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Sirius Confirms iPod Satellite Talks
An anonymous reader writes "Remember those iPod Satellite rumors last December? Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, announced at the 2005 Media Summit that he had discussions with Steve Jobs about the possibility of putting Sirius' technology in future iPods. Steve's response? Not interested."
Songs in iPod will grow old and users will eventually buy new ones to replace the olds, and iTunes the cash cow is waiting.
Being a satellite radio will allow users to use iPod without purchasing anything thing more from Apple.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Steve Jobs, the Prince Charles of the tabloid computer industry.
Adding satellite radio to iPods could create an awesome portable media player. I don't own an ipod, but adding this functionality might convince me to buy one. The capability to listen to satellite radio, and my own downloaded songs on a single device is a very attractive combination. I think jobs screwed up here... I think they'd sell tons of those units.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
I'm not up on the tech, but aren't satellite radios fairly big, and requiring a high-power aerial? We don't have them in Canada, but I saw a couple of XM units when I visited the States and they didn't look iPod-sized.
I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I think he made the right choice.
Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
I discovered MP3s nearly 10 years the time I spend listening to the radio has decreased. Even before that CD players often omitted a radio tuner further effecting how I listen to music. The iPod and other MP3 players have eliminated my need for radio.
The impeding failure of satellite radio aside, I don't see how it would even fit into Apple's bigger plan for the iPod. The iPod allows us to create out own personalized 'radio station' without commercials.
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
Why should I bother with satellite radio anyway? I can just subscribe to a few podcasts, maybe download a few extra tracks from the artists' sites once in a while and I have plenty of music to keep me busy, given how much I use my iPod. Plus I get that warm fuzzy feeling of being RIAA-free.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
If you consider that any song that is ripped from original media instead of being downloaded from the iTunes store is a potential loss of revenue for Apple, then you can see how Steve would be against the idea.
With Apple at the forefront of online music stores, it makes sense that we support them by buying our portable music at iTunes rather than listening to radio (whether free or otherwise). Not only can we, the listeners, decide what we want to hear at any given time, it benefits Apple in a way that mere words cannot.
Steve Jobs has again seen the correct path. While it may hurt Sirius XM in the short term, in the long term I think it will be a boon to everyone to have a strong Apple Computer company.
M$ buys an anti-virus firm and decides NOT to integrate AV technology into Longhorn.
Now that would be news.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Somehow I get the feeling that Steve would have been more positive about this if XM had been knocking on his door and not Sirius. The biggest problem with Sirius is that is has a terrible signal -- on my last two vacations we rented cars with Sirius systems, and were regularly frustrated by not getting a signal when driving in forests, under light cloud cover, fog around the San Francisco bay, or clear skys in Napa Valley. XM radio on the other hand, has an excellent signal - I have used it inside of brick buildings with no trouble.
The only thing Sirius has going for it is Howard Stern, who won't be on for a few years yet. They had better launch a decent satellite first, or all he'll talk about for the length of his contract is how much Sirius sucks.
Is Steve gonna sue Sirius now? ;) (Hint: What happened to the last person who revealed Apple's short-term plans? OK, so this is more of a lack of one specific plan, but...)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
iSatellite
Steve is not that serious about sirius.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
Make my iPod like TiVo... There's a radio show I like in L.A. called Morning Comes Eclectic on KCRW. I'd pay a small fee to every morning sync my iPod on the way out the door to download the entire program from the morning and have it last for say, five days before expiring. People can get commercial free the radio programs they want directly in the genre they wish without fiddling.
Apple would do well to look at PodCasting and figure out how to bring large name radio broadcasts such as this (or say NPR's This American Life) to the iPod.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
As a Sirius subscriber, what I REALLY want is a Sirius unit for my car that also plays MP3s. Think satellite radio unit with built-in iPod, not the other way around. That way, when there's nothing good on (which happens from time to time) or I want to listen to something specific, I could have thousands (or at least hundreds) of MP3s at my disposal. Of course, I'd also like a receiver that's much closer in size to the iPod, and isn't hot enough to fry an egg. Sirius, are you listening?
Perhaps Steve's just seen what some people ran into with the MyFi.
Right before I graduated from college, I was working at a large consumer electronics store to pay the bills. As frequently happened, we were given the opportunity to purchase XM equipment directly from a manufacturer at ludicrously low prices. This sort of thing is common in certain sections of electronics retailers; car audio and home audio traditionally have a huge markup, and manufacturers offer direct purchase plans that end up being better than the normal employee discount, all in the hope that an employee will fall in love with the product and recommend it to customers.
