Pandora's Playlist

The Music Genome Project's Tim Westergren on creating the musicians' middle class

by Sam Tremble

Before going off to work, mommy and daddy will load the family station wagon with amps, drums and 2.3 children. On the way to school, there will be no fights over which radio station to play. An intelligent recommendation engine streaming over the ubiquitous Wi-Fi waves will choose music suitable to everyone's taste. Then mommy and daddy will practice at their bandmate's home studio and record music to be sold over the Internet at 25 cents a song, providing comfortable wages for each band member's 2.3 children.

Is this the future? Probably not, but Tim Westergren, founder of the Music Genome Project and Pandora (a site that recommends and plays music based on your evolving preferences), doesn't think this is too far off the mark.

"I think what we'll see is the beginning of the musicians' middle class," he said last Thursday evening at a town-hall-style meeting in the University of Pennsylvania bookstore. In the predigital days of feudalism, the musical peasantry depended solely on noble record labels for recording, marketing and distributing their albums. Now that DIY means downloading a cracked version of ProTools and MySpacing music around the world, that dependence is slowly fading. At the meeting, Westergren outlined how the Oakland, Calif.-based Pandora (www.pandora.com), "an intelligent recommendation engine," would further that movement by connecting listeners with new music based on a list of sonic (as opposed to social- or genre-based) criteria. Some of those present at the meeting were glad to hear the news.

Among them was Donna Conaway Morrissey from the Philadelphia Songwriters Project, who stressed the importance of connecting listeners and musicians in the real world, not just over the Internet. Westergren explained that tour dates pop up as long as the artist provides them. He speculated that bands might one day plan their tours according to where they had high concentrations of Pandora fans.

Members from The Awful Show, a local talk-radio-style podcast, wondered when Pandora would begin streaming podcasts. Not anytime soon, said Westergren.

Marketing-minded men in blazers and Web geeks constituted a large part of the audience. Musicians were notably absent, or at least quiet.

"Musicians are fools. ... Their idea of marketing is driving 500 miles to play for 12 people and then six months later driving back," said Westergren, himself a touring veteran of the Northwest "crescent." He may be a musician, but he's no fool. Two people showed up to his first town hall meeting in the West Village last December. When he came back to New York in May, 250 people came and talked with him for four hours. Pandora will have four million users within the next few weeks and he hasn't advertised once.

Turns out it's cheaper and more effective for him to travel to talks and give away free hats. The one Westergren gave me is army green and has holes purposefully worn into the brim to make it look older. Paradoxically, it looks older than Pandora itself, which will celebrate its one-year anniversary in December. Don't expect a DJ at the party.