articles
Tim Westergren: Cofounder of Pandora The Music Genome Project
from volume 02 issue 09 // Michael Spadoni
Pandora.com
Interview with Tim Westergren: Cofounder of Pandora – The Music Genome Project
Words: Michael Spadoni
Photo: Rachel Fuchs
Internet radio is in trouble. The wildly popular Internet radio site, Pandora, is at the forefront of the fight to keep independent and underground music available to whoever seeks more than what corporate radio provides. Tim Westergren, Cofounder of Pandora, shared a few of his thoughts on the battles going on behind the scenes in Washington DC.
REAX: As simply as you can put it, how does the Music Genome Project work?
Tim Westergren: Unfortunately, “simply” is the difficult part of that question. For about eight years, we’ve been musicologically analyzing hundreds of thousands of recordings by a team of trained musicians, capturing every minute musical detail of each song. They catalog everything about melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, vocals, etc. They score them all and create a repository of musical DNA for every song. When you visit Pandora and type in a song, our search engine looks at that song’s musical makeup and creates a playlist based on musical connections. As you listen to a station and give a thumbs up or down feedback on each song, we refine the musicological sense of what you want that station to be. We’re trying to replicate what a friend would do for you. They get to know you better over time and then get better at recommending music to you. The important thing about musicological connections is that it’s blind to sociological connections. We don’t know who played with whom or who was influenced by whom, all we know is that their music has similarities.
REAX: How many categories do you have for scoring each song?
TW: About 400, it’s completely insane… in a good way.
REAX: How are you able to store and use music for Pandora? What costs are associated with that?
TW: We exist under a federal statute called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and it grants us the permission to stream any music that we want provided that we abide by certain constraints and we pay mandated publishing and license fees for all the music that we stream. This eventually gets distributed to the rights holders.
REAX: Who is in charge of regulating that?
TW: The beauty of the federal license is that it’s a quick and easy way to get permission to play everything we don’t get in direct deals. The problem is, every now and then someone in DC makes a big mistake. What happened recently is that an arbitration panel that was meant to be ruling on the new fee got it horribly wrong. In March, they ruled that the rates should basically triple for Internet radio. The new rate is completely unaffordable for us and anybody else.
REAX: Who is the driving force behind that? Is someone trying to kick out independent radio to make even more room for Clear Channel and other corporate radio giants?
TW: Actually, Clear Channel isn’t the instigator behind this. The driving force is the RIAA Recording Industry Association of America, which is the association that represents the big record labels. There are different ways to interpret the motives behind this. On one hand, you could say it’s just them trying to maximize the money they can get from their industry when they’re in the middle of the decline of their core business. But, I also think that labels don’t like the statutory law because what they really want is to deal directly with each service and license their music one by one. That puts them in a much stronger negotiating position. The federal statute is called a compulsory license, which means they have to give us the right to use their music. If the rate associated with the statute is too high, then we can go to the label and ask for better terms. When that happens, the labels can pretty much have their way with us. For many reasons, this is dysfunctional. Not only would it wreck our business, but we would also have to stop playing all the indie music because we would have to get direct deals with the 50,000 rights holders that our catalog represents.
REAX: Can you explain what the SaveNetRadio coalition is doing to help independent artists and internet radio?
TW: It was created in response to this rate hike. It’s seeking a level of royalty that’s affordable for Internet radio and it’s fighting for us to be treated equally with other forms of radio, such as terrestrial AM/FM and satellite radio. This rate hike, which will represent between fifty and seventy percent of the revenue of large webcasters, is not paid by AM/FM, they’re exempt from it. Cable and satellite just settled with the same group at seven percent. So, there is this bizarre and wildly unfair fee structure across radio.
REAX: Has the stress of dealing with the music business ever changed the way you thought about what you’ve gotten yourself into?
TW: Actually, this is really mild compared to the stress of building the company eight years ago. We raised our first round of financing literally two weeks before the shit hit the fan in Silicon Valley in March of 2000. We spent four years in the wilderness. We didn’t take salaries for two years, getting evicted every couple of weeks, and getting sued. We went through so much shit to get where we are now. This is just part of the business that involves dealing with intellectual property rights. My attitude towards the rate hike changed after we got so much public support about it. With the Save Net Radio campaign, well over a million people called or faxed their congressperson about it. That’s put me in a place where I feel that there is actually a safety net. The ability to mobilize massive public support when these kinds of shenanigans go on has given me faith and let’s me know that we’re not completely over a barrel. It matters to people and it’s an incredible illustration of what’s possible with the Internet. I think people will look back at this and say that it was a bit of a watershed. In so many parts of broadcast media, the dynamics, offerings, and distribution channels are changing.
