Pandora Media, the internet radio company, was founded in 2000. The company began as Savage Beast Technologies, a startup built around the Music Genome Project, which sought to describe songs through many musical characteristics and use those descriptions for personalized recommendations.
The service later became Pandora Internet Radio, allowing listeners to create stations based on artists, songs or genres. Its recommendation approach distinguished it from a conventional broadcast station because the system selected tracks algorithmically according to musical similarities and listener feedback.
Pandora was founded by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft and Tim Westergren. The company operated under the name Pandora Media before Sirius XM acquired it in 2019. This Pandora is a technology and media brand, separate from the mythological figure, the 1929 film and the fictional moon in Avatar.