This time, we were offered the XM MyFi for 6 months of service. That was it. We paid shipping on the player and prepaid six months of service. That meant $60 for a player that was retailing in the mid to high- $300s. Several guys jumped on it.
AND HATED THEM.
These things were wretched. I'm not sure if we got a crappy batch (although some personal online reviews at the time were similar to our experiences), but these things couldn't hold onto a signal if the fate of the earth depended on it.
One guy actually walked outside with his MyFi while it was hooked to a small set of portable speakers for purpose of demonstrating the new utter crappiness to the rest of us. He held it out from his body. The unit played fine. He held a small stack of about 15 papers above it. The signal died completely.
Most of us simply sold them on eBay. The profit was reasonable, but given the amount of problems, I was just glad I never purchased one.
Indirectly, it confirms what I'd already seen with my father's car satellite radio system. Terrestrial rebroadcast is great in some areas. In others, pulling into a gas station cuts out audio entirely.
iPods work damned well. The iTunes sync system is great, the interface is nearly as simple as it gets, and unless you have a peculiar niche desire for your player, it does everything most people want. Now imagine the same player randomly cutting out when you walk under trees by the sidewalk, or when you walk into the gym because rebroadcast isn't reaching the area you're in, or when you stick it in your pocket (if it behaves like some of our MyFi's). If and when Sirius or XM can demonstrate a 99% effective coverage system for a player that can't guarantee free view of the sky, then we'll talk.
Until then, Steve, don't pollute an otherwise great player.
There is a very simple explanation for this. Satellite radio is not yes sufficiently fault-free to be put into a mass market portable device yet. This article from the NY Times looks at one of the first such portable devices and explains why it doesn't work. The radios require line-of-sight to the satellite (so you can forget about all the subway commuters, the primary city iPod audience), and need a good antenna to get a really clear signal. There's also too much "geek factor" involved in all the various attachments necessary to get it to work properly in different conditions (a separate antenna for each type of listening location).
Apple is not interested in the iPod becoming (just) a geek toy. Most users, I suspect, would want satellite radio to work normally if they are underground, lying around in their apartment, or walking through the streets -- just like their iPods do now. Until Apple can figure out a way to get the technology to work as simply as most people expect, they'd rather not add it to a mass-product device.
I suspect Apple will eventually be the first company to offer a really usable satellite radio device though. Jobs likes to say no until the technology is ready.
This is just a conjecture on my part, but it seems that one of Jobs' insights, or pecadilloes, or whatevers about selling is that he thinks people hate supscriptions. He could have made iTMS a subscription service, but didn't, and he prospered. He shows little interest in Sirius because you only really rent Sirius or XM, and perhaps he takes a given that this makes people think twice before buying -- subscriptions are the anathema of gee-whiz, they reek of responsibility and if you are being sold a subscription, you're going to put a lot more thought into it before you do it. It also perhaps worth remarking, if only in passing, that the most successful internet/IT ventures of the last decade have been either free to the consumer (Yahoo, Google) or paid on instance of use (eBay, Amazon).
Contrast this with everyone's M$ conspiracy theory, where .NET is a big trap to suck everyone into paying monthly to use Word. I don't think this would work; imagine all those home users seeing "MICROSOFT.COM THANKS YOU-0231" on their Amex statement every month, and then wondering if there was another way. Even if monthly subscriptions are cheaper than buying a new package every 5 years, the psychological impact of paying monthly for something that only seems to get more features every year or two would insurmountable (and, after all, how many features could they possibly add to Word to justify the constant payment, the days the net is slow, etc.)
So, I guess I agree with Jobs on this, and I have doubts about subscriptions for pure information services.
Although, I do have .mac.... Hmm. I'm a hippocrite.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but I think it is definatly too early. It will be a while before we see such a thing. I don't see how it could happen right now. Just doesn't seem to make sense.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
2.) the size of the unit would be really big to accomidate the extra electronics and most importantly the much larger battery.
I'm sure Jobs knows, like we all do, that eventually the ipod will have to go there. But for now he can reap the design benefits of the smaller battery and the revenue stream of itunes for a year or two until miniturization runs its course.
Steve Jobs did do real work with the iPod and iTunes--he didn't just say "do it" and it got done right.
