Pandora CEO: No Plans To Sell Company: On Path To Do Something Big

Chris O'Brien, reporting for VentureBeat: Making one of his biggest public appearances since returning to Pandora as CEO, Tim Westergren struck a defiant tone -- insisting that the company is not for sale and is, in fact, on the cusp of a reinventing itself. "We are on a path to do something big and something for the long-term," Westergren said when asked on stage about sale rumors. "Tha's why I got back in the saddle, so no plans for that." Pandora, with its Internet radio format, has been a music streaming pioneer. Founded in 2000, it survived the dot-com bust and enjoyed explosive growth following the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the ensuing smartphone era. Pandora's rise was capped by a big IPO in 2011. But as a public company, Pandora has struggled to show consistent profits and growth. It is often buffeted on one side by artists who claim they are not being paid fairly and on the other by new entrants such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon who offer on-demand streaming services.

Re:

[b0bby]

I've been paying them ~$4 a month for years to avoid the ads. Over the last few years, though, they don't really seem to have expanded their offerings much and I get pretty sick of the same heavy rotation.
I remember reading that paying customers are a tiny percent of their users, and that they actually make more money from ads per non-subscriber, so I'm sure they won't miss me when I cancel.

Never Believe Anything

[turkeydance]

Until It Is Officially Denied http://quoteinvestigator.com/2... [quoteinvestigator.com]

Something big: Copy of Spotify

[skaag]

Pandora is such a piece of crap compared to newer entrants like Spotify, it will take massive efforts for Pandora just to copy them. Spotify is years ahead with their tech.

I will be surprised and impressed even if all they do is copy Spotify 1:1, but something tells me they aren't going to be able to do that, and will end up getting delisted from their stock exchange.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Pandora's major problem is that you can't use it offline, even if you pay.

Both Spotify and Amazon Prime Music let you download music for later payback if you pay for the service. This is very useful when you want to play music in any scenario where you either don't have internet access or don't want to waste data on it. Such as while on a road trip or when going out for a run.

Which means I never use Pandora, regardless of how good or bad their suggestion engine may be.

Then again, the last time I used Pandor

Re:

[fluffernutter]

I've made playlists in other radio sites and they just seem to play other artists in the same genre which is never really what I want. Pandora was the only one I knew which would actually match by the qualities of the songs I chose regardless of the artist, therefore it was the only one I used.

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[skaag]

I believe they curate the stations, manually. When you listen to a a Pandora station, someone carefully and thoughtfully associated other tracks to the tracks you liked. It's also somewhat enriched by feedback from other listeners.

Still, their client software is miserably lacking in features. All it takes is trying Spotify for a week or two, to realize how much more advanced they are. It's like a Tesla car vs. an old steam car.

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[UoNTidal]

Pandora is such a piece of crap compared to newer entrants like Spotify, it will take massive efforts for Pandora just to copy them. Spotify is years ahead with their tech.

Pandora bought Rdio's technology last year - all it would take is a new licencing deal to launch a new streaming service.

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[skaag]

Pandora does not have a content problem, they always had great content. They have a usability/features problem.
I abandoned Pandora in favor of Spotify because I got fed up with how miserable and limited the client software was.

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[TFlan91]

Do you really need anything more than play/pause and skip?

I've used Pandora Desktop for yeeearrsss and have never had a "fuck this" issue with it. I like its simplicity, it does feel a bit old now that I'm thinking about it and I'm not a fan of Adobe Air....

but it works. No ads, no memory hungry web browser, just straight up music.

*cough* please allow me to add more than 100 stations. Although I don't mind going down memory lane in my quest to delete the most irrelevant station, database storage costs fract

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[skaag]

I thought the same as you, but when you use Spotify for a while your eyes open. For example I play my favorite play list at the office, from Desktop Spotify, when I go to the car and start spotify, it will pick up where I left off, and it even offers to switch from Amazon's Echo (which is what I use at the office) back to the car.

Also, you get user curated playlists. There's a movie you liked? Someone probably made a playlist around that movie. Prince died? Someone made a "Prince's Best" playlist. You love

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[TFlan91]

> This is just the tip of the iceberg. I suggest you try it out before you settle.

It does sound nifty, and I will, but I don't nearly have the musical footprint or domain of device capability that would allow me to take advantage of half those features as you do.

I have a feeling it will be like the mentality of a flip-phone to smartphone conversion.

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[fluffernutter]

I just commented the same above. I haven't tried all the radio services.. for one thing I got turned off of Spotify because of the Facebook relationship. None of the services seemed to match by song quality.. Pandora was the only service that gave me other songs that were good accompaniments with each other. The other sites just seemed to go by artist genre.

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[Pascoea]

Pandora was the only service that gave me other songs that were good accompaniments with each other. The other sites just seemed to go by artist genre.

Same experience. I love Pandora for their ability to not play crap I don't like. I have 4 different stations "trained" pretty well, for different moods.

Biggest complaints:
1: I can't just play a song I want to hear.
2: Even paying for Pandora One, you still are limited in the number of skips.
3: No way to "turn off" things I don't like, such as acoustic tracks, or live music.

Mash together Google's music service (or Spotify, or whatever) with Pandora's ability to "match" content and you'd have a gold mine.

Golden parachute

[BitZtream]

He means their going to go out of business in an epic way while he floats down and a nice cushy bunch of money he made when conning idiots to invest money in a shitty form of radio that requires far more resources, provides no benefits, and to top it off, is proprietary as all hell.

Sorry, Pandora is a dumb idea. It was a dumb idea when we dicked around with it in the late 90s (internet radio), its a dumb idea now. The only people that rave about this crap are a small group of rabid fanboys who just don't

rdio!

[ioev]

Considering Pandora bought out rdio, and rdio was (IMHO) the best streaming site out there, I'm actually a little excited to hear that they are actually planning to do something. If it were a relaunch of something comparable to rdio, and it were available in Canada, I'd subscribe in a heartbeat.