Pandora founder launches Sessions: The dedicated music platform enabling artists to play more and earn more through live streaming

Sessions, a live streaming platform for music, today announced the beta launch of its web and mobile app in 200+ countries and 15 languages. With just a laptop and a microphone, musicians can perform live, cultivate a global fanbase, and make a sustainable income from home.

By combining live interactive streaming with the best engagement and monetization features of advanced game design, Sessions is ushering in a new form of musical performance.

“Let’s face it, digital music has failed the working musician,” said Tim Westergren, the co-Founder of Sessions and former founder of Pandora. “Recorded music has been devalued, and digital retail is driving artists further from their audience. They need an alternative. Sessions puts control back in the hands of the artist. We generate the audience and enable artists to turn that fan base into a dependable foundation of support and direct patronage. A financial reward system driven by fandom.”

Sessions is the first live streaming platform custom built to solve the most pressing issues for musicians – building a true fanbase and generating significant and sustained income.

  1. Building Global Fandom for Free: Most platforms provide little or no marketing support. Worse, they charge to artists to attract listeners or reach their own fans. Sessions does all of this work at no cost to the artist by using its own marketing growth engine to bring the audience.
  2. Making Real Money: While most live streaming platforms rely on one-off tips to compensate artists, Sessions provides the enduring value of virtual goods and services engineered to help Artists earn sustainable, compounding income.

“Games have blossomed in the digital era, transforming from simple, single player arcade experiences into rich massively multiplayer worlds that are changing culture,” said Co-founder and Game designer Gordon Su. “At the same time, music has stagnated, fragmenting into an isolated playlist experience. We used our best learnings from over 20 years of building virtual worlds to design an immersive virtual space for Artists and Fans to thrive. We know how to do this and we can’t wait to put these powers in the hands of artists and fans.” 

Already, a growing number of artists in the beta program are building large audiences and earning steady incomes from the platform. These are artists with no prior commercial presence or success now in a position to make a living doing what they love.