Promotional Song Targeting (PST) is the method by which Pandora serves Featured Tracks to listeners.

The overall goal of PST is to deliver a track to the right listener, on the right station, at the right time. In order to fully personalize the moment of Featured Track delivery, PST studies the listening behavior and musical preferences of individual listeners and draws conclusions on if and when they would be most receptive to that particular track. 

PST is possible because of the immense wealth of data Pandora collects. The Music Genome, Pandora’s advanced music cataloging system, combined with billions of data points collected around listener behavior, help us understand in great detail the nuances of musical preference and leverage those preferences to promote discovery. 

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF PROMOTIONAL SONG TARGETING? 

Because Pandora allows listeners to tailor their stations to their own tastes, placing a song on a given station for all listeners can yield mixed results. By instead placing songs on stations on an individual listener level, the song is more likely to fit the musical style the listener is expecting to hear in that context. With a more seamless integration into the listening experience, the song is more likely to be well-received, resulting in more spins and a higher Thumb Up radio. 

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