Swampcast features Tim Westergren, Pandora CEO

Join Michael Levin in this Swampcast interview with Tim Westergren, Pandora CEO. Click here to listen. Photo credit: Gala

In 2007, Tim started touring the USA giving presentations about a new music service on the web called Pandora. I met Tim in Orlando. There's quite a bit of background about Pandora that Tim describes in this interview. He deferred to his CTO, Tom Conrad when I asked him about technical details. Tom and I did a Swampcast interview shortly after this one. 

From Wikipedia:

"Westergren was born in 1965 in Minneapolis. He attended boarding school, Cranbrook Kingswood, during his high school years. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science.[2] Following his graduation, Westergren spent twenty years working as a record producer and composer (working as a nanny in between jobs), devoting the majority of his time to emerging artists and independent labels.

In 1999 he started Pandora Media along with two co-founders: Will Glaser and Jon Kraft. The Oakland, Calif., company went public in 2011,[3] reporting $138 million in revenue that fiscal year.

As an early project, Westergren and Glaser created the Music Genome Project, a mathematical algorithm to organize music.[1] As the company's chief strategy officer, Westergren spends the majority of his time traveling the nation and gathering feedback from Pandora Radio users. In 2010 he was listed by Time magazine as one among the 100 most influential people in the world.[4]

In April 2016, Pandora Media announced that Tim Westergren would replace Brian McAndrews as CEO. He had previously served as CEO and president from May 2002 to July 2004.[5]

In June 2017, he announced that he is going to step down as CEO.[6]"

Views: 259

Comment

You need to be a member of Codetown to add comments!

Join Codetown

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

FerretDB Cloud: Open Source Alternative to MongoDB Atlas?

FerretDB has recently announced the availability of FerretDB Cloud, a managed MongoDB-compatible database service built on open source DocumentDB. Targeting developers seeking the first cross-cloud DocumentDB-based solution and an alternative to MongoDB Atlas, FerretDB Cloud is currently available on AWS only.

By Renato Losio

Presentation: The Friction Fix: Building Collaborative Relationships Between Teams

Diana Montalion and Cat Morris discuss why large-scale transformations often fail, pinpointing six systemic friction points. They explain how architects can drive change by understanding organizational systems, designing knowledge flow, and architecting relationships. They argue that focusing on outcomes, managing resistance, and adopting a learning-driven mindset are critical to success.

By Cat Morris, Diana Montalion

xAI Releases Grok Code Fast 1, a New Model for Agentic Coding

xAI introduced grok-code-fast-1, a model developed specifically for agentic coding workflows.

By Daniel Dominguez

Google Spanner Unifies OLTP and OLAP with Columnar Engine

Google Spanner now features a columnar engine, allowing its distributed database to handle both OLTP and OLAP workloads on a single platform. This hybrid architecture eliminates the need for separate data warehouses and ETL pipelines. The engine's columnar storage and vectorized execution accelerate analytical queries up to 200x on live data, which is especially beneficial for AI applications.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Article: Virtual Panel: How Software Engineers and Team Leaders Can Excel with Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is impacting the individual work of software developers, how professionals work together in teams, and how software teams are being managed. In this panel, we'll discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping software development, and what mindset and skills are required for software developers and engineering leaders to become adaptable and resilient in the age of AI.

By Ben Linders, Courtney Nash, Mandy Gu, Hien Luu

© 2025   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service