoustic rock band and later as a composer for films, Westergren said he gained appreciation for artists who were extremely talented but were often times “invisible” to the public due to a lack of exposure.
Westergren’s experience with studying specific sounds, preferences, melodic patterns and harmonic qualities in his years as a musician and working in the film industry distinctly resonated with him a sort of musical taxonomy he felt many people do naturally anyhow, but lacked technology for, and with it came the idea of Pandora Radio.
Backpacking off the technology boom and dot-com era in the mid 1990s in Silicon Valley, Westergren began the Music Genome Project in 1999, a mathematical algorithm allowing users to hear songs that feel personal and exclusive, something Westergren said mainstream radio can never do.
According to Westergren, each song in the Music Genome Project is analyzed by trained musical analysts using up to 400 distinct musical attributes that collectively describe a song and help understand the musical preferences of listeners.
Commenting on the years of near bankruptcy, deferring over $1.5 million in salaries, pitching the company to investors a total of 348 times and legislating a political campaign, Westergren stressed to students the points where he remained steadfast in his purpose for Pandora, and hoped to inspire students to never give up in their future entrepreneurial endeavors.
Milo Spector, a CSUEB Marketing and Finance major who has an interest in business innovation said, “It’s always good to see someone in person who is the head of a company, and realize they are more regular than you would think.”
“It kind of inspires you to think you could actually do something big at some point in your life,” continued Spector.
With the Music Genome Project, Pandora was launched online in 2005, and now holding over 80,000 artists and 800,000 tracks in its library and reporting over $138 million in revenue.
Citing plans in the future to hopefully stream Pandora globally, extend their online services to also provide concert information, and fully replace AM/FM radio, Westergren constantly referred to his times as an undergraduate and how his vision, though obscure and once grim, has now turned full circle, and those with the entrepreneurial bug should not let anything stand in their way.
“Was there ever a moment when I felt this wasn’t going to work? Oh, there were many, many moments,” said Westergren. “At the end of 2003, right before we raised [more] money, I had maxed out three credit cards, I had $130,000 in credit card debt.…There were long stretches of time when I thought I was going to spend the rest of my adult life recovering from bankruptcy. I was beginning to prepare myself for it.
“There was a long, pretty stressful period of time in there, some pretty bleak moments,” he said. “But, it makes the good stuff all the sweeter.”
UC Berkeley student Robert Avellar, who attended the event with CSUEB student Spector, said as someone interested in music it was a great experience to see someone so impactful in the music world offer advice to students.
“I have a lot of ideas of what I want to do, and although I didn’t come here looking to be inspired, in the end I am walking out inspired,” said Avellar. “I really don’t listen to Pandora that much, but now I am definitely interested.”
Westergren, who said he enjoyed the event and thought it was a great opportunity for students, especially undergraduates at the tip of their intellectual exploration, stressed that in the end students need to hit the ground running with their innovations and be business innovators in their own right.
“Do it, just go for it,” said Westergren. “It might just turn out to be the next big thing.”

Leave a Comment
More to Discover

Comments (0)

All The Pioneer Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Activate Search
California State University East Bay
Pandora Creator Impels Entrepreneurship