
SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion - bithavoc
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/9/24/17895332/siriusxm-pandora-acquisition-music-streaming
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chollida1
Poor Pandora and their investors. This is for about a quarter of what they
were worth just 4 years ago.

Saddly this is almost all self inflicted.

While Spotify, Apple music and Google music really worked hard to get people
to actually pay for the service Pandora continued to act like it was a VC
backed company in hyper growth mode long after that was the case.

They fought with the record labels longer than most of their competitors did
to their own determent and they didn't end up getting any concessions for
their extra effort.

And when everyone else was letting you select any music you wanted in
playlist, they insisted on staying radio style only.

~~~
treis
>Poor Pandora and their investors. This is for about a quarter of what they
were worth just 4 years ago.

They also got 3.5 billion for a company that hasn't made any money in its 18
year existence so it's hard to feel too bad.

~~~
rubicon33
Being a business noob, I've got to ask - How exactly does a company that makes
nothing in 18 years, get acquired for 3.5 billion?

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cirnine
Pandora brought in $1.4 billion in revenue in 2017, and will have even more
revenue in 2018.

Of course, licensing rates means that the company only gets to see a few
hundred million of that, and a significant portion of that needs to go to
advertising sales personnel -- audio advertising is incredibly hands-on
compared to other forms of internet advertising.

As an aside: it was interesting when the stock cratered last year to the point
where the market cap of the company was lower than its annual revenue -- all
the revenue in the world doesn't make up for negative margins.

~~~
traek
> As an aside: it was interesting when the stock cratered last year to the
> point where the market cap of the company was lower than its annual revenue
> -- all the revenue in the world doesn't make up for negative margins.

Yup, revenue doesn’t really mean anything; Walmart’s market cap is less than
their 2017 revenue.

~~~
mcny
People always yell at me when I say this but what if we lower corporate tax
rate and tax revenue instead of profits? Does it encourage companies to get
even bigger and do everything in house?

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wil421
Cancelling Sirus is always interesteing. I always say I don’t want to pay the
$90 or however much for 6 months of access. No $50 is also too high. How about
$30? Ok sure I’ll pay.

I think Sirus only makes money off the folks who forget to cancel after the
promotional period. It’s like $20 a month and I’ve forgot to do it my self for
a couple months.

Pandora always had the best selections on their radio channels. Spotify is not
as good for random radio selections. I would never pay for Pandora after
having so much music available on Spotify or Apple Music.

~~~
cptskippy
After buying an XM enabled car from a dealership, I was extremely disappointed
when I started receiving weekly mailings and phone calls from them as my
"trial" was expiring.

I am still pissed off about the lengths I had to go to in order to stop
receiving communications from them. They refused to remove my contact
information from their system and could not promise I wouldn't be contacted
again in the future. I had to ultimately change all of my contact information
to false information, fortunately the guy I was talking to was sympathetic to
my plight and had no objections testing out the system to see what BS info it
would take.

The whole escapade landed them on my short list of companies I will never do
business with ever again.

~~~
sf_rob
Sirius and Onstar are two of the worst things about my car purchase. I wonder
the degree to which these partnerships hurt these car brands for short term
profit.

Things I want in an OEM receiver: 1) Carplay/Android Auto, 2) Software updates
for 1, 3) Radio, 4) To never do anything else ( _call_ me, install bloatware
apps, reorder menus, etc).

~~~
praneshp
> Sirius and Onstar are two of the worst things about my car purchase

I'd say your car purchase was an awesome experience.

~~~
acct1771
You don't know enough about OnStar, then.

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neuigkeiten
I used Pandora in the distant past.

These days I mainly use [http://www.gnoosic.com](http://www.gnoosic.com) for
recommendations and then look for the artists on the web, Youtube, Bandcamp,
Soundcloud etc.

Not sure if that makes me one of a kind?

This approach gives me more of a "discoverer" feeling then using one
monolithic service that spoon feeds me my musical life.

~~~
vagab0nd
Most of the music recommendation services I know of are based on meta data of
the songs (artist, genre, etc.). Is there anyone out there working on
recommendation systems purely based on the music itself, now that we have deep
learning? I'd kill for that.

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chrisweekly
Spotify Premium for family at $15/mo is still gonna be pretty hard to beat.
But. IMHO SXM has been doing a great job with exclusive content like recent
live recordings (eg phish and other jambands), which is immune to the
"shazam->spotify" escape hatch I'd otherwise use. They are desperate to get
onto people's devices, and as the early leader in the space Pandora's still
got "eyeballs" (eardrums?) galore in terms of installed user base. It'll be
interesting to see how it plays out....

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clay_the_ripper
I think this is really exciting actually. I LOVE SiriusXM because their radio
is curated by an actual DJ. You get to hear so many tracks that algorithmic
services like Spotify never would surface. I use both Spotify and SiriusXM as
for me they fulfill very different use cases. Spotify is for playing what I
want to hear and Sirius is for when I want a human with deep expertise in a
genre to play things for me.

For me, an algorithmic feed of music just isn’t interesting. Music is art, and
art is for humans, not computers.

