Timothy Brooks Westergren (born December 21, 1965) is a co-founder of

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the "Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying indiv ...

Biography

Westergren was born in 1965 in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

. He attended boarding school,

Cranbrook Kingswood Cranbrook Schools is a private, PK–12 preparatory school located on a campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The schools comprise a co-educational elementary school, a middle school with separate schools for boys and girls, and a co-education ...

, during his high school years. He graduated from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

with a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in political science. Following his graduation, Westergren spent twenty years working as a record producer and composer (working as a nanny in between jobs), devoting the majority of his time to emerging artists and independent labels. In 1999 he started

Pandora Media Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying in ...

along with co-founders Will Glaser and

Jon Kraft Jon Kraft is an American business executive best known as a co-founder of Pandora Media, Inc. and its former CEO. He also co-founded Thrively, LiftOff, Big Stage Entertainment and Stanford Technology Group and previously worked for a number of ...

. The Oakland, Calif., company went public in 2011, reporting $138 million in revenue that fiscal year. As an early project, Westergren and Glaser created the

Music Genome Project The Music Genome Project is an effort to "capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level" using various attributes to describe songs and mathematics to connect them together into an interactive map. The Music Genome Project covers five ...

, a mathematical algorithm to organize music. As the company's chief strategy officer, Westergren spent the majority of his time traveling the nation and gathering feedback from

users. In 2010 he was listed by ''Time'' magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In April 2016, Pandora Media announced that Westergren would replace Brian McAndrews as CEO. He had previously served as CEO and president from May 2002 to July 2004. In June 2017, he announced that he would step down as CEO. In December 19,2022, www.sessionslive.com, a streaming website which Tim co-founded, scammed alot of artist from their pay by shutting down the website abruptly. Up to now, there is no news on how the artists will get their pay.

References

Stanford University alumni Living people 1965 births Henry Crown Fellows {{US-CEO-stub