Of the entire universe of recorded music, how much of it is in Pandora?

Hi Thor -

Thanks for your questions!

Pandora's a curated music collection, so our mission isn't to collect every CD recorded, so much as to collect music that the intended audience of each style of music will appreciate hearing.

Pandora has over half a million songs from more than 40,000 artists. (You should see our CD library!)
We've collected and musicologically analyzed a huge chunk of all music available on CD for popular styles of music; we've been working on that collection for 8 years. We add thousands of new (and old, of course) songs to Pandora's collection every week -- we keep our 50 musicologists busy!

We of course make sure we have charting artists in our collection, but we pay special attention to seeking out independent and unsigned bands; they make up a big portion (around 70%) of our music collection.

We also pay close attention to what our listeners are suggesting we add, and we listen to and evaluate all independent music submitted to our curators, some of which we add to our collection. It's not necessary to be famous or signed, or to have the right "style" or marketing strategy to be on Pandora, which we're proud of.

We're currently focused on continuing to build up our collection of classical music, and as soon as we can we'll be adding even more musical styles, especially more "world" styles.

We love music, we have great respect for those who make it, and we only wish we had more time...

Oh, and regarding licensing: we don't have to worry about licensing much, as we adhere to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) webcaster licensing, which basically says we can play whatever we want to if we follow certain rules (pay royalties on all songs played, don't allow song-on-demand, etc.).

I hope that answers your questions, and feel free to hit me up with more questions.

Best,
Lucia, from Pandora