XITE teams up with Pandora and VICE at South by Southwest® (SXSW®)

XITE and Pandora will discuss findings from the world of streaming audio-only music, and explain how they can be applied to interactive music television. Michael Addicott, Manager of Curation at Pandora, will share his view on how curated playlists are integral to creating individual and unique listening experiences. Bouke Huurnink, Product Manager at XITE, and Paul Natale, Director of Music Curation at XITE, will elaborate on ways in which machine learning can help the curation process. Other topics will include balancing (automated) personalisation with human taste-making, catering for niche music lovers versus the mainstream, and reaching millennials. The panel will be moderated by Dexter Thomas, Culture Correspondent at VICE News Tonight.

Streaming services such as Netflix, Spotify, Pandora and XITE are transforming the worlds of music and television. Pandora has a vast amount of expertise in the area of recommending audio tracks to listeners, while XITE pioneered interactive music video television by lauching the world’s first Personalised Music Television Service in 2015. With this service, which allows viewers to personalise their music channel by liking and skipping music videos, XITE changed music television into an interactive, on-demand service, providing 24/7 music videos that the viewer wants to see.

Michael “Addi” Addicott is the Manager of Curation at Pandora, where he heads up the team of people who curate, acquire, and organize Pandora’s library of music and content. He earned a BA, in music composition from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and spent his collegiate years developing his skills as a pianist, vocalist and DJ.

Bouke Huurnink is Product Manager at XITE, where he leads the development of the recommendation system and the music video database of XITE. He earned a PhD in Information Retrieval at the University of Amsterdam, and since then has become a specialist in steering development of data-driven media applications with his data science background.

Paul Natale heads up the music curation department of XITE and is in charge of the international music video streaming strategy. He works closely with the editorial, product and technology teams to ensure regionally relevant, high quality end-user experiences. He has over 10 years of metadata and media discovery solution experience, is an award-winning independent short film and music video director and a self-proclaimed music nerd with an insatiable passion for discovering new music.

Dexter Thomas is an on-camera correspondent for VICE News Tonight on HBO, and a PhD candidate in East Asian Studies at Cornell University. He has taught media studies and Japanese and is writing a book about Japanese hip-hop.

XITE is the music television channel for millennials and broadcasts 24/7 the most popular music videos. XITE went live in 2008 and became the largest music channel in the Netherlands and Belgium shortly after. XITE is distributed to 15 million households in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Qatar. With great interest from other countries, global expansion is just around the corner.