Slashdot Mirror
Internet Killed the Satellite Radio Star
theodp writes "As Sirius XM faces bankruptcy, Slate's Farhad Manjoo reports that the company has bigger problems than just the end of cheap credit. While it has what seems like a pretty great service — the world's best radio programming for just a small monthly fee — Sirius XM has been eclipsed by something far cheaper and more convenient: the Internet. Load up Pandora or the Public Radio Tuner on your iPhone, and you've got access to a wider stream of music than you'll ever get through satellite. So forget the satellites, the special radios, and the huge customer acquisition costs, advises Manjoo, and instead focus on getting Howard Stern, Oprah, the NFL, and MLB on every Internet-connected device on the market at very low prices."
Yawn, who would have guessed?
It was centralized anyway. However, what we need is a mesh network, because otherwise we will lose net neutrality and then you'll be back to having to listen to clearchannel because no other kind of internet radio will work on your mobile internet connection any more. WE MUST DECENTRALIZE.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can run flycast.fm on my office pc instead of my xm radio and they have also released a blackberry and iphone client.
The blackberry client works well so long as I'm not moving. If I am signal fluctuates and the music drops out.
Vermifax
Logout
Bankrupcy? Yawn. If the company collapses and goes out of business it will mean a short outage. There is just too much hardware out there for it to die... SOMEONE will pick up the pieces at fire sale prices and yeah, quality will probably go down, but satellite radio is installed in too many cars to completely die out. Howard Stern will go away, but hundreds of channels of ad-free music will survive. (although I've noticed the DJs still talk over the beginning of the songs...just like real "free" AM/FM radio)
What percentage of radio listeners even have an iPhone, or any portable device capable of radio reception at non-extortionate rates? Too small to even matter.
Satellite radio has its own problems but the iPhone isn't one of them.
I cant see streaming via cell phone as practical....people have to pay for data plans, people take their phone with them when they leave the car. If i take my phone (assuming im paying lots of money for an iphone (i wouldnt i have a blackberry bold) and i have a 1 gig limit on it per month.)..i dont think ill be wasting it streaming audio....i leave the car to go shopping and my wife is in the car still, what will she listen to...no thanks, stupid idea....
Only place I use satellite radio...
The most important part of satellite radio is *mobile* access. Automobile. Essentially the same market that AM/FM stations have.
Let's look at what he's saying one by one:
1) The bulk of the article compares the iPod with Satellite Radio and says they're competing for the same market. Hmmm. Maybe so, but how many people have iPod docks in their car?
2) The idea that satellite radio is somehow a big market when streamed over the internet. Then he compares it to the huge number of free, high-quality internet streams and declares that Satellite Radio is too expensive. It doesn't even make any sense.
3) He chooses to dismiss the payments by satellite radio to car makers. He says if they got rid of that then they could charge less for the internet streams. Seriously man, I think he's retarded.
Let's be real. The *primary market* for Satellite Radio is automobile access. You turn on the music and as you drive all around the country, you get the same music/talk/news whatever. And what's more, it's a great application, too. Everybody who gets satellite radio, if they enjoy it, never listens to AM/FM again in their car.
If Satellite Radio was all set to rely on the Internet for it's delivery mechanism, then the whole reason for Satellite Radio disappears. Satellite Radio isn't about content it's about a delivery mechanism for content that doesn't require any infrastructure beyond the satellites themselves. The problem isn't that it competes with an iPod (doubtful) or that it doesn't come over the internet (goofy), its that the infrastructure set up by Sirius/XM is too costly. These guys took a bet on an adoption rate that hasn't happened.
This article is so dumb that it reminds me of a letter to the editor (true story) about 35 years ago. We were going through an energy crisis and the local paper wrote an editorial that said we need to begin seriously moving to solar. A few days later, a woman wrote in that it seemed like a poor idea because if we used solar power, we'd simply use up the sun quicker and then it would be really dark.
It demonstrated that the person writing the letter was clueless about what solar power was or how it even worked. Farhad Manjoo makes the same mistake. He has no idea what Satellite radio is, and why people want it. So he
I had satellite radio, but ended up ditching it along with a few other things. We decided that we were being economically bled to death my numerous little services, none of which were too bad individually but collectivity they ate up our budget.
- Sirius
- DishNetwork
- Land-line telephone
- Internet service
- MMO fees
- Cell phone
- GameTap
- FilePlanet
The list goes on. Eventually we were able to eliminate, consolidate, or reduce many of these fees. We safe a lot of money each month now. I now try and avoid anything that has a recurring monthly service, at least not unless it replaces something else. Business should realize that, in these tough economic times, people are going to take a hard look at where there money is going. Month payments don't have an end in sight, there's no payoff.
Thanks,
Bruce
Sattellite radio is wonderful in the car. Oh well.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Not to me. Radio should continue to be free.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Even though the internet is a much cheaper way of getting access to these wonderful radio stations, is the internet going to pay the overhead cost of obtaining people such as Howard Stern, Oprah, the NFL, and MLB? I mean, XM pays Howard Stern to have him air his shows on XM, i'm not sure how Oprah, the NFL and MLB do it, i would imagine it have to be basically the same concept. But who knows, i could probably be completely wrong in this case (wouldn't be the first time). Anyone else know?
There are many new radios that now have usb and or card ports built in, let alone inputs for your ipods. With either I can listen to what I want when I want.
