Pandora, the online radio giant, has acquired the assets of subscription music streaming service Rdio for $75 million — and plans to shut it down.
According to Variety:
The $75 million acquisition includes “technology and intellectual property” from Rdio, which will file for bankruptcy–presumably to rid itself of accumulated debt–and shut down its existing service in all markets.
So why buy a bankrupt business? Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews says, “We just were really enamored with their product.”
But he’s also hinted at future plans, explaining that Pandora’s goal is to offer “radio, on-demand and live music” all in one place, and it’s current personalized radio service is only “step one.”
With more than a quarter billion registered users, Pandora is poised to make a big entrance into the world of full on-demand streaming.
But let’s not get carried away. Though the purchase of Rdio likely signals a serious commitment to that project, we’re still a ways off from the launch of a Pandora-branded interactive subscription service.
In the meantime, your music (if CD Baby has delivered it to Rdio) will remain on the service until its eventual closure. Besides that, we’ll share more details when we have them.
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Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.