> "Pandora, for example, may not have any earnings, but the value of controlling the source of 100 million users music is no doubt quite valuable." Valuable to

> "Pandora, for example, may not have any earnings, but the value of controlling the source of 100 million users music is no doubt quite valuable." Valuable to whom, and to the tune of how many dollars? I'll agree that some startups have the potential to be worth a lot of revenue down the line - I mean, it is how nearly all startups get off the ground. But this doesn't seem like the case here - Pandora never really saw very much revenue despite dominating the online streaming market. Their valuation was always based on an ephemeral notion of being able to monetize better some undetermined time in the future with their user base. And then Spotify and Rdio came in... so now Pandora's market share is at risk long before they ever got around to really monetizing their users. So while your point is theoretically valid, in reality 99% of the time it simply doesn't apply.