Pandora Radio - History

History

Savage Beast Technologies was founded by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren. The initial technology was developed by Glaser with musical input from Westergren. The idea was to bring different styles of music together into a predictable pattern. They created 400 specifications for each song that is recorded to the listener's preferences to suggest other songs with similar characteristics. While the company was able to do some licensing of the technology to third parties like AOL and Best Buy for music recommendation, it did not achieve commercial success and nearly failed. In March 2004 Savage Beast Technologies received venture funding led by Walden Venture Capital's Larry Marcus to focus the technology on building its own consumer facing service. The new Board was formed to include the remaining founder Tim Westergren, Bob Kavner, Larry Marcus, and Larry Kubal of Labrador Ventures. In addition to Tim Westergren, a new management team was recruited that who conceived of and built the Pandora Radio product including CEO Joe Kennedy, VP Engineering Tom Conrad and VP Business Development Jessica Steel. The company was renamed Pandora Media and launched Pandora Radio on July 21, 2005. The Music Genome Project is one of core technologies currently used by Pandora to play music for Internet users based on their preferences.Today, there are over 35 million listeners, and the radio has become an app for many smartphones, including the iPhone, Android, and Windows phones.

In April 2013 Pandora announced that their radio streaming service had passed 200 million users, about 70 million of whom are active monthly.

On March 7, 2013, Pandora chief executive Joe Kennedy announced he would step down from his position, but remain until his successor is named.