View Poll Results: Does it make business sense for Sirius XM to give "extras" away to it's subscribers?

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  • Yes

    5 50.00%
  • No

    5 50.00%
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Results 11 to 14 of 14
  1. Siriusowner is offline
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    Joined: Nov 2008 Location: The Oil Patch, Texas Posts: 922
    12-11-2008, 09:15 PM #11
    Quote Originally Posted by SiriusBuzz View Post
    Some of them are on deaths door because there is no subscription fee. We pay Sirius for this service. Why would you like to see Sirius buy slacker? What does slacker have that Sirius does not? How about just create a product that actually competes and crush them?

    The best marketing Sirius can do for itself is to create a great product... period. Anyone who disagrees with that and doesn't want to call Sirius out on their bad decisions is only doing so because they are scared shit about how much money they have lost in the stock.

    How many times did you see an ad for Google before Google became what it is today? I never saw a single one, yet I learned about the site because it created the best product and people talked about it. How many times have you seen an ad for slacker? I prefer its music over Sirius and I found out about it through word of mouth because it is a great product.

    Conversely, I just spent a week down in Florida on vacation and ran into people who have no idea who I am or what I do and none of them had anything good to say about Sirius or XM. I heard one person laugh about the mailing they got which described how they could purchase the best of Sirius for an additional fee, which the person found confusing. That same person instead tried to cancel because of the commercials that were being played on a particular music station. Upon trying to cancel he was allowed to lock in at $3.99 per month and decided to keep the service. I am hearing more and more stories like this first hand from people and Sirius needs to wake up.

    Sirius has a chance to do something truly special with their technology and it seems to me that they are lacking the creativity to make it happen... or even basic business sense.

    I agree. Sirius needs to get their act together. More mergers and/or acquisitions are not the only way to achive growth or create synergies.

  2. James is offline
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    Joined: Jul 2008 Location: New Jersey Posts: 121
    12-11-2008, 11:28 PM #12
    Quote Originally Posted by SiriusBuzz View Post
    Some of them are on deaths door because there is no subscription fee. We pay Sirius for this service. Why would you like to see Sirius buy slacker? What does slacker have that Sirius does not? How about just create a product that actually competes and crush them?
    Any aquisitions that Sirius makes has to be some future date when they are profitable. If, and that's a big if, Sirius generates the cash flow that they claim it will then it would be irresponsible not to expand the product line. Internet entertainment delivery is the future of radio. Sirius will have to move into that field. Depending on how happy you are with the merged channels, which I largely am, you will agree they are capable of running the current type of business. The fact is they lacked any kind of innovativeness when it comes to internet products

    I am very impressed with the Slacker service. The concept behind their wi-fi radio device show the kind of innovativeness that Sirius has lacked. I was surprised to find out that Dennis Mudd founded Slacker. Dennis Mudd had previously founded Musicmatch, a service I enjoyed even before satellite radio. Could Sirius create a service like Slacker. Maybe. One thing I hope is Yahoo doesn't get a hold of Sirius or Slacker and destroy it like they did with Musicmatch.
    Last edited by James; 12-12-2008 at 12:06 AM.

  3. imromo24 is offline
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    Joined: Aug 2008 Location: Steeler Town, MI Posts: 2,524
    12-11-2008, 11:46 PM #13
    Quote Originally Posted by clueless View Post
    They are not losing money by "duplicating bandwidth." That content is streaming right now, you just haven't paid to unlock those channels on your receivers. It doesn't cost them a dollar more to provide it to you or me.
    Correct me if im wrong but I give it a shot...

    XM and Sirius are each allocated 12.5 megahertz of radio spectrum by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

    On XM's 12.5 mhz they are broadcasting the XM lineup.

    On Sirius's 12.5 mhz they are broadcasting the sirius lineup.

    Both now share music stations, however, Sirius is using their 12.5 to broadcast the same that XM is broadcasting, therefore duplicating broadcasts which are hogging up twice the bandwidth than if music was only on the xm bandwidth and news sports talk were on the sirius bandwidth.

    However, if that last statement were to happen then every Sirius radio owner now has to buy an xm reciever to get music and xm owners have to buy a sirius radio to get news sports talk.

    To add to that scenario, now XM has say 6.5 open mhz and sirius has 6.5 open mhz. So what to do? Broadcast news sports talk on xm's leftover 6.5 mhz and music on sirius's leftover 6.5 mhz...but thats a waste of money because now 2 companies are broadcasting the same content.

    That is where they are now...they merged content but instead of gaining 12.5 mhz they are now using 25mhz to broadcast the same content, twice.

    Once the interop radio comes out, then sirius may have some specialized content that an xm subscriber can unlock and vice versa.

    But until all of the non interop radios are dead, they can't merge the bandwidth.

    Think of it like xm's chipset picks up 1mhz to 12.5 mhz frequencies and sirius's chipset picks up 12.5mhz to 25mhz. Its like having an FM radio without the AM tuner.

    So, they merged content to save from paying 2 DJ's to play the same music but they did not gain bandwidth. But the subscriber wins because the only fundamental difference between the two services is the respective "best of" and now instead of paying $12.95 for the difference the subscriber only has to pay $4 for the different content, which is like adding HBO to your cable bill.

    I suspect that once the company turns a profit they will offer free radios and replace all of one brands receivers. Then that brand of receiver will only get 130 channels, but the new interop radios will get 260, with no duplicates.

    DONE! See you in 6-8 years when this happens, IMO of course.

    I don't know the lifespan on the radios but I bet they don't last 5 years? At which point the only option will be to buy an interop or complain until they send you a free refurbished interop. Then they will drop the content on one set of satellites, only broadcast it on the other and pick up a whole group of satellites worth of 12.5mhz new content.
    Last edited by imromo24; 12-11-2008 at 11:52 PM.

  4. Newman is offline
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    Joined: Jun 2007 Location: Dallas Texas Posts: 1,162
    12-12-2008, 06:58 AM #14
    I think it is acceptable at this point to charge for "Best Of Both" services. This, IMO, will be a short term thing, as people will no longer have to do this once the interopperable radios come out. Of course, they will still be paying for it, but in a different way because they will be buying the tier. (It will also entice people to upgrade to newer interop capable radios).

    There should not be a premium feed, because a song is a song and the streaming rate should be adequate for perfect sound, period.

    At this point, the company needs to get profitable. At that time, we can reevaluate the fees. Sirius has done a horrible job in marketing the services. This definately needs to improve. Unfortunately, they have been doing some things to piss some people off (BTLS, the channel lineup, etc). Those people will not be recommending it to their friends... thus we need to make up for that by advertising. Not such a great move when the company is already suffering.

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