Business & Tech
Pandora Co-founder, CEO Stepping Down
Shares of Pandora Media Inc., which fell 35 percent since the beginning of the year, slipped about 1 percent to $8.38 in midday trading.
NEW YORK, NY — The co-founder and CEO of Pandora, under intensifying pressure from Spotify and Apple Music, has relinquished his position and will step down from the company board as well.
Westergren, who helped found the company 17 years ago, returned as CEO about 15 months ago with Pandora struggling to match the subscribers heading to rival services. He had also been CEO between 2002 and 2004.
Pandora’s most popular product works like a radio. Listeners, most of whom use it for free, select a station and Pandora plays songs based on the user’s tastes. Ads are played, but users can listen to an ad-free version if they pay $5 a month. Pandora makes most of its money from the free version, bringing in nearly $1.1 billion in ad revenue last year. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)
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After Westergren’s return as CEO in March, the company launched a new $10 a month on-demand music service which lets users select the songs they want to hear, copying what Spotify and Apple Music already offers. But it may have been too little too late. Pandora had 4.7 million paying subscribers at the end of March, while Spotify said it had more than 50 million. Earlier this month Pandora made two moves to raise cash: It sold a 19 percent stake in its business to satellite radio company Sirius XM for $480 million and sold a ticket-selling business for $200 million.
Roger Faxon, a Pandora board member, said Tuesday that having multiple options will help the company “more effectively recruit listeners.”
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Pandora said Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra will serve as interim CEO as it looks for a permanent replacement. The company, based in Oakland, California, also said that Michael Herring has stepped down as president and that former MySpace and MTV Networks executive Jason Hirschhorn is joining Pandora’s board.
Westergren still holds 1.6 million shares in Pandora, less than 1 percent of total outstanding shares.
Shares of Pandora Media Inc., which are already down 35 percent since the beginning of the year, slipped about 1 percent to $8.38 in midday trading.
Photo credit: Richard Drew, Associated Press