Sirius-XM acquiring Pandora

[Mike Blakesley]

I just read in the Billboard Bulletin that Sirius-XM is acquiring Pandora for $3.5 billion.

I don't know if this will make SXM better, or have a bad effect on Pandora.

Here's a copy of the article from the Bulletin.

Roger Lynch, who has served as CEO of Pandora since August 2017, will be stepping down from the company, according to a press release. The news comes as Pandora stockholders approved the company’s $3.5 billion acquisition by SiriusXM, which was first reported in September. During Lynch’s tenure, the company invested extensively in its digital advertising business, including purchasing the audio advertising tech company AdsWizz in a $145 million deal announced last March, and in building up its subscription streaming service. That paid off in Q3 2018, when the company reported a 16 percent revenue increase year-over-year, and announced it added 800,000 new paid subscribers for the quarter ended Sept. 30.

But the company continued to lose monthly active listeners, ending the quarter with 68.8 million, down from 73.7 million in Q3 of 2017. Likewise, total listener hours dropped to 4.81 billion in Q3 2018, down from 5.15 billion the same period in 2017. The SiriusXM acquisition, which had been approved in Europe in November (despite neither company operating in the region), was approved in a special meeting of Pandora stockholders, which overwhelmingly approved the proposal. Once the acquisition is completed as is now expected, shares of Pandora will no longer be available on the New York Stock Exchange, and will be converted into 1.44 new shares of stock in SiriusXM. Moving forward, SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer will take over the combined companies, which will become an industry-leading digital-audio company that generated nearly $7 billion in revenue in 2017. In addition to Lynch, Pandora CFO Naveen Chopra, CHRO Kristen Robinson and general counsel Steve Bene will also exit once the transaction is finalized.

 

[Bobberman]

I used to subscribe to Pandora for a short time and I don't think their connection to Sirius XM will help improve the service one bit and I got tired of the flow of music stopping after every 3 songs and messages asking me to "Confirm I'm still listening because they don't want to play to an empty room" that happened too much and that's when I said i was Done with it

 

[Rudy]

I've paid $3.99/month for Pandora for years, as I use it a minimum of two hours per day (in the kitchen while preparing dinner and cleaning up, or while outdoors working in or near the garage...at least when it's not -11°F outside and your county is rationing natural gas, like tonight... ).

I only think SiriusXM will ruin it. They'll absorb it, the Music Genome Project will get killed off...that just sucks. It was the only unique streaming service to offer it. I'm sure my $3.99/month deal will somehow get turned into $20/month, in which case I will raise my throbbing middle finger in the general direction of the SiriusXM's world headquarters and have 'em kiss my flaming assets!

Sirius destroyed XM's good programming and dumbed it down, and laid off all the good on-air talent they used to have. My other half kind of likes it in the car (it's marginally better than our horrible terrestrial radio), but I have absolutely no use for it. When I had to drive four hours in a vehicle I picked up, I activated the two month trial before leaving the dealer's lot. The sound quality was absolutely horrible. It had that awful "underwater" garbled sound that is typical of compressed music. Way worse than when I used my XM receiver for hours per day--while it was never perfect, it was never so distractingly bad. (I'm not the only one who's heard it.)

RIP Pandora...you sold out to the devil.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I got tired of the flow of music stopping after every 3 songs and messages asking me to "Confirm I'm still listening because they don't want to play to an empty room

That's why I like Amazon Unlimited Music. It will play for days without stopping.

We have Sirius in both of our vehicles. I use it more for the comedy, talk and news channels than for music -- the only time I use it for music is if I'm on a road trip with my wife and then we keep it down so we can talk, and the sound quality is less important.

I can't stand listening to the music channels if I'm driving by myself because I usually have a very specific idea of what I want to hear, and my list and theirs almost never match up. Plus I don't like hearing the same 3 songs by an artist exclusively.

SXM seems to have retooled the comedy channels somewhat - they seem more listenable than they did a few years ago. There are fewer parody songs and prank phone calls, and not as much X-rated explicit sexual humor, and more PG-13 to R-rated mainstream-type stuff. I expect the mainstream success of comics like Jim Gaffigan, Brian Regan and their ilk may have helped this trend along.

We use Amazon Unlimited at work. I've found if you listen to an artist's "station" you get a much deeper selection of THAT artist's catalog, but usually the same few tired greatest-hits of every relatable artist. My favorite stations to play are the Doobie Brothers, Alan Parsons, and Toto. They give a nice variety of not-too-noisy rock.