SiriusXM to Acquire Pandora for $3.5 Billion

Profitable company acquires unprofitable company with no obvious integrative benefit. Good luck with that.

 

As a user, I've never understood the appeal of Pandora compared to Spotify or Apple Music. Those both have similar "radio" features on top of the ability to choose what you want to listen to...

That being said, this is a decent get for SiriusXM, I think. There's quite a bit of listener data they now have access to (and, I'd imagine they can somehow package it with their own subscription packages.

 

I don't see how any of that data advantages them, though. Part of their deal with the FCC is that they can't offer local programming options, just top-line channels, so they can't really use it to microtarget. To the extent they want to "make it easier to listen to Pandora in your car," I imagine they would need to manufacture new receivers for that purpose. I don't purport to be a technologist, but I don't see how they can piggyback individualized streaming off general-purpose satellite broadcasting technology. Just seems like they could have struck a strategic partnership for cross-promotion without having to actually purchase the company?

 

I didn't know about that deal with the FCC. That negates some of the positives I was thinking about.

But still... If you look at the pool of listeners, and say "X% spend time listening to genres A, B, and C" I can see that having some value to Sirius at a high-level.

 

The only way I could care about this is if RDIO got resurrected. Otherwise, meh

 

Yeah, it's something I only learned when I was litigating a class action against them, haha. Basically, as a condition of either their merger or use of terrestrial repeaters (I forget which), they consented to regulations designed to protect local broadcast stations from satellite radio adding local competitive programming and advertising that “would cause terrestrial broadcasters to lose advertising revenue ... which would ultimately result in the reduction of their production and airing of local programmming...” See In the Matter of Applications for Consent to the Transfer of Control of Licenses, 2008 FCC LEXIS 7626 at ¶ ¶ 73, 154, 155 (adopted July 25, 2008).