Stitcher was founded in 2008 by Noah Shanok, Mike Ghaffary, and Peter deVroede. The company began with just its listening app, entitled "Stitcher", and was venture-backed until 2014 when the company was acquired by
Deezer. In 2016, Deezer sold Stitcher for $4.5 million to
E.W. Scripps Company, who ran Stitcher under its Midroll Media unit. In 2017, Midroll Media underwent a rebranding, making Stitcher the parent company to Midroll Media and Earwolf, another entity under the
E.W. Scripps network. In July 2020,
Sirius XM acquired the Stitcher company for $325 million. Following the acquisition, Sirius XM integrated Stitcher's exclusive podcasts into its additional music and podcast listening service,
Pandora. At the peak of its popularity, Stitcher was reported to have nearly 14.5 million weekly users. In June 2023, Stitcher announced that the podcast service would be discontinued on August 29, 2023, as the parent company, SiriusXM, wanted to focus on incorporating podcasts into the flagship SiriusXM subscription. The production side of the company, Stitcher Studios and Earwolf, continued operations. == Operations ==