Pandora will join SiriusXM for the next stage of the streaming wars

Satellite radio service Sirius xm agreed to buy Pandora, no not the jewellery boutique [LAUGH], for $3.5 billion today, a move that should help Pandora fend off Spotify. So. Joan, how do you expect this to change music streaming, or if it will in any way? Well, what we've seen happen, as streaming music has become sort of the de facto way that people listen to music now Some companies have clearly sprinted into the lead. And those are Pandora, I'm sorry, that's Spotify and that's Apple Music. Pandora was the biggest streaming music service for a long time that streaming music existed, but at these other companies have been able to come out with more flexible ways of listening to music Pandora's been struggling to keep it's listeners and to keep growing. So a combination like this could be a shot in the arm for Pandora to start competing against these rivals. In places where nobody really has a lead yet. And that's in the car. So if I'm Apple music or on Spotify should I be worried at all. Is this at all an issue for them or are they so much bigger and more relevant than Pandora that they're Pandora is still an also ran despite this deal? I don't think that either of those services should count out Pandora. In any respect and I certainly don't think that they should count them out if Pandora no longer really has to worry as much about funding itself. It doesn't have to worry about its own stock price anymore, it doesn't have to worry about hitting growth metrics anymore. That was always a pain point for Pandora being a publically traded, all out there on its own company. It would be foolish for them to count out a company that has so much data about music and what people like to listen to, getting more technology, getting an entry point into the car, and getting this body of millions of subscribers that are already paying a lot more than people pay for streaming music to get serious. So we were talking about this ahead of the show, one of the interesting ideas, and I'm not actually sure if this is technologically possible yet, but this is something that Sirius is hoping to do eventually, is taking Pandora's streams or some sort of on-demand service from Pandora, and then streaming to your car using satellites. Is that Like a thing? Is that what they're hoping to do? So I don't know [UNKNOWN] satellites? [LAUGH] [UNKNOWN] that's even technically usable or possible. I sent them an email asking just that question to see if they get [UNKNOWN] if possible for [UNKNOWN] to beam algorithmic or personalize stream of music to each account holder in a car. Yeah. I don't know but it'll be interesting