SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion | Hacker News Reader

SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

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191 pointsbithavoc97 comments

Poor Pandora and their investors. This is for about a quarter of what they were worth just 4 years ago.

Saddly this is almost all self inflicted.

While Spotify, Apple music and Google music really worked hard to get people to actually pay for the service Pandora continued to act like it was a VC backed company in hyper growth mode long after that was the case.

They fought with the record labels longer than most of their competitors did to their own determent and they didn't end up getting any concessions for their extra effort.

And when everyone else was letting you select any music you wanted in playlist, they insisted on staying radio style only.

>Poor Pandora and their investors. This is for about a quarter of what they were worth just 4 years ago.

They also got 3.5 billion for a company that hasn't made any money in its 18 year existence so it's hard to feel too bad.

Being a business noob, I've got to ask - How exactly does a company that makes nothing in 18 years, get acquired for 3.5 billion?

users, and their generated data along with the potential to monetize whatever service they are consuming, is the new "revenue"

they can also integrate the tech to be more competitive, or they can shut the service (currently a competitor) down and hope to pick up a portion of those listeners

Pandora brought in $1.4 billion in revenue in 2017. Actual revenue is also revenue.

I'm a bit of a noob here as well, but my stab at it would be:

1) They have lots of customers. I work in the music industry and have insight into how much money Pandora brings in. They might not be _profitable_ but there's definitely a lot of cash flowing there, meaning profitability isn't out of the question.

2) Technology and fit with existing business - SiriusXM has lots of curated and exclusive content. With a Spotify-like platform in Pandora, they can get some of that content infront of more streamers and diversify Pandora. The only streaming service with Howard Stern, and the only one that you can stream directly to your car over Sattelite without using data? That's compelling for a lot of people.

Pandora brought in $1.4 billion in revenue in 2017, and will have even more revenue in 2018.

Of course, licensing rates means that the company only gets to see a few hundred million of that, and a significant portion of that needs to go to advertising sales personnel -- audio advertising is incredibly hands-on compared to other forms of internet advertising.

As an aside: it was interesting when the stock cratered last year to the point where the market cap of the company was lower than its annual revenue -- all the revenue in the world doesn't make up for negative margins.

> As an aside: it was interesting when the stock cratered last year to the point where the market cap of the company was lower than its annual revenue -- all the revenue in the world doesn't make up for negative margins.

Yup, revenue doesn’t really mean anything; Walmart’s market cap is less than their 2017 revenue.

People always yell at me when I say this but what if we lower corporate tax rate and tax revenue instead of profits? Does it encourage companies to get even bigger and do everything in house?

Business valuation is usually a multiple (3x, 5x, 10x) multiplied by a certain metric such as revenue, net income (can be before tax and interest) or free cash flow with considerations for growth. [Can also include current market cap if they're public or previous estimated valuations as benchmarks]

Plus or minus any assets that can be made liquid/sold for cash which haven't been depreciated totally or can be still used by the new company.

Strategic considerations also factor in customer/user base, current relationships with buyers/suppliers, technical know-how and market share which can boost or decrease the valuation.

Liabilities and the general riskiness of the transaction/merger such as debt can also factor in, so a financially healthy company is worth more.

After all that, it will depend on negotiating power/how much SirusXM wants Pandora and if there are also other potential buyers bidding for the company. If say Apple Music started bidding for Pandora, SiriusXM and Apple Music could keep one-upping each other so that the price increases.

You can google things like Enterprise Value, Discounted Cash Flows, etc. but they're a bit advanced and based on the principles I've mentioned.

It takes a competing company that is actually (very) profitable and believes it can successfully monetize the 70 million users Pandora claims to have.

My gut feeling is that this will be one of countless such acquisitions that‘ll turn out to be bad for both users and the acquiring company in the next couple of years. There‘s a reason why Pandora isn’t profitable in a market where others make 100‘s of millions in profit every year.

> And when everyone else was letting you select any music you wanted in playlist, they insisted on staying radio style only.

This is really the nail in the coffin. After a couple days on a Spotify trial, I converted to a paid Spotify account. The only reason I logged onto Pandora after converting was to get the list of my favorited songs to add to my playlist on Spotify.

Radio was cool but they repeated songs too much. The thumbs up and down would ruin the radio algorithm.

I would thumbs down live versions or comedy skits, then it would skew the entire system.

This was years ago.

