Liberty bids $3.5bn for Pandora streaming

Broadcast-streaming. The Liberty Media-owned US satellite radio giant SiriusXM has offered to acquire Pandora in a share deal. It plans to keep Pandora operating as an independent service. But the deal will create a US audio monolith with more than 100m monthly listeners – and a beach-head against Apple, Spotify and Amazon especially in cars where US streaming audiences are concentrated. Liberty is also rumoured to be trying to acquire iHeart, America’s largest radio network (formerly Clear Channel).