Passionately Indifferent
Yes, I have an iPhone, and yes I run pandora on it. It works great, and I enjoy it at home and in the car.
But that wasn't why I dropped Sirius.
I had two radios, and the high-quality internet subscription. After the merger, some of my favorite stations either went away, or the playlists got cut down to 20 songs.
I called and complained, but I was greeted with "sorry about that, how would you like two months free service?" Why would I want two more months of a service that sucks?
The last straw was the sound quality problems. Octane 20 sounded like it was underwater. I guess Sirius cut back on the bandwidth reserved for some channels to make room for some of the XM offerings.
In the end, it was bad music content, and terrible sound quality that killed it for me.
I do miss Howard, but I hope that he'll go online once Sirius XM goes tits up.
-ted
I never had any interest in satellite radio and not because I am adverse to paying for music.
1) The radios were too large/comples
2) The reception indoors was spotty
3) Having to sign contacts and such was an immediate turnoff. Reminds me of the crap with cell phones.
4) Having to pay for EACH radio didn't help matters
And regular radio? Ug.
1) The advertising is so extremely annoying- as if designed for 3-year-olds
2) Screaming advertising or major volume jumps
3) Same ads over and over and over and over and over
4) Poor sound quality
5) Idiotic DJ's
6) Poor music selection. I mean, we must have 30 radio stations, and 3 types of music, none of which I like.
I stopped listening to all radio eons ago. I just have mp3 everywhere. Granted, even with many hundreds of CD's, it still gets old after years.
And the true irony? The Neilson Radio Ratings packet just arrived in my mailbox yesterday. This is the third time. I keep telling them I don't listen to *any* radio, and they keep saying "oh, well that is valuable information, please fill out the forms with blanks".
the point is that the next generation of "normal people" phones (the generic ones that people with little money get) will be of the iPhone caliber
Even people who pay something ridiculously low like $90 per year to Virgin Mobile for a phone that they use mostly to arrange a ride home? AT&T quoted me a price eight times that for the kind of smartphone service plan you're describing.
If I have to carry a cell phone anyway, it is damn convenient when it is also a music device that I can integrate into whatever stereo I happen to be near.
The family owns four vehicles, and not one of their car stereos has a line-in jack. What workaround has worked for you?
I got Sirius to try when i bought my new car (which my wife now drives every day - go figure!) but i actually listen to Sirius online.
However, they called me last week and told me that from sometime in March they were going to start charging people EXTRA for the online service! How stupid can you get? Trying to charge people more for Internet radio?
I wonder if the dinosaurs had Sirius/XM's marketing department?
Sirius XM has been eclipsed by something far cheaper and more convenient: the Internet.
Where are you living that adding 15,000 minutes (ca. 8 hours/day) of streaming 64 kbps from the Internet to your monthly mobile phone plan is "far cheaper" than a subscription to satellite radio? Or were you talking about recording at home and then time-shifting to the office or the car, for which satellite radio would still hold a significant lead in convenience?
You should be confined to a small room, without food, until you are no longer alive.
Approximately 25% of Americans own portable standalone MP3 players, 76% of households in the U.S. own a portable electronic device many of which are capable of playing music (such as a PSP, phone, blackberry, etc.), 99% of American households have televisions in them, Americans own more than 1 billion radios with free AM/FM broadcasts to receive, Americans also play tons of video and computer games, Americans go to the movies, and the form of entertainment that Americans prefer most according to most recent studies...reading.
Sirius-XM has to compete with EVERYTHING, not just other forms of audio broadcasts like internet radio or over the air AM/FM radio. Every activity you do other than listen to Sirius-XM is in direct competition with Sirius-XM, the less you find yourself using the service, the less likely you are to renew the service, and that's if you get it in the first place.
If you have a short commute to work, is paying for a monthly radio fee worth it? Probably not if you only listen to a few minutes of radio. And if your commute is long, is satellite radio better than free radio? The talk shows have commercials on both, so unless you really want to listen to a Sirius-XM exclusive broadcaster, the answer is no again. But what about music? Sirius-XM has commercial free (for the most part) music, AM-FM does not. But with CDs and I-PODs (through car speakers) you can play your own music and audio books or whatever commercial free and you control the entire play list.
And once you leave your car, Sirius-XM offers almost nothing that is worth paying a monthly fee for, unless you crave their exclusive talk radio content like Howard Stern. All of the sports game radio broadcasts can be gotten with a superior service (like MLB.TV for professional baseball) or for free over AM-FM. And out of your car you've got the other alternatives, TV, movies, video games, reading, that studies show most Americans prefer over listening to any form of radio whether it's AM-FM or satellite.
Sirius-XM also spent enormous amounts of money securing exclusive contracts with radio businesses and entities. Howard Stern cost Sirius over $500 million ALONE and they gave him over $100 million in stocks that is now worth next to nothing. Factor in the costs of hiring Oprah, Martha Stewart, Jamie Foxx, the NFL, MLB, NASCAR, etc. and you have another major reason why the business is going under. Even more ironic was that Sirius and XM when they were competing against each other spent so money to OUTBID each other for these exclusives and now that they are MERGED TOGETHER they are stuck with each others' MASSIVE DEBT from taking on these insanely burdening contracts and the entire reason that they spent so much money in the first place is not a factor any longer. Sirius spent $500 million to get Howard Stern instead of XM (who offered significantly less according to Stern) but now Sirius-XM is the same company.
