Twitter isn’t buying SoundCloud. Spotify isn’t buying SoundCloud. Could Google be buying SoundCloud?
That’s the latest industry rumour over the latter company’s future. Music Business Worldwide suggests that Google could be in the running for a $500m acquisition of SoundCloud, half the $1bn it was thought to be seeking from Twitter and Spotify last year.
That said, any such reduction in the asking price might tempt one or both of those companies back in. With SoundCloud having raised $193.3m in funding over its history, the exit would be smaller than the company’s executives had hoped.
Any such acquisition would bring the two biggest user-uploaded music platforms (SoundCloud and YouTube) under the same roof, although it would also mean Google owning three separate music subscription services: Google Play Music, SoundCloud Go and YouTube Red – well, music-related in the latter case.
The speculation follows more rumours that Pandora may also be up for sale, with SiriusXM – or at least its major stakeholder Liberty Media – thought to be the frontrunner for that deal.
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