Pandora and Real Industry have announced the launch of the Pandora Challenge: Music & Social Impact program, to take place at five universities across the United States.
Participating students at the University of Southern California, Middle Tennessee State University, New York University, the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and Stanford will use Pandora’s Artist Marketing Platform (AMP) and data from Pandora's Next Big Sound to "harness the power of music and drive awareness for those battling cancer, students and musicians in underserved communities and LGBTQ equality," the company said.
"The energy and love of music the students possess is an incredibly powerful combination," said Alex White, head of Next Big Sound at Pandora. "With help from our partners at Real Industry, we’re not only harnessing that combination for a good cause but giving students experience and knowledge they can use to jumpstart their careers in the music industry."
Over 100 students participated in the program's kickoff at USC on Oct. 4. The students must develop campaigns to help launch BloodPop's "Made of Music" program, which aims to connect underserved aspiring musicians and music professionals with mentors from within their local community. BloodPop, a musician producer and songwriter best known for working with Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, said the program will give underserved students in L.A. "new outlets for their creativity and encourage them to pursue careers in music."
Beginning today, Oct. 9, students at MTSU will create campaigns for Manchester Orchestra as they support the 1 Million 4 Anna foundation, which is dedicated to fighting Ewing sarcoma. "It’s about so much more than vanity and ticket sales. It’s about being a part of something that is bigger than you can even comprehend. Helping people without ever knowing you were helping them. When that happens, those people actually help you," said Manchester Orchestra lead singer Andy Hull.
Over the next month and a half, similar events will take place at NYU, with Common, Lowell, with Jack Antonoff, and at Stanford.
Pandora introduced AMP in late 2014 and rolled out a full suite of self-serve marketing tools available to all artists on Pandora in 2016. In 2015, Pandora acquired Next Big Sound to help artists make insight-based decisions by aggregating data from across Pandora, social media, video platforms and other digital sources.
