Joe Kennedy, President & CEO of Pandora Radio
I recently got a chance to sit down with Joe Kennedy, CEO and President of Pandora Radio. Pandora is an internet radio service, which analyzes and classifies music based on a huge number of specific attributes, or genes, and then uses this data to make recommendations to listeners about what new music they might like. It’s a very useful service to connect up specific artists with the audience that would enjoy their specific music.
I sincerely appreciate Mr. Kennedy taking the time out to chat with a Pandora fanboy like me.
IRM: We’re here with Joe Kennedy, President and CEO of Pandora Radio. Mr. Kennedy, I know you’re a busy man, thanks for taking some time to talk with us today. We really appreciate it.
JK: My pleasure, Allen.
IRM: Internet radio has certainly come a long way since 2000 when Pandora started. In the early days, it seems we were having fun with the technology and it was less about the music. Today it seems to be more about the content. What were the goals then compared to now, and why the shift if there was one?
JK: Well, I think as with so many things, timing is everything and I think internet radio has developed, and Pandora particularly, very well over the past few years as all the pieces are in place in terms of broadband availability and even now good accessibility over mobile on devices like the iPhone and so I think it’s less about the how-to and now more about ‘what’s the actual experience like for the listener’?
IRM: We’ve all heard a lot about Pandora’s Music Genome Project. It’s really amazing the level of analysis that goes on at Pandora. Can you tell me about some of the musical science behind this project?
JK: It’s crazy what we do! Sometimes I’ll call it fundamental and definitive and it’s certainly both of those, but it does border on crazy. For almost nine years now we’ve had a team of musicians with deep backgrounds in music theory listening to individual tracks of music, spending 10 to 15 minutes a track scoring that music according to a proprietary taxonomy that we’ve developed that captures using 400 genes every element of melody and harmony and rhythm and tempo, vocal performance, instrumentation, production characteristics, lyrics. An absolutely intensive analysis that forms the basis for how we develop playlists on Pandora.
IRM: I was doing some research before the interview and I noticed there are two dates here. There’s the year 2000 and I’ve seen references to 2004/2005 for when the company started. During that time between 2000 and 2004 was it the Music Genome Project? Was that was was going on? Cataloging the music to start it off?
JK: Exactly! The intellectual property development goes all the way back to 2000. Pandora as a service launched in late 2005.
IRM: I’m a Pandora junkie! If it weren’t for Pandora I wouldn’t get anything done during the day. I literally can’t start my day until I start Pandora. I’ve discovered a ton of new artists on Pandora, many of them very obscure, many of them I never thought I’d enjoy — and I’ve purchased their CDs as a result I might add. How does Pandora get its music? Can you tell me about your vetting process if there is one?
JK: Yes! We put a great deal of energy into that. We actually have a small team of people who’s job is to identify great new stuff, and they literally spend the days scouring every conceivable source for great new music. Tim Westergren, our founder, spends half of his time on the road and a healthy part of that is checking out local music scenes and he always comes back with a big bag full of CDs. Of course we also benefit from the fact that everyday a couple million users type band names and song names into Pandora and every once in a great while they’ll type in something that we haven’t seen before, and we certainly pay attention to that. That enables us to very quickly identify and new songs, or new bands, out there that need to be in the system. So at this point our listeners are an integral part of helping us identify great new music.
IRM: That’s great! How about the bands themselves? Do they solicit you on a regular basis or how does that work?
JK: Yes, I certainly should have mentioned that. Everyday the mail brings a healthy batch of submissions. Typically from indie artists and we listen to every single disc that is sent our way, and if anyone is interested, on the FAQs on our site are the specific instructions about how to send us music and we encourage people to send their music to Pandora. [link]
IRM: Pandora is a browser-based service. There’s also mobile phone clients like you mentioned as well as some stand-alone devices that now play Pandora. Can you share with me your feelings on the OpenPandora project? Are there any plans at Pandora to develop a non-browser client application like that one?
JK: We’re interested in making Pandora available anytime, anywhere, on any device. So, we love virtually any way to present Pandora as long as it doesn’t deprive us of an opportunity to gain enough revenue to keep the service going. But, we have a Pandora API and everything from the iPhone to some Samsung connected Bluray DVD players now use that API to access Pandora and our goal is to make Pandora as accessible as traditional FM radio is today.
IRM: Since coming on board with Pandora in 2004, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about music? Is there a skill you’ve picked up as a result of getting into the music business?
JK: I always thought taste in music was diverse but it’s ten or 100 times more diverse than I ever thought. There’s just… Not just so many great artists out there, most of whom never are given a chance to connect with the audience who would enjoy their music. But, just in terms of types and styles and individual approaches to music, it’s just breathtaking how diverse the world of music is and certainly one of the greatest things about Pandora is our ability to surface all that diversity and let those that create whatever kind of music connect with the right kind of people who enjoy that kind music.
IRM: Absolutely. Music is a lot about mood. I know my stations on Pandora are set up mood based and some of the artists that surface while I’m listening are just completely obscure — from other countries sometimes. So it’s really great that Pandora can bring those to the states where they might not have an audience to begin with.
JK: Yeah, and we cherish that. Tim, our founder, for ten years tried to kinda work his way up the chain from obscurity to being able to make a living in the music business and the founding motivation behind Pandora is to give all of those great artists out there who feel like a needle in a haystack an opportunity to connect with exactly the audience that would enjoy their kind of music.
IRM: Why “Pandora”? Why not “Jam Box” or some other Web 2.0 name that’s missing a few vowels at the end. Can you tell us about the name a little bit?
JK: [laughs] I have to laugh because the name is a funny story. The company was originally called Savage Beast Technologies, and we knew that really wasn’t the right name as we brought the service forward and we were looking for a new name. The true story of where “Pandora” came from is at lunch one day it was scribbled on the back page of a Billboard magazine with a bunch of other ideas and that afternoon we looked at the names and we all said, “Wow, Pandora! What a great name!” It turned out for a relatively small amount of money we could buy the url, http://www.pandora.com, from a cybersquatter and it was pretty free from a trademark standpoint as well and boom, there you have it! And you know, “Pandora” for all she’s known relative to her and the box. In Greek mythology, she was given the gift of music by Apollo and so is in Greek mythology is one of the very gifted characters from a music standpoint.
IRM: Mr. Kennedy that’s all the questions we have for you. Is there anything else you’d like to say to our members?
JK: Well, I just appreciate the chance to tell a bit of a story and it’s good talking with you.
