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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.
I wonder if this would suck up more battery... That seems to be one of the factors many people look at when buying these mp3 players.
Satellite antennas in my pocket scare me. I don't care how safe "they" say they are, I'd just rather not take my chances. And besides, I prefer XM to Sirius.
As a subscriber to Sirius sat. radio AND an owner of Apple machines, I like the idea of being able to hear my favorite sat. radio stations on my iPod. Hopefully, the route they take will finally make that an affordable reality.
Gee, I don't think I've ever seen that incredibly hilarious pun anywhere else...
How much would this change the format of the iPod? As far as I remember (which isn't much I must admit) satellite radios must require some sort of antenna to pick up the signal. Would a relatively bulky add-in be required to pick up the signal?
Evidently Sirius will be teaming up with Mr. Adam Curry who helped to make podcasting famous (and could arguably be the "inventor" of podcasting).
This kind of a system may benefit both Sirius and Apple. Rather than trying to make some sort of Apple/Sirius bastard child, perform an Audible like system: subscribers to Sirius could get satellite shows and download them as podcasts as well automatically through iTunes, or do a "Sirius Lite" with delayed Podcast versions of shows available for a monthly fee (again, like Audible).
Apple sells more iPods (especially if they do it as an exclusive), Sirius would get more subscribers (heck, I've no interest in a satellite radio system, but I'd pay a small monthly service fee for good radio/music shows I could auto-sync to my iPod - key word "good"), and consumers - eh, I'll let individuals decide if its good for them or not.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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.
From TFA:
said the company has "had discussions with everyone," including makers of cell phones, digital music players and other devices.
It wasn't just Apple, its just a generalized thing
Steve Jobs: Nope.
Sirrus: I'll be your friend!
Steve Jobs: Nope.
Sirrus: If you don't put us in the iPod, I'll sign an exclusive deal with RealPlayer!
(pause)
Sirrus & Steve Jobs: AHAHAHAHH!
Sirrus: That's a good one. But seriously, how about putting us in the iPod?
Steve Jobs: Nope.
-Crow T. Trollbot
Equals battery time of about three minutes. Now we know that Apple would not sell such a device, so that must mean that they have developed a nuke-battery pack that can last a couple of hours.
This advancement in batteries is the breakthrough the planet earth has been waiting for. I hope Steve gets a Nobel for it.
What's also amazing is how Apple has been able to keep it under wraps and out of the blogs for so long.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I was going to post an insightful reply dispelling your unfounded fears.
I was going to post a funny reply making fun of your unfounded fears.
But, honestly, I'm so taken aback I don't even know where to begin.
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
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.
The CRTC has not approved services like Sirius and XM in Canada yet, but expect to have either or both here soon. It's basically high quality digital, (largely) commercial-free, subscription-based radio programming.
I don't know that there's any technical reason why you couldn't receive satellite radio in Canada, but neither company will sell it to you. Likewise, if you're an American passing through Canada there's no reason why your satellite radio wouldn't work. I guess that reception in Europe and elsewhere would depend on how they have their satellites positioned and what kind of orbits they are in.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
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 . .
Aside from having to strap an antenna on your head to use this (you'll know what I mean if you've ever used any portable satellite radio), the awful and somewhat embarrassing sound quality will be VERY noticeable when it's played right beside actual CD quality audio. It's gotten so bad with both Sirius and XM that normal non-nerds are complaining about it.
Most of the time you ignore it...but going from a track ripped in Apple lossless format to satellite radio will be like jumping back 10 years in technology.
I guess we could begin by pointing out that there are two kinds of "satellite antennas" -- those that receive signals from satellites, and those that transmit signals to them -- and asking him to guess which would most likely be found in this device, and then to speculate as to how much radiation each kind emits.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Attaching a sattelite radio devie is going to mean at the very least a $50 price bump. The iPods price is already ridiculous enough.
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
I hope they agree on something soon and get the technology to us.
..is that you *don't talk about talking with Steve Jobs* seriously.. it pisses him off.
Even though I like Howard, I personally am going to be getting XM. Why? Because I think the company is better - I do not want to invest in a company that I think is going to tank.