Yeah last time I used Pandora, every station would inevitably turn into "freehunter's favorite songs". Rap station? Well Run-DMC did a cover of Walk This Way, and Linkin Park is kind of rap and Beastie Boys did a lot of rock songs, and now suddenly I'm getting a lot of rock in my rap list, and rock melds into pop pretty easy, and now suddenly my rap playlist has Katy Perry and Kesha.

And thumbs down is always way too harsh in any algorithm you'll find, because there's no way of telling the algorithm why you didn't like it. If I thumbs down Thunder by Imagine Dragons, how does it know I really do like Imagine Dragons and that album was good and the genre was good, I just don't like that one song? And if I thumbs down Good Riddance by Green Day how does the algorithm know I love Green Day and I like that style of music, but I just have a really negative emotional attachment to that song and I don't want to cry right now?

Context is super hard but super important. I listen to a lot of ambient music at work and now my Apple Music and Spotify suggestions are all ambient music, even though I don't listen to that genre for pleasure.

While I haven't used Pandora (it isn't available here), you seem to be describing my experience with Spotify's various playlists. With no personal context or ranking, the algorithms have nothing to go on except how many other people liked or repeated a song. Other people have awful taste, and seem to love to put songs on high rotation that I find mediocre.

And without decent playlists and music discovery, why would you pay a monthly subscription instead of once-off fees for music you like?

I wish the algo changes the preferences based on the time etc. S, if you can set "work hours," or label it that way, it will play the sort of the music you like during those hours, while something else for other times. You can have multiple "moods" set - one for commuting, one for partying, one for night time etc.

I haven't used Pandora in years and Spotify almost never. I use SoundCloud sparsely, on occasion when someone posts an indie or to listen to podcasts like a16z. But for everyday use, I use Google Music or YouTube / Music.

Years ago I spent a week recreating my long lost high school and college CD collections on Google Play was able to find almost everything, even some of the most ecsoteric remixes.

And when entertaining, people always gravitate towards DJing through YouTube videos on the TV, and so I wired everything up with Chromecast / Chromebook pairs to make it easy. Even though they can go to any app/site they want, everyone uses YouTube.

Pandora spent much more effort attempting to get me to sign-up (and re-sign-up) than they ever did trying to retain me.

The customer service experience was harrowing, featured slow response times, an indifferent attitude to my issues and a wholly inadequate resolution leading me to quit the service.

Every so often I would see news coverage about them struggling and all I could think was, "guess things on the customer service side haven't changed."

I feel this way about Sirius/XM. It was such a hassle to deal with them every 6 months or a year to get a better rate when it came up for renewal. It just didn't feel like it was worth it anymore. And once I finally left they would snail mail me offers to come back constantly. I couldn't help but think that all that money spent mailing me to come back could have been spent just providing a more affordable service in the first place.

I was about to say, if naggy and poor customer service is a hallmark of Pandora, then becoming a part of SiriusXM will be a match made in heaven (hell?). When I finally decided to drop SiriusXM and called in to cancel my account, it took me something like 20 minutes worth of begging the phone rep to just never let me have to pay their company money ever again. They spent the entire time questioning how I used the service and trying to forcibly get me to sign up for some lowered rate for x months. I will never purchase something from them again.

Just tell them you've been sentenced to prison, or are dying, or something like that.

Cancelling Sirus is always interesteing. I always say I don’t want to pay the $90 or however much for 6 months of access. No $50 is also too high. How about $30? Ok sure I’ll pay.

I think Sirus only makes money off the folks who forget to cancel after the promotional period. It’s like $20 a month and I’ve forgot to do it my self for a couple months.

Pandora always had the best selections on their radio channels. Spotify is not as good for random radio selections. I would never pay for Pandora after having so much music available on Spotify or Apple Music.

My experience is that Spotify's Daily Mix playlists are actually remarkably good "radio stations"! I get up to 6 different "stations", they keep generating random new tracks the longer you listen, and they do a reasonably good job of segmenting the different styles of music I enjoy. The naming is wonky but I think the Daily Mixes are a much better "radio" than the actually-named-radio feature in Spotify.

And they automatically rotate and update based on your listening!

Yeah, they're great, but I wish they had some knobs to twiddle - like how often to play new stuff vs stuff I've played. It's a bit too easy to create feedback loops. Like say I'm trying to learn a song on guitar and play a song say 5 or 6 times. Now in my Daily Mix stations that'll be the ONLY song by that artist that they play.

After buying an XM enabled car from a dealership, I was extremely disappointed when I started receiving weekly mailings and phone calls from them as my "trial" was expiring.

