

What questions should I ask Pandora founder Tim Westergrin? - tvchurch

In two hours I get to sit down and talk with Pandora founder Tim Westergrin, along with a few other students. What would you guys ask if you had the chance to talk to him?
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josh_nyc
I'd want to hear about the intricacies of their new audio advertising program.

What have they learned about listener preferences through tweaking the length,
frequency, and targeting of audio ads? Are they making demographic inferences
based off of music genre?

I'm also really curious about the creative on those audio ads. Do ad buyers
know alongside which genres their ads will be broadcast? Do they adjust
creative appropriately, i.e. hip-hop audio ad creative on a station of hip-hop
music? I realize that each "station" is really an instance of user
preferences, but still...

I could go on and on... I wonder if there is a cool side-business opportunity
for supplying their ad buyers with creative (via a network involving
independent commercial musicians/producers). This could help their ads become
more effective and turn into something interesting itself.

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ScottWhigham
On that note, it's interesting that pandora.com, the website, serves ads but
the Windows Sidebar gadget does not. Does the iPhone app serve ads? Those
might be an interesting place to wander into...

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r11t
Maybe you could ask him about their back end infrastructure? It is always
fascinating to learn how they manage to handle streaming music seamlessly to
their many users.

