Pandora CTO Tom Conrad On Bringing Personalized Radio To Automobiles Everywhere

In the dozen years since it first launched, personalized Internet radio pioneer Pandora has become a staple on people’s computers and mobile phones. But the company’s mission definitely does not end there. Recently, Pandora has become more and more prevalent as a built-in feature in automobiles. It’s a big market — tons of radio is listened to while people are commuting in their cars — but it also comes with a unique set of challenges that are certainly separate from the world of traditional consumer electronics in which Pandora got its start.

Pandora CTO Tom Conrad is on the ground at the show in Las Vegas this week, and he swung by TechCrunch’s on-site studio to chat with Ryan Lawler about Pandora’s latest growth and upcoming goals — generally and in the auto space specifically.

Watch the video embedded above to hear Conrad talk about Pandora hitting 1,000 implementations in consumer electronics and automotives, how Pandora tackles its massive target market with a tight-running ship of 40 software engineers, how its consumer electronics strategy differs from its approach to the auto world, and what’s on the road ahead (see what I did there?)