I am still pissed off about the lengths I had to go to in order to stop receiving communications from them. They refused to remove my contact information from their system and could not promise I wouldn't be contacted again in the future. I had to ultimately change all of my contact information to false information, fortunately the guy I was talking to was sympathetic to my plight and had no objections testing out the system to see what BS info it would take.

The whole escapade landed them on my short list of companies I will never do business with ever again.

I got the mailings (though not phone calls) when I recently bought a used car with a SiriusXM radio (2012 model), though they stopped completely by about two weeks after the trial period ended. They may as well have not bothered, since the car didn't have a nav system built in so I was piping all the audio from my phone anyway.

Sirius and Onstar are two of the worst things about my car purchase. I wonder the degree to which these partnerships hurt these car brands for short term profit.

Things I want in an OEM receiver: 1) Carplay/Android Auto, 2) Software updates for 1, 3) Radio, 4) To never do anything else (call me, install bloatware apps, reorder menus, etc).

> Sirius and Onstar are two of the worst things about my car purchase. I wonder the degree to which these partnerships hurt these car brands for short term profit.

Well, you're stuck with the car by the time this kicks in...

And, apparently, the OnStar experience has just recently (<12 months) gotten quite horrific--apparently it used to be an online thing but that wasn't intrusive enough. I made the salesman sit with me while I was signing up (Okay, you want your commission from this, you get to spend your time.). Verbally. Over a shitty, high-latency, low bandwidth voice connection.

The salesman sat there visibly appalled. The salesmen got his manager. The manager got somebody else. etc. By the time I was done, I had 7 different people from the dealership listening with shock on their faces.

Big manager: "Ummm, yeah, this is a problem. We are strongly encouraging our customers sign up for something that makes them angry. That's ... not good."

Apparently, nobody at the dealership had experienced a signup in the last 12 months.

> Sirius and Onstar are two of the worst things about my car purchase

I'd say your car purchase was an awesome experience.

You don't know enough about OnStar, then.

I told them I sold my car, they stopped calling after that. It was still annoying.

I discussed that option with the person I talked to on the phone and that doesn't stop mail solicitations or prevent them from contacting you in the future.

My experience was similar. I think I blocked the phone number they called from, and that seems to have been effective.

Unfortunately, though not a subscriber, my car stereo often defaults to the Sirius input when I start it. This mean I'm greeted with Sirius ads when I start my car. Usually, this ad literally consists of playing a really annoying buzzing/screeching sound, followed by someone explaining that if you subscribe, you won't have to listen to that sound. That's an .. interesting .. strategy.

Sirius also has almost all major sports and a decent amount of non-music content. I like having it built into my car vs needing to deal with bluetooth, lag, and the various interruptions that my mobile likes to make.

> I think Sirus only makes money off the folks who forget to cancel after the promotional period. It’s like $20 a month and I’ve forgot to do it my self for a couple months.

they don't really have an ongoing per-customer costs, right?

so long as they extract the all the money you're willing to pay them, be it $20 or $90, that's fine. i expect they worry more about total customer count.

They probably have per user pricing with some of the content sources so there would be some cost.

There is also the cost of having a call center contact deal with the renewal every 6 months. 20 min on the phone costs at least a couple bucks.

Audible has a similar ridiculous thing going on. At any point you can cancel your $15 a month subscription and they will ask if you want to pay $7 instead. Anyone with this knowledge can easily get the service for $7 forever. Or you can start infinite trials and get infinite free books.

Can you explain I more detail how I can get cheaper audible?

Go through the cancellation flow on the website. You’ll be offered a coupon before the final step.

It took me only 10 minutes to cancel a SiriusXM account I had for over 5 years.

The webapp was unusable and Howard Stern is now boring to me.

I went with a Pandora-ish/Spotify-ish service named Slacker Radio, which costs only $2.50/mo pro-rated, has a 320k bit-rate and is commercial free.

SiriusXM may need Pandora to survive in the future. Pandora/SiriusXM can be re-worked to compete with Spotify.