Another reason that Sirius-XM is in the tank is because car sales are down. Many car dealerships had deals with either Sirius or XM (and now with the new merged company Sirius-XM) to include a satellite radio with a new car with two or three free months subscription. The idea was that people would get used to having the satellite radio in their vehicle and they would continue to subscribe. But auto sales are down and this model of placing radio units in news cars has gone away for the most part leaving another dead end for Sirius.
With the economy going sour continually, how many extra subscribers does Sirius think it's going to get? Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius, keeps lowering projections of new subscribers every month. And the number of users canceling their subscriptions must also be getting higher considering the economy as well.
Fact is that Sirius has $3.5 billion in debt. If they declare bankruptcy is allows them to void their expensive c
Cut myself off...
"He has no idea what Satellite radio is, and why people want it. So he"
So he imposes his own idea of what the market is (which is quite simply, incorrect) and then has a way to make a satellite service that works in any part of North America and turns it into an urban service that will stream audio to me as long as I'm very near a 3G cellphone service.
Just. Dumb.
It's simpler than that. It's just that, between iTunes and existing radio, that's really all the content you need while you are driving. For local sports and talk you don't need internet radio. There's a few million people that have satellite for Howard Stern, but that's really the extent of it. If you are a right winger, there's some sort of talk radio on the AM band that has the celebrities you want, and for the left wing, there is NPR. For everyone else, you already get your local sports on radio, and if you want music, you can plug in your own itunes collection.
This is my sig.
N. P. R.
Ford Prefect is from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.... he has considerable difficulty understanding why humans tend to continually state the obvious, such as "It's a nice day", or "You're very tall", or "So this is it. We're all going to die", or "expensive subscription services are going to lose massive amounts of business during an economic downturn when cheap and free alternatives with more selection are readily available."
"3G wireless works just fine in the car"
Not really. The appeal of satellite radio on car trips is that even when I can't get cell phone service at all, I can get Satellite radio. If you just drive 10 minutes to work in the suburbs near a city, then perhaps your idea is fine. But the bulk of the U.S. does not get 3G service. Then you'd have to deal with the issue of how you tie your smart phone into the sound system of your car. While this is conceptually easy, from an infrastructure standpoint, you'd have to get all cell-phone makes agree they will support bluetooth streaming of stereo sound, you'd have to get the carriers to agree to allow this to happen, then you'd have to get the automobile manufacturers to tightly integrate this capability into the sound systems. Not to mention the man/machine interface that would support tuning stations inside an automobile without fiddling with a smart phone. These problems will take years to solve.
I don't think smart phone data plans allow the kind of access that would let you stream audio hours a day. Seems to me if significant numbers of people started streaming media on their smart phones everywhere, 3G service capacity just isn't there to support more than a handful of users. You'd end up with higher rates on your smart phones, or they plans would get severely curtailed, or both.
I think what's likely to happen here is that Sirius/XM will declare bankruptcy, and force the banks to restructure the debt. I'd hate to be holding a lot of paper for Sirius/XM right now; you'll be lucky to get 25 cents on the dollar.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
...or even most of it. It won't get good radio in my car on a rural Minnesota highway, or in my airplane - much less getting me weather in my airplane.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
I heard you on my wireless on track fifty-two, lying awake my router tuning in on you, my dsl it didn't stop you coming through.
Oh Oh
They made us pay by enacting douchebag fees, decided by some who don't understand technology, and now the internet is raped as you can see.
Oh Oh
You can't take the sky from me.
I had SiruisXM service and eventually had to cancel it due to the poor sound quality. As they added more channels, they had to increase the compression on the existing channels to make room. After a while the music channels began to have the tinny quality of AM radio. It was intolerable. I've never been able to figure out why more people don't seem to be bothered by the inferior audio quality. When FM radio begins to have a richer, more satisfying audio quality than subscription radio, then the value of satellite radio becomes dubious. This is the reason I canceled, and one of the other reasons I don't see them lasting.
Don't forget the biggest mistake of all: the merger.
Had the merger not occurred, Sirius would be mostly breaking even today. Still operating at a slight loss, but its existence as a going concern would not be in jeopardy. XM, on the other hand, would have gone bankrupt a few months ago, and now be in the hands of new owners. The big debt that's coming due in a few days is *XM* debt. Sirius' original debt wasn't due to cause problems for a few more years.
Mel has destroyed Sirius as a company. He took on XM and its debt load, and achieved nothing besides alienating the customers of both networks for no good reason. The amount of money he saved by consolidating channels was literally pocket change compared to the cost of owning two sets of satellites. I'll give Sirius a pass on Howard for the moment, because he probably WAS worth it to pre-merger Sirius. Remember, before Howard, XM was clearly in #1, and Sirius was the struggling "also-ran". By the end of Year H+1, Sirius was in the lead, and almost making a profit (mostly through creative accounting, but that's still better than XM could do). He wanted XM's bandwidth to launch seatback Barney videos for kids, but ended up gutting the audio quality of both services to add more channels with lower audio fidelity.
The REAL cost savings would have been for Sirius to sell off both of XM's geostationary satellites & broadcast the two data streams formerly handled by them using Sirius' Molniya satellites(*). Rural indoor users would have either needed a proper outdoor antenna with view of the entire sky, or had to move the antenna puck from windowsill to windowsill like Sirius users do, but it would have improved XM's mobile coverage in mountainous areas (where cars were in the shadow of mountains relative to geostationary satellites) and literally saved them hundreds of millions of dollars.
