Pandora Reportedly Weighing Sale As Executives Announce Long Term Plan

Last night Grammys president Neil Portnow called once again for artists to be paid fairly for their work and for fans to support music - mainly targeting streaming. With this in mind, there have been reports that one of the oldest and largest streaming services Pandora is potentially discussing putting itself up for sale, even as its executives just announced a new detailed plan to increase revenue by 2020.

According to a recent New York Times report, Pandora has had discussions with Morgan Stanley about selling the company. It cites sources who are briefed on the talks. The talks are just preliminary and may not lead to a deal.

Pandora has struggled over the past two years with stagnant user growth, rising costs and increased competition from other services. Its shares yield a market cap at $1.8 billion a far cry from more than $7 billion two years ago.

The timing of the potential sale is odd. Pandora just made some large acquisitions in 2015 for Rdio and Ticketfly at the price of $75 million and $450 million respectively to try and expand its offerings to users. Through Rdio, it hopes to create a more conventional, on-demand, streaming service and Ticketfly it wants to get into the live music and ticketing business, connecting the various core aspects together.

Finding a suitor is difficult to do. Other tech giants like Apple and Google are already invested in their own streaming services with Apple Music & YouTube. There has been some speculation that Amazon could be a potential landing spot since it doesn't have its own specific music streaming service and Pandora could help Amazon prime's technological capabilities.

Pandora's CEO and CFO are not commenting on these "rumors" according to Variety and instead have laid out plans to quadruple profits to $4 billion by 2020. They hope that $2.4 billion of that will come from its traditional ad-supposed radio programming, while its yet-to-be launched music subscription service will bring in another $1.3 billion. The last piece of the pie will come from Ticketfly, raking in $300 million.

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