Tuned in: Satellite radio provider Sirius XM announced today that it would acquire music streaming service Pandora Media for $3.5 billion, in a bid to corral listeners who don’t want to pay for premium channels. Pandora rose to success by providing tailored radio stations for its users that were sprinkled with ads, The New York Times reports. In recent years it has struggled to compete with rival services like Spotify and Apple Music, which dominated online music streaming by offering paid on-demand content—something Pandora was slow to replicate. Read the full story.
Venti-sized changes: Starbucks Corp., on a mission to move faster, is planning an organizational shakeup, including corporate layoffs, Bloomberg reports. The leadership and organizational changes will begin this week and carry on into November, CEO Kevin Johnson said in a memo to employees. The coffee behemoth, now one of the world’s largest restaurant companies, is fighting back against fast-growing regional chains as demand wanes for its signature Frappuccinos. To counter this, Starbucks wants to speed the arrival of new menu items at its more than 28,000 cafes. Read the full story.
Life support: Warning that Sears Holdings Corp. is running out of time and money, CEO Edward Lampert is making his biggest push yet to restructure the retailer to avoid a bankruptcy filing, as a debt payment looms next month, The Wall Street Journal reports. Lampert, who is also Sears’s chairman, controlling shareholder and biggest creditor, wants creditors to restructure about $1.1 billion of debt coming due in 2019 and 2020, according to a proposal made public on Monday. The restructuring plan, if approved by the board and creditors, would reduce Sears’s roughly $5.5 billion in debt to about $1.24 billion. Read the full story.