---
(*) Sirius has a constellation of 4 satellites in modified Molniya orbits. Basically, one satellite is a spare, and the other 3 are arranged so that at any given moment, one satellite is (more or less) "straight up" (relative to Iowa), one satellite is near the horizon, and one is on the other side of the earth. XM's constellation consisted of two satellites in conventional geostationary orbits over the equator.
Sirius and XM divided their bands into 3 slices, each of which carried the full bitstream. Two slices were broadcast by satellite, and the third slice was broadcast via terrestrial repeaters. I'd be seriously shocked if Sirius' satellites were physically incapable of broadcasting a slice of XM's band, and vice-versa. For one thing, satellite transmitters tend to be designed with fairly open-ended capabilities ANYWAY (they're so expensive to launch, with so much lead time, that the satellite's owner would be financially suicidal to not launch them with a "Plan B" in case the original user falls through. For another, I'm sure XM and Sirius both entertained the prospect that the other's satellites could be knocked out by space debris, solar flare, or some other malfunction... and faced with the prospect of shutting down or paying the other extortionate fees to carry their signal, would grudgingly pay the fees.
I hope they figure something out, because I for one, do not want to go back to "commercial" radio where you have more commercials than music.
The main reason I have satellite radio is for my car, not my home. Saying that the internet is just as good misses the point.
Sorry to disappoint all you high-brow elitists, but Howard Stern is the ONLY reason I subscribe to Sirius. The music channels suxx0r. NFL broadcasts are nice to have, but only useful for part of the year.
I will go where Howard goes. If he broadcasts on sonar, I'll drop my antenna in the ocean and listen on Sonarus radio.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Are you kidding? I have all-you-can-eat data on my phone plan and it only costs me $15/month for the first phone
What carrier? What location? What voice plan is required along with this data plan? And is it truly all-you-can-eat, or did you miss a "fair usage policy" in the TOS?
You don't need to sign a contract with satellite radio. I've been month to month on XM for a long time.
If you live in some of the more sparsely populated parts of Canada/US you know how quickly cellphones signals disappear when you 'get off the main road'. If you don't live near a major city or town, you may be relying on dial-up internet. That makes programming your music gadget problematic. That's what makes services like this great: You can be anywhere and still get great radio. If I was on the road all the time, or lived out in the country, I would definitely subscribe to this.
Where are you living that adding 15,000 minutes (ca. 8 hours/day) of streaming 64 kbps from the Internet to your monthly mobile phone plan is "far cheaper" than a subscription to satellite radio?
Finland.
But Slashdot is in the United States. What U.S. carriers offer all you can eat data for $12.64 per month without tying it to a voice plan that costs three times that?
"However, what we need is a mesh network, because otherwise we will lose net neutrality and then you'll be back to having to listen to clearchannel because no other kind of internet radio will work on your mobile internet connection any more."
Congratulations. You said the magic phrase, mesh networks. Now here's another magic word, latency. And another, monopoly. See the problem now? Remember it's not really "your" mobile network.
Satellite radio subscriptions are around $15 / month.
Data plans for the iPhone are around $30-40, plus what you are already paying for voice service.
Granted, if you really need the unlimited data plan for your phone, and already have it, then it may make sense. But if you are only an occasional data plan user, then trying to justify it by claiming it replaces sat radio would still leave you needing to justify throwing out another $15-25 per month.
And that is also ignoring the fact that sat radio works pretty well everywhere. Data access on your phone only works were you have reception on your network. Not every community, even in the US, has good coverage for every provider.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That sounds like some rah rah fanboy BS. I can't happily run an iPod in the car, the internet doesn't travel well in the car, my cellphone doesn't have highspeed radio access and if it did I'd still have the same problems I have with the iPod - you can't navigate them in a car traveling down the highway. Sirius/XM is great - convenient access to news, weather, music and sports when I want it. I want Bluegrass music there it is, I want to listen to Jazz, there it is - on my local radio? No chance, it's rap and pop country and Rush Limbaugh railing away like Tokyo Rose. I press one button on my Sirius radio and I have the NFL channel and listen to actual people talking about sports instead of screaming ranting idiots like I'd get on a terrestrial station if I happened to be able to get it at all. My cell phone? I'm lucky when I can check my gmail account on it. The reasons for the financial difficulties of Sirius/XM don't have a thing to do with the intertubes or the whocaresiphone. Get over yourselves fanboys.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
As a huge fan of Sirius I fought with the ever present problem of never being able to listen without a Sirius receiver. When they came out with the Sirius Internet streaming I was ecstatic! I joyfully fired up my Nokia N95 and tried to go to Sirius.com. It does not work. A service I payed $15.00 a month for would not let me listen to the product. So I went through all the trouble of setting up Orb and uSirius and running a transcoding station at my home PC - just to listen on my mobile. But it just wasn't practical. I turned off my Sirius service. Everywhere. The minute those morons can get their act together and stream in a platform independent way I'll be back.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
My sentiments exactly. I get XM/Sirius radio as an add-on to the XM/WX weather service in my plane. I don't much care for the audio - the selection of songs is weak, the sound is extremely compressed, the DJs are tolerable - and it makes me want to punch someone that I still have to listen to adds on many of the stations, even though I'm paying to listen to them. I love that I get to listen to uninterrupted programming while covering 1000 miles, though.
