Pandora Testing Artist Messaging

Tim Westergren

The music streaming service is launching a pilot test this week that will allow music artists to send personalized audio messages to its listeners, Pandora founder Tim Westergren announced at the Code/Media conference at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, Calif., on Wednesday.

According to re/code.net, Pandora is currently open to just a small number of artists, including Lenny Kravitz, Westergren said. But over time, the company expects to expand it past a pilot test. Pandora thinks artists would use the service, dubbed Artist Audio Messaging, to announce things such as new tours and new albums, or to provide context on a particular song.

“It’s the beginning of a much longer roadmap,” Westergren said, giving an example of artists using the service down the road to target messages to fans in a specific city.

Pandora is positioning the messaging service as a continuation of an initiative to give more tools to music artists, as Pandora competes with newer music services such as Spotify for both listeners and artist support. In October, for example, Pandora unveiled a new, free analytics service for artists that gives them information about where their listeners on Pandora are from, and which songs they are favoriting the most.

Eventually, musicians could even set up a virtual “tip jar,” Westergren said.