People make more money with copyright than sales? How does that happen? The ONLY thing that makes iTunes and the iPod monetarily successful is sales.
No cynic like an anonymous cynic, but here goes.
1) My gym has TVs in front of treadmills with FM broadcast of the audio portion. I'd like to run while I watch. Also, listening to NPR while I walk across campus wouldn't be bad from time to time.
2) While I don't need or use it, using mp3 players as audio recorders for lectures, concerts, note taking is an extremely popular feature.
And, yeah, the kids like their clear channel crap and recording the same from radio and friend's CDs. And while these uses may be too pedestrian for you, it doesn't mean there aren't better ones, and that all of them would sell more ipods and bring them in line with what a personal media device ought to do.
I don't want an iBrick; I just want a freaking MP3 player. Jesus, will companies get over this "everything in one" idea? If I want a satellite radio, I will buy one.
No, I think you're wrong.
Stern's primary market is blue collar workers, not the young "hip" generation. The hip generation is just that, the hip generation. They won't have any hips left soon you see, because they shake them too much to that hip hop music. This is much like what happened with Elvis and his fans.
People wonder why there is so much hip replacement surgery going on these days. Personally, I'm considering starting SternWalkers and SternWheelchairs, since we all know that Howard Stern is the hip hop king of the hip generation.
Apple doesn't include it because, as you note, it's not a compelling feature for everybody - the rest of us don't have to pay the $5-$10 it would cost, or worse, have to carry around larger iPods.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Everyone loves to second guess Steve Jobs, but based on how Apple has turned around since his return, I'd say he knows what the hell he's doing.
Here's another example: Ever since he killed the Newton, a small, vocal group of people have been screaming for an Apple PDA. Jobs refuses to make one. Said small, vocal group of people say he's crazy for ignoring such a huge market, and then look what happens: PDA sales have been falling for the last three years.
~Philly
Steve isn't stupid. He knows something the rest of us don't. For example, he may be angling for a better deal from Sirius or XM. Or he may just be a realist who gets that the iPod would have to become the iBrick to accommodate the battery life needed to mix in radio.
This is why people who don't understand technology shouldn't speculate about it. Increased battery drain from an XM/Sirius tuner? A tuner would be 100% solid state, as opposed to the hard drive that currently has to be spun up to read MP3s. And what, exactly, would they need to add?
LO - Check
DSP - Check
Audio Amplifier - Check
User Interface - Check
Most of the main parts of a receiver are already existant in the current iPod. All they really need to add is a low noise RF amp, program the digital decoding method, and slap an antenna on that sucker. It takes a minimal amount of power to drive most of the circuitry -- the biggest power drain is the audio amp. If anything, the satellite radio enabled iPod would get better battery life when used as a reciever.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
But there's no reason Apple couldn't make money off of both hardware and a music service. If I were Steve Jobs, I'd be downlplaying the long-term profitability of the iTMS every chance I could get, for the sole purpose of scaring competitors away. Look at Real, for example. With no hardware to sell, they're still trying to compete with the iTMS, and so far with limited success.
If Apple can outlast competitors in the online music store arena, it could start making a healthy profit at it. From there, migration into an online video download service seems like a natural progression (when the labels and consumers are ready for it).
Apple seems to be moving into the place Sony would like to be - the nexus of the consumer digital lifestyle. If that's the case, the old, "Repeat after me: Apple is a hardware company" mantra may not hold up for long.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Satellite Radio is much like a TiVo. Those who don't have it, don't really miss it. Those that do, can't imagine life without it.
A year ago, my wife bought me a TiVo for my birthday and I got her a Sirius Sattelite radio. It seemed like a good deal at the time, I rarely listened to the radio and she didn't watch much T.V. A year later, she spends all of her time watching TiVo and I spend all my time listening to sattelite radio.
Since getting sattelite radio, I have pretty much stopped downloading mp3's (don't need them, too much good music on Sirius). A couple of months ago, I bought my first CD in THIRTEEN YEARS. I'm not joking, the last album I paid money for music before this past December was Tesla's Edison's Medicine in 1991.
Sure, you can download several hundred songs for your iPod and create your own commercial free radio, but describing Sattelite Radio as commercial free is like describing Open Source software a software you don't have to pay for. Commercial free is just scratching the surface.
Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
The point of satellite radio is not it's quality. At least, that's what I've been led to believe. The point of sat radio is that the spectrum is so broad that they can carry many more different channels than are commercially viable in the AM/FM market. One of the biggest pushes of sat radio is the variety of choices now available; you only have to listen to Clear Channel crap if you want to, whereas AM/FM it's harder to find a station that's not CC.
That said, I don't have sat. radio either. But if I were more interested in music I would; it's becoming the refuge of "not mainstream" music genres.
--
$tar -xvf
i'd buy a $10 radio, not drop hundreds on an iPod.
I certainly wouldn't spend hundreds on a radio, so i could listen to someone elses playlist on someone elses timetable.
I mean really, a large collection of MP3 music and other audio content (with new content discoverable and downloadable via P2P, Mp3 streaming stations, podcast feeds etc.) has completely removed any reason i might have to listen to the radio.
If Sirius or XM makes up the bulk of the content you listen to, you don't need an iPod - just a compact Sirius/XM receiver - i'm sure its illegal to actually record Sirius/XM content, so theres a very limited amount of value a hard-drive based receiver brings to the table.
Why don't they just make an addon like the iTrip?
I mean - if the capability to play Sirius/XM on the iPod is a feature lots of people are wanting, it should sell like hotcakes, right?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I was confronted with this EXACT same situation in my head this Christmas. My folks went out on a limb and, between the iPod and the MyFi, got me the MyFi. Oh, god, how I wish I could download songs onto it... I wished for an iPod after seeing the sparse techno music collection on the XM techno stations (massive amounts of repeated songs), and the mesh of the two would have sold me like no other. Heck, that'd be #1 on my wish list hands down, before car repairs or anything. Why? Because my MyFi has in-car capabilities, and listening to the radio, my recorded songs from the radio, and my own downloaded songs would have been... Well, *DROOL*......
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Why don't you stop thinking locally and think globally? The reason why Apple is doing so well is precisely because they are thinking globally. Consider that there is no "Japanese" version or "Chinese" version of OS X but rather OS X supports strong localization support.
Even if I was living in the US, why would I care about satellite radio when I don't even listen to regular radio?
Leave it to companies like MSFT and their partners to create different products for different markets.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Have you ever had a close look at one of the satellite units? I have. First, they have rather beefy power adaptors, and second, they get really warm under use. Granted, part of the reason is for the backlight, etc, but the main reason is that they have a fairly powerful chip in there to decode the signal, and this chip sucks up a bit of power. I'm pretty sure that the portable satellite unit others have linked to that supposedly gets a mere 5 hours of battery life probably has a considerably larger battery than the iPod.
The quality is very good in my opinion. I have Sirius through Dish tv and I'd have to say, I don't know what I ever did without it. It is so much better than "regular" radio, cannot even compare. No matter what mood I'm in, there is a station for me, and never do I have to worry about some inane commercials (outside of cross promotional bits concerning what's available on other stations which I don't mind). And another plus, it isn't censored. No bleeps/cut-outs in any of the songs. I get to hear the music as the artist intended, not "radio'ed" down. Also, another thing I like, is the "live/shared" feel, that spark that makes radio different than listening to an album... I'm not sure others agree, but something about hearing the dj talk about the music and whatnot between songs just adds to the experience you can't get from an album or a bunch of downloaded songs. I can get that from satellite radio without all the crap of regular radio. Now the only time I switch the station is to find a different type of music, not music period.
I remember when people said the exact same thing about a little something called "cable TV".
No... it will cost you $10,000 to put music on your iPod. I saw that on a TV commercial. TV doesn't lie.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Actually, I want Apple to offer the following on future iPods:
1. A user-replaceable battery. After all, if digital still camera manufacturers can offer user-replaceable NiMH and Li-Ion batteries....
2. A built-in tuner for local FM and AM stations. There are people out there that want to listen to local radio stations on long walks (like me every morning!) in addition to listening to music.
So, an AC who claims to have worked for an Apple competitor can prove that Apple has lied on its statements to investors and the SEC?
Sure, I believe you.
The margin Apple makes on its songs is not merely the selling price minus the price paid to the record companies. When doing that kind of accounting, you have to take bandwidth, advertising, credit card processing fees, and paying the employees. That's basic accounting.
You can't say "Well, the licensing fee was $.50, and we're charging $99, so we've got a $.49 profit. Even though you're paying $.47 in overhead costs.
Put that in an annual report, at the SEC will rip you a new one. It's not a lie, it's Business and Accounting 101.