Sirius and XM merger
 

http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/...us-talks_x.htm

So, its still pending. I'm sure the FCC and DoJ will have something to say about compliance, monopoly protection, etc.

I think the main argument they are going to put forth against being a monopoly is that they are still in competition against terrestrial radio and satellite TV music channels or some other BS.

I hope the combined service doesn't suck, as I think Sirius content beats XM in a big way.

i wish i could afford to own a satellite.

I picked up XM a couple of years ago for the Nascar coverage. The switch to Sirius by Nascar stunk for me but now I see light at the end of the tunnel. Just hope that I don't have to purchase another reciever. Thanks for the great news Nick.

My Ipod murd0rEd radio to death.

I've got both... XM in the SVX and Sirius in the truck. Sirius is like 100 times better. If they just push all their content on XM and then start charging me the "additional reciever" charge for my XM subscription, it saves me from having to tear out all the XM hardware in the SVX and replace it with Sirius, which I was about to do before all this merger business happened.

Just what the country needs - more media consolidation! Best idea evar. :rolleyes:

Well... either they merge, or XM goes out of business 'cause they suck. Sometimes, this stuff happens for good old capitalism style reasons, rather than attempts at monopoly type market domination (i.e. RIAA or MPAA).

It makes total sense;
Sirius, although its content is great, is a failing company. They have an incredible amount of debt to which they are not putting forth enough profit for their stockholders, it was only a matter of time before they either merged with another company,(XM) or went bankrupt. Last semester I did a complete financial analysis of the company and it is astounding the kinds of debt they have racked up and the problems that they have encountered.

Um.. I thought XM was the one that was failing... didn't they lose every sport except baseball?

XM was still in better financial shape than sirius

I think their subscriber fixed cashflow and capital investment was their big wins.

At least it looks that way to the folks at XM who value a strong customer equity base to solving problems.

It really doesn't matter why - having more and more media outlets in the hands of fewer and fewer people is a Bad ThingTM.

So they are going to have commercials now? I thought their whole schpeal (sp?) was no commercials... Well I guess they had to make money somehow.

If they start playing commercials they'll die. That's the biggest reason by far that people pay for the service.

Actually, the biggest reason by far that people listen to sat music is that there's listenable music on it. Every terrestrial station is the same ClearChannel top 40 crap. Sat radio could go to commercials and as long as they continue to have actual content people will still listen... they'd be pissed about it, but what are they going to do, go back to whatever this week's American Idol runner up is putting out?

Uh... internets? It's the best place in the world for free stuff. If I subscribed to Sirius for the lesser known music and they started playing commercials on top of the monthly fee, I'd leave. Commercials on a service which you are paying for already is completely retarded.

Yeah, no one would pay for ads!

Oh wait... cable TV, satellite TV, newspapers, magazines, internet sites, movie theaters... :roll:

DUH! That's my point! It's stupid how we pay for shit, and then have to watch more shit that they want us to pay for. Now satellite radio is no different than any other entertainment media.

I dunno where I'm going with this, commercials just bug me sometimes.

The problem with the internet is the almost the same problem with stores though. Without knowing what you want, its hard to find music you like. For me, the word of mouth factor has dropped off significantly to the point where I don't even hear about music I would potentially like. Satellite radio plays stuff I haven't heard and do tend to like (more so than terrestrial radio). Its not the end-all-be-all, but its better than nothing in my opinion.

I get by without either one. I bought a head unit that plays .mp3s, I download a lot of music from cheap sites and add it to my archive of stuff I've gotten from other people or ripped from my own CDs. As for new artists and other stuff I don't know, Pandora an similar sites do a great job of showing me new music. I'm not trying to argue that Satellite Radio isn't currently the best broadcast outlet for getting new and/or good music, but I would go from considering getting it eventually as an outside posibility, to having zero desire to use it if it added commercials.
Most importantly to my original point, when hundreds of thousands of people bought XM or Sirius, they didn't play commercials. If they add them, that's the kind of BS that makes me stop buying a product or service.

Well considering how cheap some of the radios are and the fact that the service is only $10-15 a month still cheaper than a cd Album.

