This happens all the time amongst competitors. It doesn't mean they want to reverse engineer or violate patents; it is usually so you can educate yourself as to what your competitors are up to and make sure that you're staying competitive.
I think the idea is that there is a large demographic, college students, that don't spend time in cars but are on the internet all the time.
This new service opens them up to the world of "satellite radio" without requiring them to pay for receiver hardware.
As for the $13/month- I agree that is a bit high because:
commercial-free music is everywhere on the internet so mostly it's the talk-radio that people would be paying for.
the talk radio programming on Sirius has commercials and many of the shows are also broadcast on terrestrial radio. (Note: the commercial load on the Howard Stern show is 6 minutes/hour-- far less than anything on commercial terrestrial radio).
I'm guessing they won't let you actually download files- rather you can probably only stream it through Sirius's DRMd player.
So in the end you pay purely for the "exclusive" talent (like Howard).
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This happens all the time amongst competitors. It doesn't mean they want to reverse engineer or violate patents; it is usually so you can educate yourself as to what your competitors are up to and make sure that you're staying competitive.
- commercial-free music is everywhere on the internet so mostly it's the talk-radio that people would be paying for.
- the talk radio programming on Sirius has commercials and many of the shows are also broadcast on terrestrial radio. (Note: the commercial load on the Howard Stern show is 6 minutes/hour-- far less than anything on commercial terrestrial radio).
- I'm guessing they won't let you actually download files- rather you can probably only stream it through Sirius's DRMd player.
So in the end you pay purely for the "exclusive" talent (like Howard).They have specifically mentioned on the air several times today that the service will be available to anyone with internet access, world-wide.