Pandora.com
Interview with Tim Westergren: Cofounder of Pandora – The Music Genome Project
Words: Michael Spadoni
Photo: Rachel Fuchs
Internet radio is in trouble. The wildly popular Internet radio site, Pandora, is at the forefront of the fight to keep independent and underground music available to whoever seeks more than what corporate radio provides. Tim Westergren, Cofounder of Pandora, shared a few of his thoughts on the battles going on behind the scenes in Washington DC.
REAX: As simply as you can put it, how does the Music Genome Project work?
Tim Westergren: Unfortunately, “simply” is the difficult part of that question. For about eight years, we’ve been musicologically analyzing hundreds of thousands of recordings by a team of trained musicians, capturing every minute musical detail of each song. They catalog everything about melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, vocals, etc. They score them all and create a repository of musical DNA for every song. When you visit Pandora and type in a song, our search engine looks at that song’s musical makeup and creates a playlist based on musical connections. As you listen to a station and give a thumbs up or down feedback on each song, we refine the musicological sense of what you want that station to be. We’re trying to replicate what a friend would do for you. They get to know you better over time and then get better at recommending music to you. The important thing about musicological connections is that it’s blind to sociological connections. We don’t know who played with whom or who was influenced by whom, all we know is that their music has similarities.
REAX: How many categories do you have for scoring each song?
TW: About 400, it’s completely insane… in a good way.
REAX: How are you able to store and use music for Pandora? What costs are associated with that?
TW: We exist under a federal statute called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and it grants us the permission to stream any music that we want provided that we abide by certain constraints and we pay mandated publishing and license fees for all the music that we stream. This eventually gets distributed to the rights holders.
REAX: Who is in charge of regulating that?
TW: The beauty of the federal license is that it’s a quick and easy way to get permission to play everything we don’t get in direct deals. The problem is, every now and then someone in DC makes a big mistake. What happened recently is that an arbitration panel that was meant to be ruling on the new fee got it horribly wrong. In March, they ruled that the rates should basically triple for Internet radio. The new rate is completely unaffordable for us and anybody else.
REAX: Who is the driving force behind that? Is someone trying to kick out independent radio to make even more room for Clear Channel and other corporate radio giants?
TW: Actually, Clear Channel isn’t the instigator behind this. The driving force is the RIAA Recording Industry Association of America, which is the association that represents the big record labels. There are different ways to interpret the motives behind this. On one hand, you could say it’s just them trying to maximize the money they can get from their industry when they’re in the middle of the decline of their core business. But, I also think that labels don’t like the statutory law because what they really want is to deal directly with each service and license their music one by one. That puts them in a much stronger negotiating position. The federal statute is called a compulsory license, which means they have to give us the right to use their music. If the rate associated with the statute is too high, then we can go to the label and ask for better terms. When that happens, the labels can pretty much have their way with us. For many reasons, this is dysfunctional. Not only would it wreck our business, but we would also have to stop playing all the indie music because we would have to get direct deals with the 50,000 rights holders that our catalog represents.
REAX: Can you explain what the SaveNetRadio coalition is doing to help independent artists and internet radio?
TW: It was created in response to this rate hike. It’s seeking a level of royalty that’s affordable for Internet radio and it’s fighting for us to be treated equally with other forms of radio, such as terrestrial AM/FM and satellite radio. This rate hike, which will represent between fifty and seventy percent of the revenue of large webcasters, is not paid by AM/FM, they’re exempt from it. Cable and satellite just settled with the same group at seven percent. So, there is this bizarre and wildly unfair fee structure across radio.
REAX: Has the stress of dealing with the music business ever changed the way you thought about what you’ve gotten yourself into?
TW: Actually, this is really mild compared to the stress of building the company eight years ago. We raised our first round of financing literally two weeks before the shit hit the fan in Silicon Valley in March of 2000. We spent four years in the wilderness. We didn’t take salaries for two years, getting evicted every couple of weeks, and getting sued. We went through so much shit to get where we are now. This is just part of the business that involves dealing with intellectual property rights. My attitude towards the rate hike changed after we got so much public support about it. With the Save Net Radio campaign, well over a million people called or faxed their congressperson about it. That’s put me in a place where I feel that there is actually a safety net. The ability to mobilize massive public support when these kinds of shenanigans go on has given me faith and let’s me know that we’re not completely over a barrel. It matters to people and it’s an incredible illustration of what’s possible with the Internet. I think people will look back at this and say that it was a bit of a watershed. In so many parts of broadcast media, the dynamics, offerings, and distribution channels are changing.
Pandora.com
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