Bought a car with free SiriusXM subscription. I listened to a few stations a number of times - pretty good selection, but really didn't use it much. After the trial period, started getting calls from them. I (regretfully) accepted a discounted rate to extend my trial, but I had refused to accept any subscription that auto-renews. (Only later would I find out the salesperson outright lied to me that they were offering me a one-time subscription). The extended period eventually expired, and they billed me for another subscription at a higher rate. Since I never ultimately listened to anything, I never realized it was still active. By the time that one expired, that particular card had been closed, and they started mailing me past due notices. Which is when I discovered they'd continued billing me. I was irate and called their customer service at least a dozen times, every time getting a different runaround. On most of those calls, the runaround was to transfer me to a menu system that went nowhere. I fired off a letter to them, then just gave up, refusing to pay. The past due notices eventually ended up at a collection agency, and I had a couple interactions with them until I discovered the magic word "fraud". I sent the collector a letter explaining how Sirius had charged me for something I never asked for, which is fraud. It literally took years, but finally I got Sirius off my back. I am definitely uninstalling the several instances of Pandora we have.

I used Pandora in the distant past.

These days I mainly use http://www.gnoosic.com for recommendations and then look for the artists on the web, Youtube, Bandcamp, Soundcloud etc.

Not sure if that makes me one of a kind?

This approach gives me more of a "discoverer" feeling then using one monolithic service that spoon feeds me my musical life.

Most of the music recommendation services I know of are based on meta data of the songs (artist, genre, etc.). Is there anyone out there working on recommendation systems purely based on the music itself, now that we have deep learning? I'd kill for that.

Spotify Premium for family at $15/mo is still gonna be pretty hard to beat. But. IMHO SXM has been doing a great job with exclusive content like recent live recordings (eg phish and other jambands), which is immune to the "shazam->spotify" escape hatch I'd otherwise use. They are desperate to get onto people's devices, and as the early leader in the space Pandora's still got "eyeballs" (eardrums?) galore in terms of installed user base. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out....

I think this is really exciting actually. I LOVE SiriusXM because their radio is curated by an actual DJ. You get to hear so many tracks that algorithmic services like Spotify never would surface. I use both Spotify and SiriusXM as for me they fulfill very different use cases. Spotify is for playing what I want to hear and Sirius is for when I want a human with deep expertise in a genre to play things for me.

For me, an algorithmic feed of music just isn’t interesting. Music is art, and art is for humans, not computers.

Honestly, I discover far more music through services like Spotify and Pandora than I ever have through the SiriusXM stations that I listen to.

I totally agree with this. Algorithms still have a ways to go to keep up with a human DJ. As far a human DJ who has the ability to pick the songs he wants and not just a formulated top 40 playlist chosen for him.

Recently, I got Pandora Plus through T-mobile promotion. I was enjoying it until one day, while driving, I got "Can't skip due to licensing restriction" which reminded me of the scene in Fifteen Million Merits from Black Mirror...

What worse was it was bit off from type of song I asked for, and particularly I couldn't stand to listen to. I switched back to Google Play Music, which has a mix of my own uploads and (smaller for things in my taste, but doesn't complain I can't skip) music from the service.

This makes me side. I am a long-time, paid subscriber. We'll see what happens next, fingers crossed.

I'm not sure if this was a win for the team or a mercy killing. But, if someone can explain what's in this for customers, that would be very helpful.

SiriusXM is dying, if not already dead. Why do I need satellite radio when I can just listen to a podcast, or preload a bunch of music on my phone? Or just stream? 10 years ago, you could still do these things, but it was harder or very expensive. Now, you just open an app on your unlimited data phone, plug in the aux cable, and start driving.

So this purchase is about Sirius re-entering the market. I think they'll pivot pandora to be more self-serve and they'll merge the good things people liked about sirius (comedy, shock jocks) with the good things people liked about pandora (choice, freemium)

I only know a few people that are SiriusXM subscribers still. One of them only subscribes to listen to Howard Stern. He will also only rent a car that has SiriusXM. He is a bit of an outlier though. I'm not sure of other motivations beside those two (Him and rental company).

In regards to, "Why do I need satellite radio when I can just listen to a podcast, or preload a bunch of music on my phone?" you don't if you only listen to music or content accessibly on your preferred streaming service. Their strength is in their specific content, most notably Howard Stern to note one. If and when Apple Music/Spotify gets and/or can take away that big talent then yes Sirius will eventually be dead in the water. I use Sirius for things like CNN. I tried using CarPlay app for that and didn't work reliably enough compared to the simplicity of just knowing Sirius in car is always there and always work even if ones phone dies or any other random situations. Sirius has horrible customer support and they deserve what is coming to them, but still think they have a lot of gas left in in them as long as they continue to retain their headliners and come preloaded in new cars with free trials.

Sirius is in a tough spot. I've heard from many people that they only listen for Howard Stern. If Howard was smart, he'd pivot to selling podcasts and doing live streaming like Joe Rogan. He could cut out the sirius middleman and bring much more money home.

