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Tim Westergren is an award-winning composer, a musician with more than 20 years of experience and has even owned his own digital recording studio. Yet, Westergren’s greatest impact on the music industry has been as Pandora Radio’s founder and CSO. Pandora Radio has grown to more than 40 million users, and for last year they paid out more than $20 million in royalties.
Still, Westergren has even bigger plans for Pandora and ideas on how musicians can utilize current and future marketing tools.
In late January we talked with Westergren about what Pandora’s value is to musicians, and his thoughts on how to find success in this new decade.
What is the Music Genome Project?
“[The Music Genome Project] is the connecting tissue that powers Pandora.”
“I spent a lot of time in bands and as a film composer as well. And specifically when I was writing music for movies, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why people like what they like.”
“I kinda developed this taste profiling method, an informal genome in my head. And that eventually became the foundation for the idea of the Music Genome Project.”
“The genome project itself is this enormous musical taxonomy. So it’s a collection of hundreds …of discrete musical aspects that collectively describe a song.”
How are royalties paid by Pandora?
“We pay a publishing fee and a performance fee for every song we play. And a publishing fee is paid to the composer and the performance fee is paid to the performer.”
“We pay the publishing fee to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, and we pay performance fees to a company called SoundExchange. And they in turn distribute that money to artists and labels.”
“The nice thing is that musicians are getting paid. It’s been a real strain for us on a business standpoint, and I think it still remains a pretty unjust fee.”
Can musicians get feedback on play counts and thumbs up/thumbs down from listeners?
“It’s certainly something we would like to offer and eventually will. Where an artist can go in and investigate that, and ultimately make use of that.”
“So, not just find out what songs people are liking and who your fans are, where they are. But, communicate with them as well. So you can maybe plan a tour and e-mail all the people who ever thumbed up a song of yours to let them know you are coming.”
How can artist promote themselves on Pandora?
“[Musicians] can go in and buy advertising. That would essentially mean buying graphic visual advertising that surrounds the tuner, banners around the tuner. That currently is the only method we have for artists to advertise.”
What advice do you have for new bands starting out?
“I think it’s time now where if you’re a musician you need to take advantage of the web.”
“In order to do that you need someone to help you. If I was starting a band now, one of the people I would add to the band is a person whose job is to be the online member, not necessarily some one who plays an instrument…But, this person’s full time job is just to figure out all the ways in which you can take advantage of the web.”
“Think of that person as a member of your band just like anybody else. But they play a mouse instead of playing guitar…give them a cut of the door, credit them on the album and make them part of the band.”
How will musicians fair as labels are struggling to stay vital?
“I think there will be now a potential for a musician’s middle class. And in some ways you are going to see a compression overall where… the top selling artists aren’t going to make nearly as much, and that’s not news, so you’re going to have this layer of artists that [in the past] couldn’t quite make it that can start making it. Meaning, make a living.”
This is part two of a three part series on Pandora Radio. Part one was how to get your music on Pandora Radio.
The third part of the Pandora Radio series is on promoting your band and making money on Pandora. We will we talking with the band Barefoot Truth, a band with more than 4 million plays on Pandora Radio.
Brett Lohmeyer is an editor for detone8.com, and in the day you can find him at
hi
Hi how are you i really liked this.
I really liked this article, it gives “middle class” artists a sense of value and a realization that a good living is still out there to be made even if you dont strike it big beyond your wildest dreams.