~~~
gizmo385
Honestly, I discover far more music through services like Spotify and Pandora
than I ever have through the SiriusXM stations that I listen to.

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unsignedint
Recently, I got Pandora Plus through T-mobile promotion. I was enjoying it
until one day, while driving, I got "Can't skip due to licensing restriction"
which reminded me of the scene in Fifteen Million Merits from Black Mirror...

What worse was it was bit off from type of song I asked for, and particularly
I couldn't stand to listen to. I switched back to Google Play Music, which has
a mix of my own uploads and (smaller for things in my taste, but doesn't
complain I can't skip) music from the service.

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relaunched
This makes me side. I am a long-time, paid subscriber. We'll see what happens
next, fingers crossed.

I'm not sure if this was a win for the team or a mercy killing. But, if
someone can explain what's in this for customers, that would be very helpful.

~~~
jbob2000
SiriusXM is dying, if not already dead. Why do I need satellite radio when I
can just listen to a podcast, or preload a bunch of music on my phone? Or just
stream? 10 years ago, you could still do these things, but it was harder or
very expensive. Now, you just open an app on your unlimited data phone, plug
in the aux cable, and start driving.

So this purchase is about Sirius re-entering the market. I think they'll pivot
pandora to be more self-serve and they'll merge the good things people liked
about sirius (comedy, shock jocks) with the good things people liked about
pandora (choice, freemium)

~~~
Thrymr
> Why do I need satellite radio when I can just listen to a podcast, or
> preload a bunch of music on my phone?

Anyone who is away from a good data connection for a significant amount of
time. E.g. long haul truckers, rural areas (especially in the western US),
mountainous regions. If most of your car time is commuting in the
city/suburbs, that may not be an issue.

~~~
handruin
My podcasts are all downloaded with multiple episodes for each podcast and so
is a large collection of my Spotify music. I get what you're saying but it
isn't that big of an issue with a reasonably modern mobile device and a little
customization of the app to do the downloads for you.

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conception
Whenever there is an exit like this I like to remember that for just 4B,
Sirius could have had a Star Wars franchise instead. These valuations are
nutty.

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bentona
Other sources [1] mention a "go-shop" provision, which allows pandora to shop
the deal around. I'm wondering if this is likely to result in any alternative
deals?

[1] [http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-
release...](http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-
releases/press-release-details/2018/SiriusXM-to-Acquire-Pandora-Creating-
Worlds-Largest-Audio-Entertainment-Company/default.aspx)

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honkycat
I never liked algorithmic DJs.

They don't really expand my horizons and play the same crap over and over.

My favorite is chirpradio dot org. Real DJs who are real music buffs.

~~~
adrianmonk
Thank you. I thought I was the only one who got tired of algorithms noticing
I'm listing to some classic rock and deciding a great move would be to
introduce me to this band I may have never heard of called The Eagles.

I've noticed that YouTube (just plain YouTube, not the new YouTube Music) is
actually decent at recommending music though. I played some songs by The
Meters and Herbie Hancock, and through its recommendations I learned about the
existence of Lafayette Afro Rock Band and learned that Prince made a
funk/fusion album in 1977 before his pop stuff. I wonder if it's just using
its regular video recommendation algorithm and not anything music specific,
which might be a different approach than the music services.

EDIT: And by really strange coincidence, I just checked out Chirp, and the
last song they played was by The Meters, and before that they played another
band (Cymande) that YouTube recommended in the same session.

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josefresco
I have used Pandora (happily) for years. Just downgraded my subscription to
the "free" level as I have too many streaming music providers and needed to
reduce cost. SiriusXM (paid), YouTube Music (paid, new), and Pandora (free)
are my streaming services. Trying to build up my YT library now, as Pandora
has over a decade of my "likes".

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landa
It's such a shame that Pandora didn't do anything with rdio.com. Rdio was the
best music service I've ever used. Not only was the music high quality, but
the UI was very intuitive on all devices, and it also had cool features like
if you're playing Rdio on your laptop, you could use your phone as a remote
control.

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temuze
Not a bad exit for a company that raised a Series... H?

