[citation needed] 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.
In the summer of 2009, the company was chosen to participate in the TechStars incubator program for online startups in Boulder, Colorado.
[4] Next Big Sound raised $7.5 million in funding from Foundry Group, IA Ventures and others.
[6][7] 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.