The real reason I subscribe is for the aviation weather package - it isn't cheap, but it's indispensable. I think it will eventually be run out of business by free ADS-B services, but for another 4-5 years at least it'll still be the way to go. I'm not sure what I'll do if the bankruptcy disturbs the weather programming.
I dream of getting internet in the plane - current options I read about run in the $800,000 range.
In the early days the cellular companies dishes out cheap semi-unlimited data plans for the early iPhone adopters. Nowadays the best I could get was $30 for a 1GB/month plan, or $25 for 500Mb. Better than my buddy, he gets all of 5MB for the sample price I pay for a gig!
.. by distribution rights.
I'm from South Africa and I could at least make use of Sirius for great programming. I try Pandora and I get a message telling me that it's not available outside of the USA.
Sirius XM has been eclipsed by something far cheaper and more convenient: the Internet. Load up Pandora or the Public Radio Tuner on your iPhone, and you've got access to a wider stream of music than you'll ever get through satellite.
Please don't reference Pandora like it's available to everyone. It isn't. Thanks US government!
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I have AT&T (iPhone) $30/mo. The AUP is surprisingly fair; IIRC it's no servers and no tethering. Neither is enforced, aside from NAT (for no servers). Tethering works fine anyway. I've been very happy about it; pulled about 5GB so far this month - about normal for me.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I've got an Inno and an MP3 Player. I use my Inno far more often. I like the fact that I hear new music and original programming on my radio. So far, the humans are doing a better job than the algorithms of picking the music I like. I also get the NFL, college football, goofy shows like Coast to Coast AM, and several comedy stations. Most, but not all, of this is available on the internet, but at a seriously reduced convenience. It is unsafe to change radio streaming websites while driving on your phone. It is easy and much safer to hit one of my radio station presets. While the internet may kill Sat Rad, I hope they can make it through their current mess to survive and thrive. Secondly, even if XM Sirius goes away, I suspect that someone would pick up the satellite network and try to make a go of it with subscribers like myself. They are down, but I wouldn't write them off yet, and they certainly are not dead. Proof? I'm listening to my radio right now and it still works.
I had XM radio for several months, and liked it quite a bit. Then Sirius and XM started working on their merge, and XM ditched several channels in favor of Sirius programming. The channels I listened to on XM had real DJs, playing music that I liked about 95% of the time. Afterwards, all the channels I listened to were gone and had been replaced with automated playlist channels playing music I liked about 5% of the time. Whoever was building those playlists had nowhere near the ability to tie together a long stream of songs, it does take some skill and knowledge of the music to be able to make a cohesive playlist. I tried for about a month to like the new format, but I just couldn't get into it and cancelled my subscription. For me, it was Sirius's programming that killed XM.
I am an NPR junky. The problem is that local NPR stations generally don't transmit very far. I recently moved to an area that only gets one station, and its programming is mediocre with news and talk for only part of the day and music all evening and night. So I got an XM radio so that I could listen to NPR. XM provides 24/7 BBC world service, world radio network, and 3 public radio channels. And I can get it reliably at home and on the road no matter where I am in the country. No other broadcast radio or internet phone service can match that. So for me satellite radio is definitely worth it.
I think that Sirius/XM just priced themselves out of their own market. Satellite radio is $13/month. While not as good for dedicated radio listening, a cell phone data plan is $30/month and provides a hell of a lot more functionality in general. I maintain that all of their problems would be solved if they charged $5/month and put gags on their stupid DJs.
Indeed. I'd love to get Internet in my airplane, but whatever comes along to provide that service will be big, heavy, bulky, and very, very expensive for the first several years.
I don't expect ADS-B datalink weather to be practical for the small airplane owner with nationwide coverage for at least another decade.
I consider the XM weather essential for long-distance cross-country flights (more than one 300 nm leg), to the point I'd have to seriously reconsider a trip if it broke. Being able to have current weather along my route of flight quickly available and presented graphically, without having to get someone to read it to me, is a major enhancement to aviation safety.
I'm not that fond of the changes they made to XM 46 and XM 49 after the merger, but it's still mainly something to listen to in between ATC transmissions anyway, so I'm not going to argue that loudly. My favorite channel for a long car trip, Old Time Radio (XM 164/Sirius 118 after the merger), isn't practical for listening in the airplane, since ATC overrides the program audio, and they talk too much. :-)
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Contracts? What Contracts? I never signed anything with Sirius.
Support the source, Open Source! An entire site developed with OSS
People out in the sticks don't have gadgets? Are you for real? It's exactly the same on a per capita basis near as I have ever seen. Probably much higher once you get into tools and mechanical things, but for electronics, about the same. We don't have as good broadband plans, that's about it for lack, everything else is the same. I work on a farm, it is definitely in the sticks, deer and turkeys around, etc, we can target shoot on the property no problem, including long range rifle, we heat with wood,(establishing official sticks bona fides there) but just in this room I am sitting in are half a dozen computers, two active cellphones and several more in the drawer, two TVs, one with the converter for digital (I was just playing with it, switched antennas and went from 4 to 9 channels..)(although most people have sat dishes), about a dozen radios including HAM and shortwave gear, etc, we have various music players, etc and we are some of the poorer folks around here! Heck, I pulled a vid card and 80 gig drive out of the damn dumpster nearby, just three days ago.
