Music streaming service Pandora recently announced the promotion of David Gerbitz to its Chief Operating Officer position. Gerbitz previously filled in as the organization’s official VP of Revenue Operations. Gerbitz comes after former COO Sara Clemens left the organization in December to become the COO at Twitch. Gerbitz joined Pandora in July of 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously worked at Yahoo, most as of late as VP of global mid-market and SMB deals. Before that, he worked for nearly 10 years with Microsoft.
CEO Roger Lynch recently told Variety that Pandora had to execute better to be successful. “We have the best collection of assets in the business. We under-leveraged them in the past,” he said. Lynch also said that Pandora would be adding more podcasts to its streaming service, and outlined plans to build what he called “the equivalent of the podcast genome project.”
Gerbitz’s advancement comes as Pandora is experiencing a restructuring that incorporates cutbacks of around 5% of its workforce—intended to save the company $45 million every year. The organization also moved some of its business from Oakland, Calif. to Atlanta, where it would like to enlist more affordable talent. The organization’s board affirmed the rebuilding will begin on January 11, and representatives influenced by the cutbacks were told of the arrangement on Wednesday, as per an 8-K documenting with the SEC. Pandora expect s that the rebuilding will be significantly finished before the end of the principal quarter of 2018.
“We have an aggressive plan in place that includes strategic investments in our priorities: ad-tech, product, content, partnerships and marketing,” Pandora CEO Roger Lynch, who took the helm last fall after heading Dish Network’s Sling TV, said in a statement. “I am confident these changes will enable us to drive revenue and listener growth.”
Pandora estimates the cutbacks will be approximately $6.5 million to $8.5 million, including severance and advantages costs. A year ago, Pandora laid off around 50 employees after it chose to close down offices in Australia and New Zealand.
