Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has agreed to a deal to buy out music streaming platform Saavn for $104 million in cash and rest in stock, to merge it with its own digital music service JioMusic, valuing the combined streaming entity at about $1 billion. In the cash and stock deal for Saavn, the Mukesh Ambani owned company will hold roughly three-fourths of the merged entity, with JioMusic’s implied valuation at $670 million, RIL said in a statement to the press. In addition to the merger, Reliance will also invest up to $100 million of which $20 million will be invested upfront. According to the statement, the investment intends to enable "growth and expansion of the platform into one of the largest streaming services in the world." The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. RIL is acquiring a partial stake from the existing shareholders of Saavn, including Tiger Global Management, Liberty Media and Bertelsmann among others. The three co-founders of Saavn, Rishi Malhotra, Paramdeep Singh and Vinodh Bhat, will continue in their leadership roles the press note stated. How will Saavn-Jio Music be affected? What will be interesting to see is how the merger affect the current nature of both services. Jio Music for one is free for Reliance Jio subscribers, has it's own app and is tied down to a Jio Phone number. Jio Music is not operator agnostic, i.e. if you have an Airtel connection you cannot sign up for Jio Music. Saavn, on the other hand, is both platform…