Rule of thumb: when you see every other guy driving 40 grand pickups with ten grand worth of customization, they ain't hurting for the scratch to by cheap iPhones and such like gadgets.
Really man, get out, meet some folks in the country, it isn't 1950s andy of mayberry all over with technology in some sort of locked time warp. Broadband, that's it, no cable or anything, and wireless doesn't cut the mustard yet here..yet, but I am sure it will eventually penetrate to us yokels. Hopefully, when they get done dicking around with the TV digital switchover the freed up spectrum might lead to that broadband problem being fixed as well. Ya, have to drive pretty far to a starbucks..whoopedy zing.
The compression rate is way too high. Music is all but unlistenable in a non-automobile environment. I had a trial XM radio hooked up to my home stereo. I could not listen to the music for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
I drove NY->Cali last year and used a 3G Sprint phone (HTC Titan) as a music player, hooked up to the line-in on the mp3 player.
I used mainly Resco Radio (Windows Mobile software that aggregates a lot of streaming radio stations) and Last.FM as music sources. It worked okay. Even in the middle of 2G-only areas, I was able to select the lowest bandwidth streamers and still get acceptable playback. At no point did I feel a need for satellite. So, yes, even though Farhad Manjoo's articles are usually epic, pointless tales of obviousness, in this instance he's right. Satellite radio is a technology whose chance for mass market penetration passed some time ago. It is the steam-powered buggy whip of digital audio.
As a bonus I was able to tether my phone to my laptop for Internet, and do video conferencing along the way. All this, plus voice, for $30/month. Sprint rules.
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You'll be doing all kinds of stuff you said you wouldn't do.
"satellite radio as a market will have to turn itself into a cost structure like Iridium satellite phones. Think dollars per minute, rather than dollars per month"
Well, no. Satellite TV is a much closer model; the Iridium is expensive, but it's providing 2-way communication from any spot on earth at pretty much any time. Satellite Radio is one-way, providing a footprint over North America. TV provides that kind of footprint for 30-40 bucks a month for "unlimited viewing".
Look at Muzak (http://www.domyweb.net/music.htm). Muzak provides commercial music, with all BMI/ASCAP/Performance fees for ~$80/month. I'm not sure why we'd expect satellite radio to cost dollars per minute.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yes. Absolutely. At least for music. Here in DC the commercial stations seem to be 50% commercials. Maybe more. XM is commercial free. So I spend $15/month or so to NOT listen to commercials.
Also, satellite is receivable all the way from DC to Ocean City. Can't listen to DC101 much beyond the Bay Bridge. Assuming I'd want to.
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Stop living so far away from where you work. it's not natural.
How do they make you pay a monthly fee for broadcast reception, anyway? What's to keep you from just finding a used receiver and listening all you want?
Visit the
Why don't you bring your iPhone here to Montana and drive around the state with me. How much coverage will it get? How much will you pay in roaming fees since AT&T has no coverage in Montana? Bring every smartphone from every wireless company and you still won't have sufficient coverage. As we take a drive that's perfectly normal for Montana, we will pass through multiple broadcast markets. Do you want to spend the whole drive surfing the AM/FM dial? What about the places where there's no AM/FM? What will you do then? Maybe we could mount a satellite dish on my car and find some way to keep it from blowing off the car and stay aimed at the satellite while driving at 80mph. Then we could crank up any Internet radio on my laptop, plugged into an inverter, plugged into my cigarette lighter.... Or, maybe we could just use my satellite radio.
Initially, yes, the radios were huge. My Delphi SkyFi was giant, as is the SkyFi 2 (Complete with FCC violating FM transmitter, woo!) I replaced it with.
Indoor reception is spotty, yeah. It's a satellite. Stick it in a southern window and it'll usually work unless you have obstructions.
Contracts? I never encountered a contract in relation to XM, so I don't know what you're on about here. You buy a radio, you subscribe, cancel whenever. Sirius might have been different, but I didn't think so.
Paying for each radio wasn't a big deal before, since the rates were lower than today.
The biggest problem with satellite now, is that so many of the complaints you have about regular radio finally got pulled in.
The advertising sucks and feels designed for morons, and there -are- only about a dozen different ads you'll hear in the space of a day's listening on some channels. The sound quality, in my opinion anyhow, did drop with the Sirius merger. The Sirius DJ's are serious "weak sauce" with few exceptions (Nina Blackwood's good on the 80's, and Cain(?) on Octane isn't bad) though the XM DJ's always seemed to be a lot better quality. (I wouldn't have even accepted three free months if they weren't keeping Grant Random and Bodhi around)
But what annoys the hell out of me, is that they talk over the songs now. Yesterday, I was listening to Alice Cooper's "Hey, Stupid" and the last moment of the song got cut off mid-phrase. When I'm trying to listen to a song and get into the groove, that pisses me -right- off. So it goes right up there with your "Idiotic DJ's" complaint.
