The business grew from a class assignment at
Northwestern University, where founders Samir Rayani (CTO), Alex White (CEO), Jason Sosnovsky (since parted with NBS) and David Hoffman (CPO) attended. As part of the entrepreneur class, students present their ideas to
venture capitalists. The Next Big Sound received
US$25,000 in
seed money. In the summer of 2009, the company was chosen to participate in the
TechStars incubator program for online startups in
Boulder, Colorado. On June 1, 2012, the company moved its headquarters from Boulder to
New York City. Next Big Sound was named one of the 10 best music startups of 2010 by
Billboard Magazine and CEO Alex White was named to Billboard's 30 Under 30 executives to watch list. On May 25, 2014, the company announced a new division, Next Big Book, and a partnership with
Macmillan Publishers. Next Big Sound raised $7.5 million in funding from Foundry Group, IA Ventures and others. On May 19, 2015, Pandora acquired the company. On October 1, 2021, the company announced in a blog post that the Next Big Sound platform would be shutting down on November 1. However, the team stated that they would be transitioning to working on Pandora's Artist Marketing Platform (AMP), which would continue to share data with partners such as
Billboard. ==References==