

Pandora CEO stepping down - hansy
http://investor.pandora.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=227956&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1793860&highlight=

======
carterac
A personal anecdote to demonstrate Joe's awesomeness: After hearing him give
the keynote speech for Princeton's entrepreneurship conference, I was able to
wiggle through the crowd of people surrounding him and blurt "Hey Joe! I loved
your talk. I'm also a computer science major about to graduate and start a
company that is essentially Pandora for art--there's even an Art Genome
Project too [of course none of this existed at the time]. I'm moving out to
Silicon Valley when I graduate this spring. Could I meet with you when I'm
there and get your help?" He managed to say "Sure, my email is X" before the
crowd reformed around him.

I was convinced he would forget about me or be too busy to reply to a random
student who approached him after a conference (which I now know is the worst
time ever).

To my surprise, he remembered me and invited me to visit him at Pandora's
offices for lunch. He even took me on a tour of the whole company and showed
me the "genomers" (who I remember being mostly bearded men staring into space
thoughtfully while listening to music on gigantic headphones--strikingly
different from Artsy's genomers today). The whole time he never made me feel
like I was imposing or wasting his time. It was amazing to meet someone so
successful yet also so humble and genuinely interested in others.

Joe continued to stay involved and add value even after I moved to New York. A
computer scientist himself, he even helped me think through the original (very
simple) similarity algorithm for Artsy's own Art Genome Project and despite
how busy he must have been, would always take the time to answer my emails or
get on the phone. And of course, having his name involved was critical social
proof in the early days of the company.

Although I'm a proud NYC'er now, I've often said that Silicon Valley will
always have a place in my heart for teaching me the value of paying it
forward. And that lesson started with Joe's kind actions, without which I'm
not sure Artsy would be what it is today.

~~~
benmathes
I know this isn't the right venue, I don't know how else to get in touch with
you, Carter.

I still have your camera that you lent me when I let you keep my backup squash
racket. I didn't know you had moved to NYC without returning it to you, and I
still feel pretty bad about it.

I'm sorry, but the little guy just up and stopped working. He had a good life.
Can I return the favor?

~~~
orta
he's carterac on twitter, and at artsy we use [firstname]@artsy.net for email
addresses :)

------
pavanky
I found pandora a little over 6 years ago on my first day in USA. I left all
my music back home in India. A Google search for "Internet radio" introduced
me to Pandora. They are the reason I found some of my favorite bands.

I don't listen to it as much now, but Pandora was the only source of music for
a poor graduate student for nearly 3 years.

------
mkhattab
Did anyone else get an email saying you're one of the 4% of users that exceed
40 hour monthly usage? Can't believe it's only 4%.

(listening to Pandora now).

~~~
rz2k
There may be a very large group of users who listen less than an hour per
month. In other words, their population of users may include people who signed
up, but rarely use it and could stretch the definition of what would be
considered active users.

------
ajg1977
It's hard to see this as anything other than someone choosing to go out at the
top.

~~~
rhizome
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that there's about to be a big
fight over royalties to the labels with Apple entering with a huge salvo
today[1], and Pandora likely needs a new face in order to join the battle
differently than they had in the past. In other words, "circumstances
dictate."

1\. [http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/07/apple-reportedly-
offerin...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/07/apple-reportedly-offering-
half-of-pandoras-royalty-rate-for-streaming-music-service/)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Here's an article on the amount Spotify pays for streams to indie artists.
There's obviously a lot of hands out for pieces of the pie.

<http://www.spotidj.com/spotifyroyalties.htm>

~~~
Erwin
Interesting. If that's not enough royalties, Spotify is charging too little.
According to last.fm (who can record all track plays from Spotify), I've
played 10672 tracks over the last 4 months ($55 in royalties at the
0.0052/stream rate), but paid $61.9 to Spotify for their highest premium
subscription in the same time.

------
rplnt
Almost at the same time, CEO of (financially) quite similar company steps down
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5342655>

Funny enough the press release is released through the same system, only few
IDs away from each other, with very similar words used.

------
sj4nz
Does this mean we'll finally get a checkbox for "[x] Don't Play Music Recorded
'Live'" now? (Or "[x] Only Play Music Recorded 'Live'?" for people who are
fans of it?)

------
hakaaaaak
Ok. What's the story, though?

I love Pandora, but I want to find out what is going on.

------
tyang
Still few exits among music tech startups.

~~~
winterchil
Not exactly sure how to take your comment but Pandora is a public company, the
IPO was an "exit" in the valley's sense. Maybe that's what you meant? LastFM
was probably the other great example.

~~~
tyang
True. What else? No experts I know like investing in this space. What are the
returns for investors to date in music startups, exactly?

