Pandora's Founder Rocks the Music Biz: TIM WESTERGREN has made friends with the record labels, retailers, and consumers - and his company makes money. Not bad for a former starving artist

摘要

ANDORA'S TIM WESTERGREN took a somewhat meandering path to starting what amounts to the world's largest radio station. The 44-year-old executive spent much of the 1990s as a struggling musician. During a gig at a Palo Alto Holiday Inn in the late 1990s he found himself playing piano in front of a big-screen television broadcasting the latest football scores. Adding to the indignity, a football fan approached "and asks me to stop playing for a moment, so he can hear the scores," Westergren says. "He can read them, but he wants to hear them."