The music service Pandora was founded in 2000, originally as Savage Beast Technologies.
The company began with the Music Genome Project, an effort to describe songs using hundreds of musical characteristics. That data-driven approach became the foundation for personalized internet radio: a listener could choose a song or artist, and Pandora would generate a station based on musical similarities.
Savage Beast Technologies changed its name to Pandora Media in 2005. The service initially operated as Pandora Internet Radio and later expanded through web and mobile applications. Unlike a conventional on-demand music library, its original identity centered on programmed radio stations and algorithmic recommendations.
Pandora is sometimes confused with Spotify because both are major streaming brands, but they developed with different early models. Spotify launched in Sweden in 2006 and emphasized on-demand playback, while Pandora’s early service was built around personalized radio and the Music Genome Project.