US satellite-radio firm SiriusXM owns Pandora, but now it has a minority stake in SoundCloud too. The company announced a $75m investment in the streaming service yesterday, which will see it also take two seats on SoundCloud’s board of directors.
“We admire SoundCloud’s loyal and growing audience, its offering for creators, and its reputation and popularity in global music communities,” said SiriusXM boss Jim Meyer. “We believe this is another opportunity to continue creating value for SiriusXM stockholders by investing in expanding digital audio platforms.”
The deal builds on Pandora and SoundCloud’s existing partnership, announced in October 2018, which saw Pandora selling ads for SoundCloud in the US, claiming a combined audience of more than 100 million listeners. SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor said the investment “gives us added capital flexibility to accelerate our vision and take advantage of strategic opportunities as they arise”.
However, it’s hard not to think back to September 2017 – when SiriusXM made a $480m strategic investment in Pandora, a year before announcing its plans to acquire the latter company for $3.5bn – and wonder if this time next year, we might be talking about a similar move to buy SoundCloud outright too.
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