Talking Your Tech: Pandora founder is a Ben Folds fan

• Tim Westergren loves the piano-infused indie composer
• He uses the thumbs up/thumbs down feature "like a madman"
• The Beatles' 'Abbey Road' is his musical "bible"

SAN FRANCISCO — What is Pandora founder Tim Westergren's go-to channel on the music streaming service? Piano-infused indie composer Ben Folds.

"I'm a trained jazz pianist and love piano-oriented music," says Westergren.

Westergren currently is Chief Strategy Officer at Pandora, the world's most popular online music service, with 160 million registered users. The pianist and film composer in 2000 devised an idea to use computers to match listeners' musical likes, creating individual stations based on individual tastes. After several lean years, Pandora started to take off in 2007, and the company is now thriving.

I met with Westergren at the Public Relations Society of America conference in San Francisco, where I interviewed him at a morning keynote session for 3,000 people. Beyond asking him about how he got the big idea for the service and how he would sell it if he were starting out today, I thought it would be fun to do a "Talking Your Tech," with Westergren live on stage.

Tim's station

He listens to Ben Folds every day. "I'm also a songwriter. He (Folds) hits my bull's-eye and I like the stuff around him. Gabe Dixon Band, the Beatles ... it stimulates all of my musical interests."

Other stations

Westergren has created Pandora stations devoted to late jazz greats — pianist Oscar Peterson and trumpeter Chet Baker — as well as bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss.

Computer

He uses a MacBook Pro, which sits on his desk at Pandora's Oakland headquarters. This is where he most often listens to Pandora.

Piano

There's a classic Fender Rhodes electric piano at Pandora headquarters, but Westergren spends more time with an acoustic, "I went cold turkey on piano for eight or nine years, since I was working from dawn to dusk, but I'm playing again."

Single stations or the QuickMix?

QuickMix is a way to play music from all the Pandora stations, but Westergren doesn't use it. "I'm very narrow. When I want a certain sound, I want that sound."

Five artists on the Ultimate Westergren Playlist

Ben Folds, Bach, the Beatles, Judee Sill and the Gabe Dixon Band.