Tim Westergren, ’88, the founder of online music service Pandora, advised students and community members last night to let creative inspiration — rather than financial concerns — drive them post-graduation.

Westergren was featured as part of the Freshman Dean’s Office’s “Beginnings” Series, in which alumni and faculty reflect on how creativity has enriched their lives.

“We want students to start thinking about how to start a meaningful life beyond the well beaten path,” said Dean of Freshmen and Transfer Students Julie Lythcott-Haims.

Pandora is an online music service that allows users to create individualized radio stations based on their personal musical preferences. A Music Genome built into the program analyzes individual songs on 400 different attributes and matches songs a user enjoys to ones with similar musical characteristics. Users rate the songs recommended by Pandora on a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” basis and generate a playlist of songs they like based on what the genome determines to be their musical taste.

Westergren first took his idea of a musical genome to marketers as the dot-com boom was beginning to burst in the late ‘90s. Having spent several years after graduating from Stanford as a struggling independent musician, Westergren envisioned Pandora being a medium for emerging artists to gain exposure through online channels. He hoped that unlike Amazon.com and other online music retailers, Pandora would help lesser-known artists reach new listeners.

“The challenge of the music industry online at the time was to expose people to a much wider collection of songs,” he said before a crowd of more than 70 in Cubberley Auditorium.

The realization of his vision was not easy.

“It wasn’t uncommon to get an eviction notice for our office on a regular basis,” he said of the company’s first few years.

After hundreds of marketing pitches, Pandora generated the money to become an independent radio network in March of 2004. By September 2005, Pandora was able to offer a free, ad-supported service to online subscribers with access to thousands of songs analyzed for their musical attributes — and not their mainstream recognition.

Westergren credited his success to meticulous user awareness and effective public relations.

“I think business plans are a joke,” he said with a smile. “It’s all about convincing a group of people to get excited about something.”

Today, with four million regular listeners and praise from over 30,000 bloggers, Pandora can safely assume it has a product people are excited about. According to Westergren, at least 40 percent of users are buying more music as a result of using the service.

Students praised Pandora’s ability to diversify their musical collections.

“I’ve used it to find new bands like the Orange Peels,” said freshman Jimmy Chen.

By typing in the name of his favorite band, the Meters, freshman Sam Pimentel was able to generate an entire playlist of songs with similar musical attributes, all found through the Music Genome.

As Pandora gains popularity and financial backing from advertisers, Westergren assured the crowd that the services offered by the online radio network would improve. Among his goals for the future, he expressed hope that the service would become legal internationally and expand to include musical genres currently not offered, such as classical.

“I do not spend too much time thinking about what happens next,” he said.

His inspiration remains to make a “music middle class” and not to get rich from the service.

“If you aim just to make money, you won’t last,” he said. “That’s not enough incentive to go to work every day.”