Tim Westergren was the former founder and CEO of Pandora, and helped build the current digital music landscape. He left the company in 2017, frustrated by “the music industrial complex vortex”, and last year launched a new startup called Sessions – a live-streaming platform for emerging and established artists. He says Sessions does something unique: it spends its own money to bring in viewers for performing artists, and gives artists a direct connection, and all the data, on their fans. Tim talks to Music Ally editor Joe Sparrow about how he hopes the music industry can work differently, and how the business model of the big streaming platforms, he believes, is not the right path for artists. He also discusses Spotify's controversial Discovery Mode – where artists receive a lower per-stream rate in exchange for exposure.
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