There are so many places to get news that I'm actually surprised to hear that sirius is an important place for you to get yours.

Howard Stern makes a risk-free $80M/year for 4 hours of radio 3 days a week. Maybe he could make that much making podcasts, but why risk it ? He's at the tail-end of his career anyway.

Do you know a lot of "smart" people who would trade a guaranteed $80M/year for possibly more doing podcasts ?

Stern is smart :) He obviously could do that but can't be bothered. He's not starving to death. So unless he's going to leverage his brand to build others and broaden his (a la Oprah) by having a family of stations under his control then it's probably not worth it to him. How can he not go to bed thinking, "I'm one of the luckiest schmucks in the world"?

The entire US podcast ad revenue in 2017 was $314 million. Stern is paid $80 million a year. Seems like the smarter choice.

It's built into my new car's stereo system, and it's as quick and easy to use as an FM radio. Using my smartphone and various services takes more effort.

That's definitely changing as more and more cars are shipping with Android/Apple Auto. Even if it is slightly more effort to pair your phone once, for most people once paired they don't have to fiddle with it again beyond launching an App.

For more power users it's trivial to setup a Tasker/Llama/Automate rule to launch your preferred music app when paired to a particular Bluetooth device.

Smartphones are getting increasingly well-integrated into the car's stereo, though - especially in the Appleverse.

From a contingency planning perspective, even if their business is healthy now, they might also want to hedge against a long-term decrease in private car ownership. We're seeing quite a few trends that point in that direction: increasing use of ride share services, self-driving cars, wealthier folks moving back into the cities, increasing cultural interest in moving away from motorized transportation as the default, more remote work.

> Smartphones are getting increasingly well-integrated into the car's stereo, though - especially in the Appleverse.

My personal threshold for usability is that I need functionality while wearing thick winter mittens.

There are a lot of people that have to do long distance driving (truckers mostly) and having a live selection of music to choose from when data connections fail is nice.

Loading music and podcasts is possible, but takes work and never feels like you're "connected" to the live world. You're always a few days behind the rest of the world, even though it's some of the best content.

What you describe takes a lot of thought, planning and self curation. With Sirius we can just hop in the car and play music, listen to talk when we get bored flip around the channels. It also works in areas where cell coverage does not.

> just hop in the car and play music, listen to talk when we get bored flip around the channels

This is nice, but is it $21.99-a-month nice? It's $300 a year, that's the problem. That's twice as expensive as Apple music and Netflix. That's the cost of a data-only cellphone plan.

I guess it depends on how often you drive through areas with no cell phone coverage.

"Why do I need satellite radio"

I'll answer my myself: For my car(s). SiriusXM just ... works. No pairing, no bluetooth on/off dance, no cables, no unpairing my wife's phone, no setting my car radio's source, Internet connection or not ... it just works. The only other time I listen to "satellite" radio is in my office, streaming from my Chromebook - which is just silly but don't judge me.

This just sounds like a problem with your car's stereo. For me, I get in the car, plug my phone in (always have a car-only charger cable), press "Media" on the dash, and it picks up whatever was playing on my phone.

I don't have sirius built into my car, I think this is an american car thing (did sirius pay them buckets of money for this integration? methinks so). If I wanted it, I'd have to have a ugly receiver taped somewhere on my dash.

*Multiple cars. High tech, low tech doesn't matter - it's a shit show. You know what still works? FM radio.

You must have a great local radio market, then. I wouldn't consider any of my local FM stations to be "working" radio.

It actually rebounded (post Internet era) and exploded locally (I live 1.5 hours from Boston). I listen to NPR, a top 40 station when the kids are in the car, and there's a local rock station that's just as good as any SiriusXM channel (the kids aren't wild about that one). More commercials sure, but sometimes you luck out and your 5-10 min car ride has tunes the whole time.

This isn't just an American car thing. My past two Japanese vehicles and two German vehicles had SiriusXM built into the radio.

I've had Sirius for

bugs me is that

drive under a tree or overpass. Seriously, having

really bugs me.

LTE

Does that too

I've had very few buffering issues with Spotify via LTE over the years when compared the constant dropouts from my SiriusXM in my various cars that have had this service. SiriusXM audio quality is also terribly compressed and tinny in addition to the constant drop outs. I've never had a good experience with their product.

Spotify can also download large quantities of music and playlists...so with minimal planing you will have no buffering issues.

