Oakland-based Pandora Media Inc. is an Internet-based radio company that creates personalized stations based on user’s choice of artist, song or genre. The company’s Music Genome Project — labeled a “hand-built musical taxonomy” — makes all the selections from that point and allows customers to listen on a range of consumer devices from smartphones to Blu-ray players.
Pandora’s advertiser-based service is free to users, but a $36-a-year subscription is available to users who want to skip the ads. Some 90 million users are signed up with Pandora. Chief Strategy Officer Tim Westergren founded the company in 2000; Pandora went public in June 2011. The company (Nasdaq: P) reported $75 million in revenues for the quarter ended Oct. 31, and net income of $638,000.
