Tommy Page has spent more than 25 years in the music business. Following a successful career as a pop singer in the late 80s, Page had a well thought out plan of how to reinvent himself and stay connected in a business he loved. The plan worked! After a long tenure with the Warner Bros. family in both radio promotion and A&R, Tommy is now heading up Brand Partnerships at one of the largest digital music platforms in the country, Pandora. Page sees Pandora as the present and future of the music business. He couldn’t be more excited about how Pandora is creating new unique programs and partnerships that benefit Pandora listeners, artists and advertisers.
Tommy Page
By Bob Burke
Tommy Page was signed as a recording artist in 1988 to Sire Records by Seymour Stein. He was an artist for nearly 10 years, recording a total of three albums for Sire/Warner Bros. and four albums for Pony Canyon in Asia. Following that he decided to go back to college wanting to reinvent his career and learn the business side of the music business. In 1997 with his eye on radio promotion, he was hired by the Reprise Records radio promotion department as an assistant after graduating from NYU Stern School of Business. It was a very humbling moment for Page having been a successful pop singer. His plan was to plant seeds into another career as his artist income dwindled. His plan worked! Within a year he became the regional promotion manager for Reprise and ultimately VP of Top 40 Promotion. He would then venture into A&R, a position he would hold for six years reporting to (then WB President)Tom Whalley. Tommy then headed back to radio promotion to become the head of Pop with Bob Weil at Reprise. He was at WB for a total of 14 years.
He left Warner Bros. in 2011 and joined Billboard as its Publisher for two years, a job he thought he would remain at much longer. But in May of this year Tommy received a call from Pandora, a destination he had his sights on as the next step in his career. He wanted to explore an area of the business that was growing and being monetized. Page sees Pandora as the present and future of the music business and he couldn’t be more excited about heading up Music Partnerships at one of the largest digital music platforms in the country!
How did the opportunity to join Pandora come about?
I wasn’t really looking for a job but I received a phone call from [Pandora AP Manager] Drew Thurlow and [Pandora Director of Artist Strategy] Jeff Z both of whom I knew from my past. Drew worked at Nonesuch Records and comes from a marketing A&R team which was part of Warner Bros. and Jeff Z had been a program director at WKTU in New York. Pandora was on a search for a person to head up this [brand partnerships] department, so they recommended me and I went through a series of interviews when I was down in Austin for South by Southwest earlier this year. I had an instant connection with [Pandora SVP Strategic Solutions]Heidi Browning.
The final person to make the decision on whether or not I would be offered this job was [Pandora Founder] Tim Westergren. After I met with over twenty executives from Pandora I jumped on a plane to Oakland and spent the day with Tim. I have been very careful about the brands I’ve been a part of during my career, as there have only been a few, and they have been some pretty big brands. It was very important to me that I believed in what Pandora was doing and what it stood for and that this would be the right place for me. After spending the day with Tim I was convinced I belonged at Pandora.
What excited you most about the Pandora brand?
What I love about Pandora is that it provides a platform for artists that don’t have a platform at terrestrial radio. Often you read stories about the emerging independent artists that can have a platform on Pandora, but what you don’t read about are the forgotten pop artists that terrestrial radio no longer plays and I am one of those artists. I saw lots of royalties in the early nineties when I had lots of airplay on terrestrial radio. A few years after my last hit record, “I’ll Be Your Everything,” my airplay on terrestrial radio in the United States pretty much disappeared.
In 2001 when I discovered XM satellite radio all of a sudden I had a platform again. My songs were on 80’s on 8, 90’s on 9 andThe Love Channel. Then Pandora launched and with the launch of these Internet digital platforms Sound Exchange was started which pays the performers for their performances. I started to get royalty checks from Sound Exchange and it was because of Internet radio and Satellite radio that my voice could be heard again. Now as a father of three children I get into the car and my music still lives and a new audience is discovering me through these platforms.
What’s been your main focus since joining the company?
I lead the Artists Partnerships and Events team. Basically, we build programs for brands and we also partner with artists and their rights holders in sharing our data so they can strategically plan their careers appropriately. Whether it be marketing research on their songs or heat maps that show where their fans are so they can plan tours. We also team them up with brands that can help connect them and amplify their message so they can help grow their audiences as well as help a brand to grow its customers.
What’s been the biggest misconception about Pandora?
It’s that we don’t care about artists and songwriters. We do! We are a company that was founded by an artist and many of us here at the company are artists and musicians ourselves, we care so much about artists. We don’t look at paying royalties as a burden, we consider it an honor, but we are just asking for an equal playing field.
You’ve always been an artist friendly executive from your record label days. How has the response been from artist and labels alike in creating new brand partnerships?
I believe an artist teaming up with a brand to develop a new campaign to promote their music is the new normal. In the old days the term “sell out” was used, but now it has been done so tastefully and so successfully and the biggest superstars in the business are all doing it. The response has been great as everyone realizes that if it’s done correctly and strategically, and it’s organic and feels good, it’s a win for everybody. It’s a win for the brand, the artist and the fans.
