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Sirius in Negotiations With Apple
An anonymous reader writes "Sirius Satellite Radio Chief Executive Mel Karmazin announced that his company is in talks with Apple about bringing satellite radio to the iPod. Karmazin met with Steve Jobs Monday and he says the technology is the easy part. The hard part is negotiating just how they will split the profit from equipment and monthly subscriptions." We've covered this before, but now it seems they are getting "more Sirius," or something.
I know he's just trying to make sirius look more viable since they seem to be losing out to XM, but shouldn't he consider Apple's general attitude towards not announcing stuff ahead of time and keep his mouth shut.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Would it really be that hard to add a radio? And I don't want satellite radio. Sorry, Steve.
Ah well. If an iPod had radio, I might tempted to get one, and I've sworn a holy oath never to give Apple any of my money because of their business practices. :D
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Since Sirrus has lots of Satallite Radio channels. Maybe Apple can sell Podcasts of Sirrus radio channels to iTunes 4.9 users.
Not quite satallite radio, but a neat way of delievering quality content to iPods.
This way people could copy yesterday's episode of Howard Stern to their iPod, and listen to it inside an underground bunker with no outside communication.
Sirius signed a contract with Stern, who will be producing quite a few shows. The big question is will his listenership follow? If a large enough percentage of them do, Sirius stands poised to take the lead in the satellite market share race. Maybe a monster one.
Hooking up iPods with Sirius would be quite interesting . . . maybe an XM killer.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Attaching a sattelite radio devie is going to mean at the very least a $50 price bump. The iPods price is already ridiculous enough.
"Sirius fishing for anyone willing to partner with them to sell more stuff."
Nothing to see here. Move along.
-EvilMagnus
It's not about adding features. If it were all about feature count, Netscape would be the best browser ever.
The iPod serves a simple purpose. It does it well, it is not ugly while doing it, and it is easy to use. Please do not suggest that FM radio would not further complicate the device, because it certainly would.
Besides, why would you want to listen to the utter crap which is today's ClearChannel dominated FM radio landscape? Do you not have enough advertisements and reptition in your life?
Yes. Darn them for trying to make money. Darn them for an excellent service record marred mostly by the intense expectations of their users (call Dell and complain that "your fans are too loud" and expect to be taken seriously. I dare you)! Darn them for being so... so... successful! Here at Slashdot, we don't take kindly to success.But you know what? keep your iPod money. I'm pretty sure Apple can cope with the loss.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
or you tuned in at just the wrong time.
I love this Microsoft-centric way of thinking. With XP, you only have to reboot once every 7 days and reinstall once every 9 months! The sound quality should be CD quality (since that's what they advertise) ALL the time.
Regardless, my point is that it's absolutely obvious of the quality difference when played directly after actual CD quality sound.
Wow, I have to say that's actually pretty good, and makes a hell of a lot more sense than trying to cram a satellite receiver inside of an iPod. I find myself in too many satellite unfriendly locations to even consider something like Sirius or XM, but I too would consider a subscription for quality time-shifted radio.
but I'd much rather see FM radio first.
You would? Have you listened to FM radio lately? Morning radio on FM is a cesspool of rancid ass-shit, later in the afternoon it's commercial after commercial with an occasional song thrown in to tease the listener.. when evening comes, it's the same crap britney speers/back street boys songs played over and over.
With the possible exception of NPR.
Satellite stations are discrete, named, require no tuning (the channel is there or it isn't), do not change based on locale.
FM radio stations not, not, not any of these things. You could represent Sat. stations as playlists trivially, and they would conform to the user's expectations. You cannot do the same with FM if you travel more than a few miles in any given direction.
FM radio is an inherently crufty user experience. XM is not. Think about it.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Uh, you know that the radiation is hitting you whether you're carrying an antenna or not, right?
Don't worry. Your tinfoil sombrero will protect you.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Content really is king though. Why would anyone pay for satellite radio if it doesn't have content they want to hear? If all they want is something to listen to, free radio handles that need perfectly right now. The only reason someone would pay to listen is if it is something they cannot listen to elsewhere.
IMHO, Sirius and XM will end up merging at some point anyway. Either one will lose and the other will gobble up it's customer base and assets or they will do some sort of mutual beneficial merge.
The fact is that Sirius is acting a lot like a dot.com company. They're betting that they get a lot more subscribers before they burn through the cash...
A dotcom like amazon.com, you mean?
The cake is a pie
You do realize that if you convert a lossy format (WMA) into another lossy format (AAC), it's going to sound worse regardless of whether the one is better than the other, right?
The cake is a pie
Additionally, Doug Stanhope has also signed on with Sirius. . . he's appeared on Stern numerous times and there has already been communication between the two about working together creatively.
Interesting, Doug Stanhope doing a similar thing that Jim Norton has been doing on Opie & Anthony for years now. Looking forward to hearing if he brings anything to the table.
3 million new subscribers to Stern isn't unlikely. . . we're talking about a syndicated talk radio host who pioneered the format and has a rabid following.
True but we'll have to see when Stern moves over. He could possibly bring in 3 million. But many people listen to Stern because all you need is a FM radio. When you pay $12/month for a service that you once got for free you expect much more. We'll see if he's up for the task or if he does the same show he does now.
he's still a guy who gets a ton of listeners and does wield a significant amount of influence.
Agreed that he does have a ton of listeners, and does have a large influence.
Stern's numbers not being so hot - that has a lot to do with the FCC's chilling effect on all radio broadcasting
I definitely don't agree about the FCC. I think it's an excuse and cop out by Stern. Instead of putting on an entertaining show he complains about the FCC. Look at Seinfeld (the TV show) and Brian Regan they prove that you can be very entertaining w/o being dirty.