Internet radio service Pandora has entered into an agreement to purchase live events company Ticketfly. That transaction is reportedly valued at $450M.
Announcing the news Wednesday on the company’s blog, Pandora founder Tim Westergren wrote the acquisition would allow Pandora to offer a new music discovery vehicle that connects consumers, artists and promoters.
Westergren referred to the acquisition as "the perfect solution for listeners, artists, promoters and club owners, bringing the power of scale and personalization to bear on the working musician’s most intractable problem."
The acquisition gives Pandora some much-needed diversity in its toolkit. The world’s largest streaming service still boasts an audience larger than Spotify — about 81.5 million active listeners as of 2014 — though the company’s only revenue source had been its paying subscribers, which now accounts for fewer than 5% of its active listeners. The company claimed revenues of $920 million last year, a slight dip from the year prior.
In buying Ticketfly, Pandora will be able to effectively target its legion of music fans for marketing purposes, regarding concerts the company knows its listeners would enjoy. According to a Wednesday release, Pandora’s new platform “will enable artists and promoters to sell out more shows and will strengthen the bond between artists and their fans.”
Founded in 2008, Ticketfly quickly became a pioneer in the sales of online tickets for the live events industry, offering ticket sales, digital marketing and analytics software for about 600 websites and 1,200 venues across the country. Last year the company was responsible for about 16 million ticket sales to more than 90,000 events.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
Have a comment? Send it to 
No comments have been submitted for this story yet.