How important is a platform like Pandora in today’s digital music landscape?
Pandora is one of the most important platforms in the digital music landscape. We’re undeniably the largest internet radio station in the United States. Over 200 million people have registered with Pandora and of those 200 million, 76 million are unique users every month. That translates to one fourth of every American listening to Pandora on a monthly basis. Eighty percent of that audience is listening on mobile devices. Two years ago it was the other way around, 80 percent were desktop, and 20 percent were mobile. We didn’t lose desktop, we just gained mobile. Our business exploded when smart phones came out with Android and iPhone.
I recently attended one of your Pandora Exclusive Concerts with Trey Songz. The room was filled with some very passionate, loyal and excited fans. What has the feedback been from listeners and artists?
The Trey Songz show you came to in Philadelphia was a partnership we had with Amazon Student. Basically we hosted a few events to help Amazon reach the audience they were looking for. We went into our Genome system and we looked at the type of students they were targeting and what they were listening to in the areas where we were going to host the events. We did a show in Philadelphia and Oakland, and through our the Genome we identified that Trey Songz was a very popular artist with the exact demo we were trying to target and we created a private show. We then sent out invitations to the Trey Songz fans that listened to him on his Pandora channel. We targeted these invites to the fans of the Trey Songz stations and kept the party private and only lucky winners could participate in this experience. For these shows we incorporated a social media strategy with hash tags and a hub so we could give the program a national spirit and not just keep it local. As for feedback, the artist was thrilled as were the fans. They got something both very special and intimate, as Trey Songz usually plays venues of a much larger scale.
We also recently did a program with T-Mobile. It’s one of the programs I’m most proud of that I have been working on since I came to Pandora. T-Mobile sponsored an editorial platform we created called Pandora Premiers where we stream 2-3 albums a week before release. The program started in May and runs to the end of the year. Thus far we’ve featured over 53 artists and we’ve had a few events with this program. About a month ago we did a private exclusive event with Neko Case. We reached out to her fans through her Pandora channel and invited a small group of VIP winners We streamed her album a week prior to the release and it resulted in #12 debut on the Billboard Album chart. We offered a “click to buy” feature and it helped drive the pre-orders of the album. Neko recently performed at Radio City Music Hall so our private show, in a very cool artsy photography studio in New York, was extra special for the lucky fans who attended. That program and all the programs are a win-win! They’re a win for the brand, the advertiser, and ultimately a great win for the fans.
There’s so much data you have access to as a digital music platform. Give us one of the most eye-opening things you’ve noticed about people who use Pandora?
One of the things I noticed was the time spent listening on Pandora is very long. On an average our unique listeners on Pandora is 2 hours and 15 minutes a week as compared to 45 minutes on terrestrial radio. Another fascinating fact is that we’re noticing, and people don’t realize this, Pandora is usually either the number 1 or number 2 driver to iTunes sales. People think we’re competition now that iRadio is out but we really do well together.
Is Pandora making a conscience effort to separate itself from other competitive brands?
We believe that we shouldn’t be the only ones offering this platform. We believe that competition spearheads innovation and innovation is crucial and important for our growth. We welcome iRadio and we also don’t consider ourselves the same as the other services that people compare us too. Spotify is also a wonderful product and platform but it’s using music differently. The platform that is the most similar to Pandora is iRadio and iHeartRadio.
Can you share with us some cool things we can expect from Pandora over the next 6-12 months?
Yes, we are developing an artist dashboard called Pandora For Artists where rights holders and artists will be able to access their data. We are going to do this with our partners. They won’t be able to see the data of competitors but they will be able to see their own. They’ll be given a user name and password and they will be able to see general information that gives them great insight to careers and what’s happening with their music on Pandora. This is a very popular idea with everyone I know in the music business. As we know, Pandora’s data is our “secret sauce” and we have always been very precious and careful about it, but we also have a philosophy at Pandora that we don’t rank artists against each other. We don’t compare artists. We let the fans make the decisions and give us the feedback, and that determines what we play. Our data and our information are not given to Nielson or Billboard and is not a part of any chart. That’s what this whole company was founded on with the mentality that we are not going to pit artists against each other.
When people hear the name Pandora what do you want them to think of first?
Music! We have a new slogan for our new branding and it’s called “Let there Be Music!” What I love about Pandora the most is that we are not the arbiters of cool. We are the best music for everyone no matter what kind of music you like. You can customize your own station to fulfill your own taste. If you are listening to radio stations, you are listening to a format that is being programmed by a professional programmer and there’s definitely marketing research involved. Pandora is being programmed by you! You make a custom radio station and the more thumbs up or down you give it curates your station, and no one Pandora station, once it’s curating is like another existing station. Pandora to me is such a personal experience and a personal environment. It’s another reason why we will keep our loyal listeners because people have been curating their stations for years and they don’t want to lose them. These stations become a personal journal or diary of your life. For me the experience of listening to Pandora is quite magical and keeps me going every day!
[eQB Content By Bob Burke]
