Sirius Founder Says The Company Is Screwed
from the cracks-in-the-crystal-ball dept
It’s no secret that Sirius XM’s business has been hurting. Its recent brush with bankruptcy merely highlighted the huge obstacles the company faced from the beginning: massive capital outlay on satellite infrastructure, and huge spending to attract subscribers. But one key issue for the company that many people didn’t foresee was the rise in popularity of internet radio, podcasts, and portable music players. Included in that group was Martine Rothblatt, Sirius’ founder, who now says competition from those media, spurred on by growth in mobile networks, have doomed satellite radio (via Paid Content). Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin, of course, disagrees, saying the company has enough unique content to succeed. But what happens when streaming services become even more pervasive, more portable, and available to a wider audience? Sirius XM’s exclusivity to certain types of content in locales like automobiles will slip, and being tied to its proprietary hardware and subscription model could become a liability. The company is growing its efforts in this area, such as with its recently announced iPhone app, but more fully embracing online radio would seem to be a brighter strategy.
Filed Under: martine rothblatt, satellite radio
Companies: sirius xm
Comments on “Sirius Founder Says The Company Is Screwed”
unique content?
Wait, so instead of providing a more valuable service, they are trying to provide more valuable content?
So their business model is one that tries to capitalize on artificial scarcity?
Gee, it’s hard to understand how that could have failed!
Exclusivity contracts are NEVER a long term solution!
How about...
they just work with the terrestrial stations and provide the content for free (still need the hardware)…after a small activation fee. I’d pay to take my local radio stations across country when traveling. Satellite radio offers the unique benefit of being able to transmit in the any area unlike the limited range of your local stations. They could offer their original content (open for commercials now that they are openly competing with other stations), as well as offer local stations to other listeners that may be interested. The advertisers would be getting more exposure as well. There is also a station in Houston, TX that I like but can only listen to it on the internet. I’d love to be able to get that in my car though. I know it can be done already by ripping the audio blah blah blah, but I like convenience too. I want to be able to get in my car and tune into a station…done. 🙂
Re: How about...
That’s kind of the point. I pay NOT to have my local radio stations, which are horrible!
this is old news
This article is old news and has been recycled at least 3 times. Everytime the stock does well, someone tries to knock it down either by repeating an old (neg.) article or a new one that is basically negative, whether the info is correct or not. The company will be successful and thrive in my opinion.
Online radio isn’t ready for prime time yet, not even close. In fact, IP based “broadcasting” is a non-starter because it just isn’t broadcasting. It doesn’t scale.
It’s just like plug in electric cars. Nice idea, but if 25% of the people in California switched, the power grid would melt. The good news is because electricity is consumption based for billing, there would be new money to pay to increase the grid.
But the internet? Everyone wants it for “FREE!”, nobody wants to pay bigger bills, but they want bigger pipes, more services, and always on portable services.
Something has to give to make it happen – either the public has to get ready to pay, or someone has to find a way to make the bandwidth so cheap that all of these services become possible.
I am not holding my breath.
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If we could put an end to the Cable companies’ monopoly in so many places (my ONLY option is Comcast, I can’t put up a dish) then the competition between companies would spur growth and bigger pipes, while probably even lowering prices. The problem isn’t that the technology isn’t out there, because it is. The problem is that current providers have no incentive to spend the money on it when they can give themselves a raise or nice big bonus.
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Everyone wants it for “FREE!”, nobody wants to pay bigger bills.
I believe you have a misguided notion here, WH.
People don’t want to pay for content which has infinite supply. Even basic economics says costs drop to $0.00.
So why do so many businesses insist on trying to circumvent this model? Consumers get it and they’re tired of over paying for this content (bigger bills).
I’ve yet to see anyone defend why a song costs $1 in a digital format. Some argue that bandwidth costs, server maintenance, and customer support dictate this, but that’s an insulting argument.
If 1000 people buy $1 songs on a single day, and this still doesn’t cover those costs, then the business is doomed to fail because it’s bleeding itself dry.
Capitalize this number for a year, and there’s no way the argument of “costs of distribution” can hold up.
I, for one, am one of those who tires of overpaying for digital content, especially when these industries tell me I need to pay again for every copy I want.
Why should I have to pay $3, for the same song, just because I want it on my phone, MP3 player, and in my car?
SERVICE is not the same as distribution. People are willing to pay for a service to manage distribution, but the end result had better be content costing $0.00.
