Pandora has named veteran music/technology communications exec Jason Roth as its new Head of Product and Partnership Communications, based at the company’s Oakland headquarters. Roth, who starts this week, will report to Pandora’s newly-hired VP of Brand and Communications, Brad Minor, who comes via senior branding roles at JP Morgan Chase & Co. and American Express.
Roth most recently managed communications and editorial strategy for HP’s 3D printing business, but the well-regarded PR vet has a deep resume of senior communications roles in the music space that includes Senior Publicity Director for Capitol Records, where he worked with Coldplay, LCD Soundsystem, Liz Phair, The Decemberists and the Beatles catalog, among others, as well as senior roles at Spotify and Apple, where he led communications for iTunes for many years.
Roth is also a longtime music writer whose work has appeared in Spin, the Chicago Tribune, and New City, among others, and moonlights as a contributor to NPR Music.
Roth, whose late father Morry was Variety’s midwest bureau chief for over 35 years, was indoctrinated into the music industry from an early age. “While other fathers and sons were bonding at baseball games, we were bonding at Black Sabbath and Ramones concerts,” said Roth. “We tried to play it like normal people, but we went to exactly one Boy Scout meeting, where other dads were wearing khaki shorts and tying knots, and turned right around and went to a Judas Priest show.”
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As competition in the music streaming space continues to heat up from Spotify and Apple Music, a recently-announced acquisition of Pandora by SiriusXM, expected to close next year, would create the world’s largest audience audio entertainment company.
Said Roth: “The most exciting part of leading product and partnership communications for Pandora is that those two things are so central to driving this new era for the company, where it has the wind back in its sails, accelerating listener growth, big market-leading partners, and some things in the works that are genuinely going to surprise people and make Pandora the one to watch. I can’t wait to help tell that story.”