I for one did not buy Sirius as my sole music service. I bought it as a supplement to my music. I'm rich biatch. It takes the place of lugging CDs in my car which I like. I can also play my unit in my house when I feel the need. I don't believe in d/l'ing music for free anymore.

Of course I'm against commercials but like Scott said what are you gonna do listen to Taylor Hicks(name drop). They still have small talking ads the Djs do for things. If you had Sirius you'd know what I mean, they are not 100% music content.

I like the sources Scott mentioned that we have ads now but no actual difference in price. The theatres are a great example, more ads but somehow the prices still go up. And what about all the ads in video games like the banners and shit in GT4 and other racing games shouldn't those games be cheaper. Ad revenue is just another way to make money and not a public goods subsitute anymore, it sucks.

College stations, boys. It's about the only radio left that's still independent of the corporate overlords.

I'm sure your MP3 CD's get great local and out of market live sports, talk, traffic, and news.

Just b/c it's on clearchannel or Sirius doesn't automatically make it souless crap pop music controlled by overlords, although it's close with clearchannel.

I agree with AtomicMonkey a good college station would awesome to have.

When will seemless streaming internet to your car be available? Because after that happens it's pretty much all over, anyone will be able to make playlist and broadcasts. There are already many great free "radio by the people" communities.

Most of them stream over the internet for free as well; hell you could listen to NC state there in Reno on the computer just like I get it on the radio here. :)

None of which I have any desire for. More importantly, I can get all of that on local AM or FM radio, without paying for it. The ony advantage satellite has in those areas is the lack of commercials and out of market sports. Since I can get all the sports games I migth want to listen to locally, there would be no advantage to satellite for me if I was that concerned with hearing anything other than music in my car.

yep.

I enlist my "radio" for mah ridzz, mostly.

You might not care about that, but the majority of subscribers do care. Sports deals are one of the big reason people pick XM vs Sirius vs terrestrial. Plus, there are a ton of retards that love Howard Stern and/or Opie and Anthony... shit that I'd rather kill myself than listen too, but a huge sales point for the general public nonetheless. Not everyone (likely most people) is happy or willing to dick around downloading or ripping and burning CDs for all their in-car entertainment.

These are radio's bread and butter customers, and they're not going to up and drop the service just 'cases there are some commercials added, or 'case the price goes up a buck or two a month... all satellite has to do is stay just a little bit better than ClearChannel... which frankly means they can just jam a mic up Howard Stern's ass and beam sounds of his anus down to Earth, and stay in business.

There are 100s of millions of people happy and willing to download and rip music. Thats why so many people have an ipod or some form of mp3 device.

And if commercials are added to sat radio the price should go down. I mean thats why you dont pay for regular radio, because sponsors do. If you raise the price and add commercials that will turn people away, perhaps not a large number of the stern/nascar fans, but people none the less. but I guess I am a little one sided since I listen to stuff that will keep me awake in the morning;)

Kevin (and 100_Percent_Juice),

You both seem to assume everyone thinks as logically as you do. The problem is, most people will bitch about commercials, but won't cancel subscriptions. Maybe 1 or 2 in a 100, but those numbers are not significant. But most people these days view commercials as a necessary annoyance. Just because you think one way (and even if a whole gaggle of internet forum guys do too) it doesn't change the fact that commercials don't bother the average satellite radio consumer to the point of cancellation.

Most sheeple don't seem to much care about the ever-increasing number and new ways that advertisements are being thrown at them.

Did you know that there is a new fiber-optic turf being developed for football fields? Just as durable as regular astro-turf, but it can display graphics. Right on the playing surface. I'm sure you can imagine where they're heading with this... :rolleyes:

Pretty soon agents from the Bureau of Advertising will knock on your door everday to strap you into your viewing chair, Clockwork Orange style, for your legally required daily dose of commercials.

You're wrong... virtually no-one downloads music and rips MP3 CDs for play in their car. iPods are successful because iTunes makes it easy for the non-technical to buy and download songs. But all that shit is chock full of DRM bullshit. The vast majority of people don't know the difference between a burned CD and a donut.

