{"id":1776,"date":"2014-04-14T18:08:30","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T01:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2014-04-14T18:08:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T01:08:30","slug":"how-to-get-your-music-on-pandora-internet-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/how-to-get-your-music-on-pandora-internet-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Get Your Music on Pandora Internet Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submitting music to Pandora is easier than ever<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Over the past decade,\u00a0Pandora Internet Radio<\/a>\u00a0has become one of the go-to destinations for music discovery.<\/strong>\u00a0The popular radio service allows over 76 million active users to create customized stations based on their favorite genres and artists. Pandora\u2019s recommendation engine (built on extensive human input) then streams a playlist that is altered by user engagement in real-time. In other words, Pandora is pretty smart at picking the playlist to start with, but the listener can give feedback (a simple thumbs up or down) and then Pandora gets even smarter!<\/p>\n

For independent artists, getting music on Pandora can be a great way to build an audience without spending thousands on radio promotion or advertising.<\/strong>\u00a0If you sound like Coldplay, whenever someone creates a Pandora station based on the music of Coldplay\u2014bam!\u2014your music could get served up, hopefully earning you a new fan or download sale (since Pandora also displays\u00a0buy<\/em>\u00a0links).<\/p>\n

But how do you get your music onto Pandora as an independent artist?<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s pretty easy, actually, especially since they began accepting submissions for digital-only albums a few months ago. Yep, pretty easy \u2014 except for one small detail, which we\u2019ll discuss below. But first, here\u2019s the simple steps for submitting music to Pandora.<\/p>\n

How to submit your music to Pandora<\/strong><\/h3>\n

1. Make sure you control\u00a0the legal rights<\/strong>\u00a0to your work.<\/p>\n

2. Make your music available on iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, or Bandcamp.<\/strong><\/p>\n

3. Log into your Pandora account<\/strong>. If you don\u2019t have a Pandora account, create one\u00a0HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4. Go to Pandora\u2019s\u00a0Submit Your Music<\/a>\u00a0page.<\/strong>\u00a0If you\u2019re in a country that doesn\u2019t have Pandora, just write to\u00a0musicandcomedy@pandora.com and they\u2019ll create an account for you.<\/p>\n

5. Provide Pandora with details about your submission<\/strong>, including your band name, release information, link to artist bio, and valid links to one or two songs on iTunes (US), Amazon, CD Baby, or Bandcamp.<\/p>\n

6. Verify your submission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

7. Wait.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yep. Now you\u2019ll have to wait an estimated six weeks to get an acceptance or rejection from Pandora (if it\u2019s an acceptance, they\u2019ll request that you send the whole album) \u2014 which brings us to that one little detail I talked about above:\u00a0not everyone\u2019s music will get accepted into Pandora\u2019s catalog<\/strong>, an extensive collection of songs that is curated by a team of musicologists and powered by a taxonomy of musical data called\u00a0The Music Genome Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How does The Music Genome Project work?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Since so much of Pandora\u2019s curation work is hands-on, it\u2019s no wonder there\u2019s a significant wait time for response, especially when you consider the huge amount of submissions they receive each week.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a little bit about the team of people who\u2019ll be considering your music, and how your music is further analyzed and cataloged if you DO get accepted. According to Pandora:<\/p>\n

Each song in the Music Genome Project is analyzed using up to 450 distinct musical characteristics by a trained music analyst. These attributes capture not only the musical identity of a song, but also the many significant qualities that are relevant to understanding the musical preferences of listeners. The typical music analyst working on the Music Genome Project has a four-year degree in music theory, composition or performance, has passed through a selective screening process and has completed intensive training in the Music Genome\u2019s rigorous and precise methodology. To qualify for the work, analysts must have a firm grounding in music theory, including familiarity with a wide range of styles and sounds.<\/em><\/p>\n

What qualifies your music for inclusion in Pandora\u2019s catalog<\/strong><\/h3>\n

And what exactly is this team of music experts looking for exactly?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Michael Zapruder (Pandora\u2019s music curator, and a great songwriter too IMHO) explains:<\/p>\n

For unknown bands, the fundamental question we have to answer is: will fans of this kind of music be excited to discover this on Pandora stations?<\/em><\/p>\n

We also consider how the submission might add to our existing collection. We may have more of a need for Black Metal, a less visible genre, than for something more common like Indie Rock (that\u2019s not to say that we close the door on any genres, but the state of our collection sometimes comes into play).<\/em><\/p>\n

We have a few basic internal guidelines for listening to every submission.<\/em><\/p>\n

For one thing, our reviewers never have to give a reason for accepting music, but they always have to explain their decision if they are rejecting something. This only seems fair to us.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, we try to keep our personal musical preferences out of the decision-making process. The fact that a reviewer may not enjoy Darkwave or East Coast Hip Hop or anything else really has no place in the decision about whether our listeners would embrace that music.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are looking for excellence. Tim, Pandora\u2019s founder, often says: \u201cYou have to earn your way into Pandora.\u201d We try to make good decisions about whether the music lives up to that high standard.<\/em><\/p>\n

When it\u2019s all said and done, though, we know that with music and art we can\u2019t ever be 100% sure we\u2019re making the right call. We can never completely transcend our own subjectivity. Our way around that is to keep it simple: we try as hard as we can to give your music a fair hearing. We do our best to be conscientious with your work.<\/em><\/p>\n

If we do get it wrong (and we do sometimes), we\u2019ll find out about it; and when we see your music being reviewed or appearing on a chart somewhere, or when you\u2019re playing the Fox Theater here in Oakland, we\u2019ll make sure to get it into the collection right away!<\/em><\/p>\n

Best of luck to everyone who is considering submitting their music or has already done so, and thanks from all the reviewers here for your interest in being a part of Pandora.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n

Hopefully all this information is helpful to you in submitting your music to Pandora. If your music is accepted, be sure to\u00a0register with SoundExchange<\/a>, an organization that pays digital performance royalties to artists, labels, and performers for the usage of sound recordings online. Heck, even if Pandora doesn\u2019t accept your music, you should still register with SoundExchange; there may be plenty of other internet radio stations that are interested in playing your music.<\/p>\n

Have you submitted your music to Pandora?<\/strong>\u00a0Did it get accepted or rejected? What was the process like? Let us know in the comments section below.<\/p>\n

Via CDBaby<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Submitting music to Pandora is easier than ever Over the past decade,\u00a0Pandora Internet Radio\u00a0has become one of the go-to destinations for music discovery.\u00a0The popular radio service allows over 76 million active users to create customized stations based on their favorite genres and artists. Pandora\u2019s recommendation engine (built on extensive human input) then streams a playlist that is altered by user engagement in real-time. In other words, Pandora is pretty smart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[223,285],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-tips","tag-marketing-tips","tag-pandora"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1778,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/1778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}