UPDATED 20:38 EDT / NOVEMBER 16 2015

NEWS

Rdio gives up the ghost, files for bankruptcy and sells core assets to Pandora for $75m

Streaming music company Rdio, Inc. is no longer with the company Monday both filing for bankruptcy and announcing it had sold its core assets to Pandora, Inc.

The deal will see Pandora pick up technology and intellectual property from the failed music streaming service for $75 million The Verge reported, with “many employees” from Rdio being offered the chance to work at Pandora.

Founded in 2008, Rdio was among the first wave of online streaming music providers and had expanded upon its demise to providing a service to over 100 countries using a catalog of over 12 million tracks.

While its offering was solid, the company never gained a serious market share compared to large competitors such as Spotify AG, and the emergence of both Apple Music and YouTube Music this year may have been the final nail in its coffin.

Although not made entirely clear by either party, the Rdio streaming service is not shutting down, at least for now, but it could be merged into Pandora itself at some stage in the future, with Pandora saying that the acquisition will “accelerate the company’s plan to offer fans greater control over the music they love, strengthening Pandora’s position as the definitive source of music.”

Rdio wasn’t any clearer on exactly what the future for the service and its customers was either, noting that “Rdio’s service will not be interrupted today. We will have more updates in the coming weeks on what this process means for your Rdio account, but for the time being the service continues unchanged,” while also saying of the buy “we’re very excited to continue our tradition of delivering beautiful and powerful music experiences to an even larger audience,” hinting perhaps that the service may continue on.

Value add

The acquisition of the core assets (presumably the streaming service itself) by Pandora can reasonably be seen as the company looking to value add to its current service with an on-demand streaming music service, and if that’s the primary purpose it’s also a good buy for the money.

Rdio brings to the table rights agreements for music streaming in a vast number of countries whereas Pandora is only available in Australia, New Zealand and the United States; those rights agreements may not allow Pandora to take its existing service to more countries, but it will certainly open doors and give the company far greater geographic growth potential.

Prior to bankruptcy and partial acquisition, Rdio had raised $125.7 million over 7 rounds from investors including Mangrove Capital Partners, Atomico, Skype, Janus Friis, and others.

Given Rdio has filed for bankruptcy the sale is subject to a period where other suitors are able to offer to acquire the assets for sale as well; presuming none do the deal should close in the first quarter of 2016.

Image credit: hotmeteor/Flickr/CC by 2.0

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