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In my opinion Sirius is killing satellite Radio. I've been an avid listener of XM for 4 years or so. I liked the country stations 10 - 13, 16, 17. I really enjoyed the "Visiting with the Legends" shows with Bill Anderson, and also the Outlaw America shows that used to air live during my commute time. Outlaw America had a call-in line that took requests. These shows are now gone. They have an "Outlaw Country" channel that very seldom plays music of the outlaw country genre. They have a hand full of new D.J.s most of which are annoying. Some are too annoying for me. ( Mojo Nixon _really_ _is_ a bugar eating moron. )
I have no idea how they are doing for other kinds of music, but they've totally screwed up the stuff I like. My yearly subscription ends in April. I plan to cancel then.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
At work, where i do not have my gigabytes of mp3's i use last.fm to maintain my sanity, because there's no decent radio station in Belgium, well, none if you're not into the 50cents, Britneys and other crap. Last.fm however, does provide excellent service, they have a community, a concert agenda, wiki pages about the bands & artists, loads & loads of small unknown bands just waiting to be discovered... I love it!
If they start blasting commercials like they do on "free" radio, I'll be one of the first to cancel.
Sounds like you are my age....will you agree that those old tube stereos had a certain charm about them? My first "aftermarket" car thingy was an old pioneer underdash 8 track stereo, with a WHOPPING 4 watts per channel fed into two 8x9 coaxial speakers.
I'm really not trying to flame you, just inform. They sell all the same gadget stuff out here you can get probably, and fed ex goes everywhere. We have all the big chain stores, all the various *marts, various whitebox computer shops, office depots, radio hovels, fast food to gourmet restaurants, etc, just a bit further drive, but they are here, along with all the gadgets you could sling a yagi at. In fact, like I said, we probably have *more* because you can get all the gadgets plus all the cool mechanical gadgets and stuff, from half a million dollar a whack crawlers and trackhoes down to you name itm low end chainsaws, let alone your regular assortment of cars, trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, RVs whatever, boats, all that stuff..
You want a giant plasma TV, you can get it, a fancy stereo home theater rig, you can get it. Home automation, available. The *only* thing we lack is broadband down the last little roads, that's it, but a lot of folks do have broadband, it just isn't quite everywhere yet. If you *really* need it, there's satellite broadband and whatever the cell phone guys have, it is just spendy. We lack cheap DSL and cable down the last mile here and there, but probably 2/3rds of the county I am in can get one or the other or both already, and wireless is creeping in here and there, new towers going up just for it, in fact one of the wireless isps locally is getting some new gear this week coming up and they are going to try and shoot me a better signal, so then I can get broadband that way if the new gear works..
Where's there's money, retail is there, dense urban areas or over in flyover country in the little towns. It doesn't go from highrises and subways to poof wilderness in other words, there's a LOT of inbetween areas that sill have all the amenities.
The US really has four basic zone types, ultra urban, suburban (which is way more urban than rural), farm-rural like here where I am (a vast amount of turf in this nation), then way the heck out in the boonies (again a huge amount) where you need to fly in or take a horse or something. Regular "farm rural" covers a lot of ground, and we got all the same stuff you got in the much larger cities, with plenty of merchants to take your cash.
The scenery can change a lot within a few miles, drive 15 or so minutes one way, national forests, etc, good hunting and fishing and hiking, etc, 15 minutes another way, walmart and banks and various stores and so on in town. There's way more "diversity" here as to human cultural lifestyles and living situations than in any big city I ever saw within reasonablly short travel distance, mansions to townhouses to apartments to cheap trailers to rambling ranches that are *real* ranches, and as to social multiculturalism, there's folks from all over live around here, up the street from me some Vietnamese folks have a farm, we get some Russian boys (BIG dudes) come help on the farm here sometimes, the first store up the road from me is run by a family from Pakistan, and so many hispanic folks they have a lot of their own stores now with all the signs in Spanish.
Plenty of gadgets, with just the right mix and size of city without being stifling and cut off from some real nature, lots of land and trees and creeks and lakes and "green" around.
Like I said, a starbucks is more of a drive for me, like a half an hour or so if I lead foot it, but frankly, a waffle house or huddle house coffee is just as good, loads cheaper, and tons of those places around here have free wifi now as well.
In other words, not bad at all, and 1/3rd to 1/2 the living costs say from living in or very near metro Atlanta, last really big city I lived in. We have a freezer packed with our own grass fed beef and free range chicken, and a fridge full of fresh produce (more in the summer of course, but we do get some stuff year round and have a greenhouse as well) from our garden and shelves full of stuff we canned, all organic. Not sure what that costs in the expensive
I was paying them $240 a year for two subscriptions and am now paying them $11 for one subscription which won't be renewed when it runs out.
A car antenna cracked and they only sell replacements for exorbitant prices, so they fixed the issue by issuing a new radio (which includes antenna) and paying $80 towards installation. Their systems cancelled an account instead of noticing that a credit card expiry date had been updated to be current. They removed the station I listened to the most and explained that "customers like me" wanted that. They kept charging the wrong amount (too little) in this mess and on cancellation refunded the wrong amount (too much). This is despite pointing that out to them.
But it was most noticeable to me that they hate their customers so much they pay (presumably the lowest bidder) in another country to talk to them. (Of course that country doesn't have Sirius or XM service so the customer service reps have no experience of using the product in any way.)
And it's right in your post:
Thousands of truckers and commuters rely on Satellite for their source of entertainment and news.
Emphasis mine, of course, on the numbers involved. There just isn't a big enough market. Even in a society where commuting via car is standard, satellite can't muster enough subscribers to provide a viable business model. Between licensing of content (sports, stern, and statutory fees) and the cost of satellite broadcasts, you need a solid host of millions of paying customers. Thing is, most of the US can get what they want out of traditional broadcast services, or from their personal collections (ipods). Satellite TV is viable because it has a large installed base that can only get the majority of content from a for-pay source, and the competition is Cable TV (most companies should be so lucky as to have such an incompetent rival).
