In the fourth quarter of 2023, Sirius XM had 33.88 million subscribers, slightly down from 33.97 million in the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Until now subscriptions have peaked with 34.91 million in the final quarter of 2019. In February 2019, the company completed its long-discussed acquisition of Pandora Radio.
Sirius and Pandora: a brief history
Before Sirius XM purchased Pandora Radio, the two were competitors for years. However, Pandora began to struggle to compete with other highly successful music services such as Spotify as consumer preferences evolved and other larger companies like iHeartMedia began to infiltrate the market.
Pandora’s plight is aptly illustrated not only by its income data (or rather, data on its losses), but also by its comparatively small slice of the global subscriber base who don’t just use streaming services, but pay for them. Despite millions of users, Pandora fans simply weren’t spending their money on the service. In November 2018, the number of Pandora’s worldwide paying subscribers was estimated to amount to just under 6.2 million, whereas Spotify had 96 million subscribers globally at the end of 2018.
Back in 2017, Sirius invested 480 million U.S. dollars in Pandora for stakes of almost 20 percent in the company. This gave Pandora less control but the cash injection it desperately needed, and predictions of a full-blown acquisition began to circulate. When the inevitable finally did come to fruition, the move cost Sirius XM 3.5 billion U.S. dollars.