Speaking of DRM... the next step in DRM is requiring you to listen to x minutes of ads in order to unlock the music you already paid for. It's bad enough that the music companies are saying things like "you don't own the CD you bought, you own the right to listen to the music on that CD in one device". Give me a fucking break...

But they get away with it... RIAA and MPAA get away with suing grandma for copyright violations because they know that even with all the bad press it generates, the general public doesn't care that there are monopolies out there gobbling up their individual rights. Hell, the general public doesn't even have the power to fight back if they did care.

Mark my words... satellite radio will slowly get commercials (in fact many stations already have them, and all of them have ads for other channels), and it won't make a dent in their consumer base (Nick's 1-2% estimate is probably 100-1000 times higher than reality). People bitched and moaned when cable got commercials, but I don't see cable going out of business over it anytime soon, hell people don't even remember the days of commercial-less cable. Sat Radio will do the same, and make more money on the deal, and pass none of the savings on to their customers, because if they did, they'd be failing their shareholders.

I never said anyone makes mp3 cds. Why would you make an mp3 cd when you have am ipod? And reguardless of free, stolen, paid for, on your cellphone, home computer, or through iTunes... MILLIONS of people download music. And everyone I know has "ripped" their cds onto their ipods. Last year Apple shipped 14 million Ipods in 1 quarter alone. Thats not saying how many people have the other less expensive mp3 players. If you go to crutchfield.com out of 128 in-dash cd players that they sell 90 of those are ipod compatible. Which should tell you where the market is going. Sat radio will become the new "radio" in a matter of years just like cable TV turned into basic cable that they are almost giving away.

Adding commercials will result in some cancellations, more non-renewals for people who didn't buy the "lifetime" service, and fewer new subscriptions. I can't see this possibly being a good long-term strategy even if the ad revenue makes up the difference.

I didn't say "people don't download music", I said they "don't download music and burn CDs", which was the point I was making in contrary to BAN SUVS argument that satellite radio was dead because people can play MP3 CDs in their cars.

I know the iPod is very successful, but it's because of iTunes which made what used to be a painful process of Napster-ing around for a decent quality pirated song into a simple point and click legal purchasing system that even semi-brain dead Dixie Chicks fans can use. But Apple is the only one to figure it out... even to the point that Steve Jobs is talking about wanting to ditch the DRM in iTunes and open up the industry. *Everyone* else doesn't get it... every other music seller wants stricter controls, more ad revenue, and more lowest common denominator content. Unfortunately, iTunes is kinda bound to these morons because unless Apple wants to get into the record production business, nearly all the content on iTunes comes from the status-quo loving, lobby heavy, monopoly music industry.

And Kevin, with regards to the music industry's long term strategy... history has shown, over and over, that you're wrong. Since electronic media was invented in the 30's, the industry has been moving to less real content, more "perceived" value, more ad revenue, and higher end-user costs. The advent of the internet and digital music doesn't seem to have changed the way the industry works, they seem to believe that they can go ahead "business as usual" in the light of new technology... and frankly, unless we get some smart leadership that can see through all the industry lobbyists bullshit, I think the mass media conglomerates have enough power to insure that business does continue to operate as usual.

I'm quibbling with this a little bit. I burn CDs because I choose not to own an iPod. Effectively, they come to the same thing as far as actual use. I sacrifice a few pennies per disc and maybe 15 mnutes of effort making it in exchange for not buying $100 or so piece of equipment and using crappy formats. I have no intention of paying for a radio service because even good satellite staton still have a shorter playlist than I can put on one disc, and none of them are 100% full of music I really like anyway.
I'm just trying to explain that satellite radio is taking a product that doesn't really fit my needs and reducing its attractiveness further. I can't be the only one.

Maybe you could write them and ask for the Alanis Morrisette/Dire Straits/Jewel channel?

You forgot Shania Twain.


Jerk. :p

Don't worry, I burn MP3 CD's to listen to in the car for the same reasons. i only drive a total of 10-15 minutes a day. I want to make sure I only ALWAYS hear the songs I like. and I don't need a playlist of 5000+ to listen to while driving. At work i listen to free streaming XM Satellite radio all day. Don't remember the last time I've had to pay for music I want to listen to.