Pandora Media began as the company behind the Savage Beast Technologies project that became Pandora Internet Radio. Savage Beast Technologies was founded in 2000 by Will Glaser, Jon listening? and Tim Westergren, with the service developing from a music-recommendation project based on the Music Genome Project.
Pandora launched publicly in 2005 as an internet radio service. Instead of letting users select every individual track, it generated stations from songs or artists and used musical characteristics to recommend recordings. The approach distinguished Pandora from on-demand streaming catalogs.
The company’s name was changed to Pandora Media in 2004, before the public launch of Pandora Radio. It should not be confused with the Danish jewelry company Pandora or the mythological figure. The company was later acquired by Sirius XM in 2019, becoming part of its audio business.