Having your service pre-download stations/playlists when on wifi helps with this.

Actually owning your music and storing it on your devices in open formats helps even more.

Hard with a 16 (actually 14) GB iPhone. I deleted my iOS music library (to free up space) and only stream now. Even with the LTE issues, it's (streaming) better than listening to the same couple dozen songs and dealing with iTunes.

...Yeah, that's pretty accurate

I keep Sirius in my daily driver because the satellite cutouts are annoying, but so are cellular dead zones. And cellular dead zones are more common for me than satellite cutouts.

Truck drivers and other industries with volatile connectivity is where satellite radio shines.

I like the randomness of content that I didnt program.

Also, effectively XM was the winning company - its the XM platform that continues on, and the XM billing platform as well - its more like XM bough sirius.

If you travel in places without good data, XM is invaluable to have.

> Why do I need satellite radio when I can just listen to a podcast, or preload a bunch of music on my phone?

Anyone who is away from a good data connection for a significant amount of time. E.g. long haul truckers, rural areas (especially in the western US), mountainous regions. If most of your car time is commuting in the city/suburbs, that may not be an issue.

That doesn't seem like it would be a very large or profitable customer base.

My podcasts are all downloaded with multiple episodes for each podcast and so is a large collection of my Spotify music. I get what you're saying but it isn't that big of an issue with a reasonably modern mobile device and a little customization of the app to do the downloads for you.

My spotify playlists download to my phone

SiriusXM is worth $30-40B USD and is profitable.

A large portion of my listening is to talk content. Either news (live) or sports (again, live).

TBH the sound quality is too bad for even casual music listening unless I'm really desperate.

i pay full retail for sirius xm in two cars. I dont even know how much it costs.

My wife listens to her LA stations, I listen mainly to news and talk radio.

When we drive cross country it works regardless of cell reception.

I dont listen to music at all.

1. I don't have unlimited data. I pay for usage so I tend to download podcasts and music before I leave the house to save money. 2. I really like the new music and playlists the Sirius DJ's have come up with. In fact in terms of music curation and discovery I've not found anything better personally.

The audio space has been going through extremely cutthroat competitions and consolidation. Even today, most of the major players are operating at loss. SiriusXM is still one of the largest revenue-wise, and possibly the only profitable company in the space.

Its current business model may be at risk as car companies start to get more smartphone integrations. But with the money and content they have, they are uniquely positioned to selectively buy out streaming competitors to diversify their income streams.

There is risk if they can successfully integrate Pandora with their existing business, of course.

>if someone can explain what's in this for customers

Second sentence of the article

>The satellite radio company says it intends to maintain the Pandora service and brand, along with its roughly 70 million monthly active users (5.6 million of which are paying members)

Whenever there is an exit like this I like to remember that for just 4B, Sirius could have had a Star Wars franchise instead. These valuations are nutty.

Other sources [1] mention a "go-shop" provision, which allows pandora to shop the deal around. I'm wondering if this is likely to result in any alternative deals?

[1] http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-release...

I never liked algorithmic DJs.

They don't really expand my horizons and play the same crap over and over.

My favorite is chirpradio dot org. Real DJs who are real music buffs.

Thank you. I thought I was the only one who got tired of algorithms noticing I'm listing to some classic rock and deciding a great move would be to introduce me to this band I may have never heard of called The Eagles.

I've noticed that YouTube (just plain YouTube, not the new YouTube Music) is actually decent at recommending music though. I played some songs by The Meters and Herbie Hancock, and through its recommendations I learned about the existence of Lafayette Afro Rock Band and learned that Prince made a funk/fusion album in 1977 before his pop stuff. I wonder if it's just using its regular video recommendation algorithm and not anything music specific, which might be a different approach than the music services.

EDIT: And by really strange coincidence, I just checked out Chirp, and the last song they played was by The Meters, and before that they played another band (Cymande) that YouTube recommended in the same session.

I have used Pandora (happily) for years. Just downgraded my subscription to the "free" level as I have too many streaming music providers and needed to reduce cost. SiriusXM (paid), YouTube Music (paid, new), and Pandora (free) are my streaming services. Trying to build up my YT library now, as Pandora has over a decade of my "likes".

It's such a shame that Pandora didn't do anything with rdio.com. Rdio was the best music service I've ever used. Not only was the music high quality, but the UI was very intuitive on all devices, and it also had cool features like if you're playing Rdio on your laptop, you could use your phone as a remote control.

Not a bad exit for a company that raised a Series... H?

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