What, huh ? This move will increase their subscriber base, going with Apple is plus-plus-good. And having Howard Stern will only make it that much more attractive..
Do you work for XM ?
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!
SIRIUS has been winning a lot of battles on fronts other than Howard Stern.
You do know that iTunes can batch-convert WMAs into MP3 or AAC, right? And that AAC, a *standard* audio format, sounds a lot better than WMA? As for the size difference of the Gmini veresus the iPod, smaller player almost always means smaller display, or smaller controls, or smaller battery, or all of these things. Really now, consider an iPod. The seamless music management and better interface alone make it worth it.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
You people laugh and make jokes but Stern is a HUGE market, I know of 8 people who are buring Sirius when Stern moves over, they are waiting but they are gonna buy one. If only 5% of his listeners move that will put Sirius in the #1 spot and crush XM.
I think people will spend $12.95 a month for Stern, plus all the other channels I know I am going to. Not to mention that Clear Channel owns a percentage of XM so even if Howard wasn't on Sirius I wouldn't buy XM because of that connection.
~S
And while they have all of this content, they only got it by dramatically overpaying for it. XM has, to their credit, refused to play that game. Meanwhile, Sirius has been ignoring certain less sexy aspects that drives growth in this medium.
Sirius is losing the car partnership race. Folks that buy new cars have something like a 30-50% conversion rate for whatever ships in the cars. That is becoming, increasingly, XM. Their new deal with Hyundai is going to probably bring in more subscribers than Stern ever would, but it didn't cost half a billion.
Sirius is also seen as losing the hardware race. They don't have the resources to make desirable hardware. XM isn't doing the best here, either, but they're doing better than Sirius.
Lastly, Sirius cannot afford to launch another sat, and they need to. They're going to burn a lot of money keeping a repeater network going. XM has the resources to continue lofting birds, and saving money from having less of a ground presence - and eventually, having the sat bandwidth to offer new services.
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 - and I think that's a bet that they're going to lose.
Sirius will be calling for a secondary stock offering soon. I'm sure that Stern is going to be just thrilled when his huge deal suddenly is worth a whole lot less. That will be the beginning-of-the-end event for Sirius.
jh
XM will get as many as 1 million subcribers every year from their deal with Hyundai - which didn't cost half a billion dollars.
XM currently has 2 million more subs than Sirius. There is simply no way that Sirius is going to catch up, Stern or not.
Sirius paid a lot of money for potential Stern subcribers - at least a couple of hundred bucks each. It is extremely unlikely that Sirius will actually make money on this deal any time soon.
Sirius is betting the farm on some risky deals, while XM has had strong and steady growth - and will absolutely turn a profit years before Sirius does.
"I would not want to pay extra for a feature on an iPod if it is useless when I travel to europe."
Or Asia. Hmm, that's two of the three main markets for iPods where this feature won't do any good.
This makes me think that a SiriusPod would be some sort of add-on to the existing iPod model (something to plug into the top, like an iTrip/iTalk). It makes little sense to fracture the model line by creating North American iPods and "other" iPods.
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.
Sirius is losing the car partnership race. Folks that buy new cars have something like a 30-50% conversion rate for whatever ships in the cars. That is becoming, increasingly, XM. Their new deal with Hyundai is going to probably bring in more subscribers than Stern ever would, but it didn't cost half a billion.
e etwood Enterprises
Land Roverr y
...and Toyota- though not listed on their web site
from the Sirius website:
Aston Martin
BMW
Chrysler
DaimlerChrysler
Dodge
Fl
Ford
Hertz
Infiniti
Jaguar
Jeep
Lincoln
MINI
Mazda
Mercedes-Benz
Mercu
Monaco Coach Corporation
Nissan
Volvo
from xm's web site:
General Motors Corporation
American Honda Motor Co., Inc.
Toyota
Audi
Nissan North America
yes, they both have toyota and nissan. Doesn't really look like Sirius is losing the car partnership race. And how is Sirius losing the hardware race? don't feel like researching that one right now but i didn't see your proof for that either.