I'll grant you that satellite radio is cool - my wife has XM. There are a couple of problems, though. They've created a model of one receiver, one subscription, so if you have two cars you need two subscriptions, or a tuner module you have to physically move. For SatTV and Cable, it's an extra 10% a month for each extra TV. In doing so, they also required bypassing your car tuner if you want to take your unit between vehicles, or you'd have to buy a separate, 100% cost subscription for each vehicle. And up until recently, you couldn't have a portable device the size of a personal audio player. Now, there are practical reception / link margin reasons for this, but you can't discuss that with consumers - all they know is that you have no portable device.
To put this kind of endeavor together, you'd have to generate a _lot_ of subscriptions, and they just can't do it. I'll probably drop this year - I've already removed XM from my wife's car when we got the new head unit that does DVDs. Thee only useful way to keep it would have been to spend (another) $200 to have a hardwired receiver, but then she couldn't have XM at work. Now it's just in a radio in her office. For $55/yr, it's not a huge deal, especially since I can also tune it in from time to time on my PC. Now they're going to drop the PC version (unless you pay more), and our promo is up in March. I'm not paying $150/yr. Especially now that Pandora makes a much better station (or, rather, I make a better one on Pandora). Enough interstates have good cell service that I can get a lot of XM-like stuff on my cell phone, too.
There is a place for satellite radio, but it's market size just isn't large enough to sustain it. Thousands of people just don't have the buying power.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For a week and a half I can find either a book on tape/CD or my personal collection.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Wow, that's the first time I've heard mention of the use of a Molniya orbit in more than a decade. I didn't know it was even used commercially for US coverage.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
While the iPhone and other smart phones could spell trouble in the future is it really what is killing the current market for sat. radio? I don't think so. Yes some folks do use Pandora or other services on their phones in the car, but the problems TODAY for Sirius are more likely due to the economic climate and bad business decisions. However, if the company survives this trial it may not be long (2-3 years) before cell data coverage is ubiquitous enough to put a real dent in business.
Oh, you are right, I just looked at the packet- it is "Arbitron"
... shoutcast ?
Pandora is a crippled app that does not even support the full power of shoutcast, which has been around for years.
just fwiw: a co worker of mine has actually endeavored to use as much Edge/3G bandwidth as he can via streaming to his iPhone (several gigabytes at last mention) and so far ATT hasn't batted an eyelash
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Until you solve the problem of ubiquitous, seamless radio coverage in the car, your ideas will be relegated to your small, poorly lit IT office where they belong. Solve the real problems, not your pet ones.
Bandwidth came and broke your heart
Put the blame on the router....
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Hey, liked your post.
I always thought that the one feature that Satellite Radio should have provided (but did not) was actually to offer limited internet data service. For example, they could have a data channel that occasionally broadcasts the updated contents of major websites, such as cnn.com, weather.com, hell maybe even slashdot and twitter, etc... whatever people were interested in "subscribing to" when they happened to have full internet or phone connectivity. Their device would just need to set up a little web proxy configured to cache the updates you're interested in, and voila... you've got "good enough" internet news, weather, and updates to a laptop or set-top or PDA in remote locations for much cheaper than other forms of 2-way internet access.
People (like me) pretty much do something similar to this using AvantGo / Plucker for "time shifted" web browsing... I'd love a way for my Plucker database to be refreshed while I was out in the bush. But obviously these types of users are probably more technical than the Sat Radio's target market.
>In all, it comes down to you "open-source" / "pirate" twits that think paying for anything is below them
Anonymous Coward,
Perhaps you should re-read my posting. Specifically the part that says: "not because I am adverse to paying for music." I never pirate anything and I am certainly willing to pay reasonable prices for reasonable services, and do, all the time.
Dammit I have to get an iphone. I live out in a rural area and can only get WISP internet which limits my bandwidth. I really should get an iphone and download everything i can with it... then use my WISP for work and movie downloads.
//runs off to check when my att contract is up for renewal.
Okay you've convinced me.
Get a 3g if you can swing it (and get 3g signal in your area)
What with ATT throttling Edge (and the limitations of edge in general) my Edge-only iPhone is pretty worthless for streaming nowadays, even something on the level of 64kpbs music.
Once that's all done, get Pandora and Tuner and have yourself a ball. If you like heavy metal I heartily recommend Braingell Radio via Tuner. (Barring that, set up a Pandora station around Ensiferum)
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Both of my radios were sirius connect radios hard wired to pioneer head units.
One of my cars has quite a bit of audio gear in it - Hertz components, Audison 6 channel amp, JL audio stealthbox...etc. I can reasonably say that my audio system will expose flaws in satellite audio that other systems may not.
The bandwidth and sound quality seemed to vary from station to station. Talk stations had very little in the way of high-frequencies, and rock stations seemed to have a lack of highs as well. The electronic/dance channels seemed to have better highs.
A Sirius rep confirmed they do monkey with bandwidth on channels from time to time. If I am paying for radio, I want a premium experience - no commercials and good sound quality. I'm not asking for CD quality, but the highs shouldn't sound like a bad MP3.
-ted