Pandora has acquired ticket vendor Ticketfly for a price of approximately $450 million. The acquisition was officially announced this morning in joint statements by both company CEOs on their respective blogs.
The $450 million will contain an equal balance of cash & stock, though the exact price point is subject to certain purchase price adjustments.
Pandora currently has 80 million users and the new integration of Ticketfly will help Pandora's communication between artists and fans through its Artist Marketing Platform (AMP), which was launched last year as an extra feature on the artist dashboard. Artists will be able to sell tickets immediately for an upcoming show or a tour directly from an ad or their account in between song streams. This should put more money in the pockets of artists who have complained about the per-song payouts of streaming on Pandora.
"This is a game-changer for Pandora - and much more importantly - a game-changer for music," said Brian McAndrews, chief executive officer at Pandora in a statement. "Over the past 10 years, we have amassed the largest, most engaged audience in streaming music history. With Ticketfly, we will thrill music lovers and lift ticket sales for artists as the most effective marketplace for connecting music makers and fans."
This continues Pandora's push to diversify its portfolio beyond just being one of the largest music services. This move gives Pandora leverage to provide better tools to its artists and will help collect better data on its users for their listening patterns and buying patterns for future recommendations.
Pandora acquired Next Big Sound, a data analysis firm, which will help deal with all of the extra data set to come in from this deal.
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