I got an invite to attend Pandora’s Listener Town Hall on Barracks Row last Wednesday night, in Eastern Market. Naturally, I brought Dennis and Vanessa to this event since they are both hardcore Pandora listeners. Pandora founder, Tim Westergren, had an informal Q & A at the National Community Church on Barracks Row.
The session commenced with an engaging story about Tim’s struggle to keep Pandora afloat and over how Pandora had to go through multiple hurdles to get to where it is today. A surge of questions cut his story short since the room was full of inquisitive minds. In between the question overload, it was fascinating to learn how the music genome project worked.
I even learned a new term that day: Musicology. If you have a Beetles station on and all of a sudden, you hear disco from The BeeGees do not blame Pandora. Blame Musicology since both bands have songs with similar intonations, tones and lyrical structures.
Pandora has alot of new features cooking up in the future, fyi. They are in the process of incorporating concert listings whenever you hear a band you like plus there is a threshold for DC rock bands to submit their songs into Pandora. Check out their website to learn more information.
