Exclusive Video Interview With Pandora Founder
On Tuesday, I caught up with Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He was doing a town hall tour of the nation and meeting up with listeners. It was a great experience to see Tim talk and hear listener ideas about where the company should go. After the well-attended event, he and I sat down and chatted about many of the topics that have been floating around the Hypebot community. Keep in mind that I was being rather candid and thanks to Tim, who bought coffee for everyone who came, I was quite caffeinated.
The result is short segment that covers everything from web startups to radio to licensing costs. Many thanks to Tim for taking the time to talk to me after the event and I hope you enjoy our short chat. Here's a video and a picture:
Tim and I:
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Before the interview, Tim and I reviewed the reader questions and found none of them provided more than a few word answer, so we moved onto the questions I jotted down. Also, the video of Tim talking at the event got pulled from the blog because some of the footage contained shots of Pandora listeners.
Nice interview. I totally agree with Tim that it makes no sense to have different royalty structures for terrestrial vs. satellite vs. online.
Now for a complaint: I found a lot of the reader questions quite interesting and I didn’t know the answers to most of them. I was disappointed that you didn’t ask Tim any of those questions. Perhaps, since “none of them provided more than a few word answer” you could do a quick blog that answers each of the questions. After all, I and the other questioners would find it interesting and it wouldn’t take you too much time to write. Right?
Really informative interview guys, thanks!
I heard Tim say the cost of failure in digital is expensive. Did I hear this right? I thought it was the other way around?
Cheers,