Pandora Media, Inc. announced its hire of George Lynch as the new Vice President of Automotive Business Development.
Pandora Senior Vice President Jessica Steel stated, “We’re thrilled that George is bringing to Pandora his 20 years of experience pioneering new radio technology into vehicles, where fifty percent of all radio listening occurs. Delivering Pandora’s personalized internet radio to our 48 million listeners in their vehicles is a key focus of our company this year and we think we’ve got the best person on board to help Pandora cement our presence in the automotive arena.”
Mr. Lynch said, “I’ve been fortunate in my career to have the opportunity to evangelize new radio technologies in the automotive industry and forge the partnerships with automakers that make them a reality for consumers. Pandora is radio at its most innovative: wholly personalized and ever-present. I’m excited to introduce Pandora into connected vehicles.”
Pandora recently announced a business partnership with Ford that will enable listeners to access their personalized Pandora radio stations through voice command over Ford Sync, making their radio listening experience safer and more engaging than ever before. Alpine and Pioneer have also announced support for Pandora’s recently launched “PandoraLink” technology in aftermarket products that those companies are distributing later this year. The PandoraLink integration enables Pandora listeners to command and control their Pandora iPhone application directly from their Alpine and Pioneer radios in their car while their phone is tucked safely away in the glove compartment.
Mr. Lynch’s professional history includes 11 years at Sirius/XM Satellite Radio where he held the positions of Director, OEM Accounts and, since 2004, Vice President, Automotive Partnerships. Previously he held positions at Panasonic Automotive Electronics Company, Aisin World Corporation of America and United Technologies Automotive Group.
About Pandora
Pandora (www.pandora.com) is the personalized internet radio service available through personal computers, mobile phones, and a wide array of consumer electronic devices. With 48 million US listeners, Pandora is the world’s largest internet radio service. By simply entering a favorite artist or song, listeners can instantly enjoy a personalized station based on Pandora’s Music Genome Project(TM). For more than ten years, Pandora’s team of professional musician analysts have been building the world’s most comprehensive and intricate musicological database, manually analyzing more than 700,000 songs across up to 400 distinct musical attributes per song. This musical ‘DNA,’ representing every dimension of timbre, melody, harmony, and rhythm, captures each song’s unique musical identity, and enables Pandora to quickly and easily create relevant playlists, full of discovery. 70% of the collection, which includes everything from early Baroque music to the latest hip-hop, consists of tracks from independent artists and labels. Real time ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ feedback allows listeners to further refine their stations, which are stored and universally available through their account. More than 2 million new listeners join Pandora every month, including over 600,000 on mobile and CE devices.
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