SiriusXM is one of the most popular satellite radio services in the US. However, the growth of paid radio subscribers is falling as free offerings like podcasts find more popularity than ever before. In an effort to ride the wave, SiriusXM has announced its acquisition of Stitcher, a mainstay in the world of podcasting.

Stitcher may be known mostly for its podcasting platform, but the company also runs the Midroll Media advertising firm, as well as its own podcast networks such as Earwolf and Witness Docs. Today's announcement sees all three of Stitcher's operations finding a new home under SiriusXM. Every Stitcher employee will be moved over in the agreement, which is nice to hear.

The deal is worth $325 million dollars, which seems pretty impressive when compared to the mere $4.5 million that Stitcher's current owner paid to acquire it from Deezer back in 2016.

SiriusXM bought Simplecast, a podcast management and analytics platform, last month. With these recent moves and the addition of support for paid radio services in Google Assistant last year, it definitely seems like Sirius is serious (ba-dum) about sticking around in the audio market. Hopefully this will only serve to benefit podcasters, so they can keep on growing by reaching more audiences in a new segment of the market.

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Source: SiriusXM