News April 21, 2016

Ticket giveaway: Pandora spotlights Urthboy for live Sessions

Former Editor

In November last year Pandora Australia launchedPandora Sessions, an intimate and live initiative that sees the internet radio giant act as an influential gatekeeper.

The inaugural Australian Session saw Brisbane quartet The Jungle Giants perform to a modest crowd of industry invitees at Pandora’s Chippendale headquarters. Sessions with Sydney singer-songwriter Elizabeth Rose, Perth’s Methyl Ethyl and Blue Mountains duo Hermitude followed.

It could be said that Hermitude are an exemplary case study of the project’s global pull. Following the duo’s Pandora Session at 25th Street Studioin San Francisco late last year, the recording was mixed, mastered and scheduled to become the first live Session on the platform’s branded Station. The recording accrued so much traffic and engagement that it increased Hermitude’s audience on the platform by 160%.

Speaking toTMN,Thomas Heymann, head of artists and industry relations for Australia and NZ, said each artist picked for Pandora Sessions have been identified as having global potential.

“The reason Hermitude was so successful was because we saw that their song The Buzz had a lot of individual listeners, and we saw the opportunity to turn these listeners into Station creators, therefore increasing [Hermitude’s] audience.”

Pandora Sessions was originally born under the banner Whiteboard Sessionsat the US headquarters in Oakland. Acts like country singer Jo Dee Messina, Norwegian indie-pop artist AURORA and Brooklyn pop singer Tor Miller all stopped by the office to perform intimate sets. The initiative was picked up by the New York office and later rebranded. Recordings are now posted to Pandora’s YouTube account and updated monthly.

When Heymann joined Pandora last August, he came into the fold with the strategy to roll out Pandora Sessions in Sydney to help place local artists on the international stage.

“We have a lot of data, so we are aware of artists that we see a lot of potential for,” he said. “Specifically artists that we see have a lot of potential in the USA. Because we operate in only the USA, Australia and New Zealand there’s a unique opportunity right now to help Australian artists to grow their audience through Pandora.”

This Friday, Pandora is set to take over Studios 301 with hip hop luminary Tim Levinson, aka Urthboy. As with previous Sessions, Levinson will utilise Pandora’s marketing muscle to create new engagement experiences for his fans and the 81 million-strong active Pandora users.

He’ll also own all the content created by Pandora for the recording, including the footage filmed in the same space previously used by Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Kanye West and Muse.

“Studio One [at Studios 301] is an amazing room,” said Heymann. “I’ve attended showcases there before. We just wanted to do something special with Urthboy in a recording studio environment.”

Pandora’s ability to influence careers has been more regularly documented in recent years. Industry digital ratingsreleasedby Nielsen and IAB earlier this month showed Australians spend more time with Pandora than any other music streaming platform. Meanwhile, its reach is markedly wider than that found on many social networks.

“You’ll see that in 80% of all cases, artists on Pandora have a bigger audience on Pandora than all of their social media combined,” Heymann said.

TMN is offering members a special opportunity to see Urthboy live at Sydney’s Studio 301 at 2pm thisFriday(with food, drinks &networking). RSVP to [email protected]with the subject line ‘Urthboy’. The first 10 to reply will receive a free VIP double pass. (RSVP by Thursday 10am).

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