Video Interview with Pandora Founder Tim Westergren

Last year, Pandora released it's iPhone app, and quite possibly changed internet "radio" forever. Suddenly personalized radio, previously only available to the masses on computers, was free from any Mac or PC, and in the wild.

I had a chance to talk to Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, about the effect the iPhone app has had on the company (spoiler: it now accounts for 15% of daily listening) and the dark days last fall as internet broadcasters were facing a potentially game-ending music royalty hike.

Enjoy, and my apologies for the bad video quality. (That might be another blog post all in itself.) Also, to put this in context, the interview took place prior to the launch of the Palm Pre, another device aimed at massive adoption that sports a Pandora client.

Pandora iPhone App

Want radio for your iPhone? Look no further, Pandora is what you want. Pandora is your radio station customized based on the music you like. You tell Pandora the artists or songs you like and it will customize a station based on your likes. While the songs are playing you can give them a thumbs up, telling Pandora to play more songs like that. Or you can give them a thumbs down, telling Pandora not to play that song or songs like it.

I was happily surprised to find that Pandora works over EDGE. I had no problem streaming my station with a full EDGE signal. I'm confident I would not have had as much success with a weaker signal.

Pandora also has a computer based portal at www.pandora.com. The App is free and I think you'll really like it.