Look at Netflix. The SERVICE has a monthly rate, but the content streamed to users is $0.00. Argue that if you want, but I believe Netflix is ridding itself of its DVD library.
And it makes sense to. Why pay such incredible markup on a plastic disc when distribution costs could be cut by more than 50% with digital distribution?
Every business tries to cut distribution costs, as these have always been expensive. Take this part of the spending out, and revenue, by default, increases if costs don’t change.
So please don’t make the mistake in assuming customers want everything for free. That’s simply not the case and it’s been proven time and time again.
Give a customer a reason to buy, and they will.
Tell a customer they have to buy or do without, the sale is lost while the customer finds it elsewhere.
How confusing can this be?
Food for thought regarding one year of digital sales:
Show me a person who owns 100 songs, and I’ll show you someone who paid $1 per song.
Show me a person who owns 500 songs, and I’ll show you someone who paid for some, copied the rest.
Show me a person having over 1000 songs, and I’ll show you someone paying nothing for them.
Because, long before piracy was introduced, people rarely spent $500 a year buying CDs.
Market trend, Harold.
Adapt or fail.
Those are the only options business has in the new digital era.
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Wow, Mike must have given you an extra cup of the koolaid this morning. You came out swinging without even reading the original post, I think.
Let’s start with the basic problem: Digital distribution is neither infinite nor free. At this point, people are mistaking some of it for free because of “forgotten cost syndrome” – where people forget to figure out how much their computer cost, how much their pay the ISP each month, how much electricity they used, their time, etc.
Just as importantly, there is a significant lack of bandwidth to do all these things. Taking TV stations and radio stations and all those things and turning them into IP based services is possible from a purely technical standpoint, but there isn’t enough bandwidth out there to haul all those personalized bits around. In your terms, bandwidth is still scarce and valuable, but nobody wants to admit it.
Broadcast (radio and TV) and DTH / DTU sat services are effecient means of distribution because they scale – 1 client, 1 million clients, there is no difference in cost to do move the data. Yes, I know, you don’t get to get an entirely personalized playlist or what have you, but you get a ton of entertainment for the price of a cheap receiver (am/fm tv) or for a monthly cost + receiver (sat).
Sirius is probably screwed in it’s current format, but the power of direct transmission isn’t a loser. They just have not found exactly the right way to make this package work out for them financially. They have created something that was otherwise scarce (bandwidth), and that is very important.
As for your 100 songs, 500 songs, 1000 song example, all you are showing is that people have learned to shoplift better. I can’t imagine why we would celebrate that people have learned to steal better. That isn’t a market trend, that is just “the mob rules”. It isn’t something to celebrate, it’s something to be sad about, we have become a society where the pilfering of goods is considered good.
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You’re talking bullshit. After reading “there is a significant lack of bandwidth to do all these things” I stopped.
As M.Sc. in communications I assure you, there’s enough bandwidth to do “all these things”. And match more “things”.
Keep talking about “legal” stuff – you’ll be looking better. But all this complicated technical details are not for you, honey. Do you even know how network cable looks like?
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Yosi, here’s a dare for you:
Go look at the final mile for AT&T’s 3G network. Go look at their total bandwidth available for clients, and how much they are likely to have installed and available for clients in even 5 years. Now divide that up by the number of 3g phones they expect to have in service.
Now tell me how many of them can watch TV at the same time before the system craps out due to lack of bandwidth.
Same calculation: Everyone is watching a full stream HD tv channel at home – heck, some of them are watching 2 because the kids are watching a different channel in the other room. Now, put that all over, let’s see, the local DSL network in Atlanta, GA. Do the calculation and let me know how much bandwidth would be required to do it (assuming 1 million clients, 50% of them watching TV in the evening).
There is a significant lack of bandwidth to do these things, end to end, it just ain’t there. There may be a bunch in the middle somewhere, but the internet is still suffering last mile problems that won’t go away any time soon, because nobody wants to pay to fix it.
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Please, stop making fool of yourself.
Your calculations are so ridiculous that even discussing them is embarrassing.
Your “legal advise” is somewhat funny to read, but for technical size – sorry.
I have to 2-word hint for you:
* Multicast
* Gigabit
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multicast = not supported by anyone in the real world – and it still doesn’t address the last miles of the internal network (which is one of the reasons it isn’t used much).
gigabit: Doesn’t matter how fast your internal connection is if there is a blockage upsteam. What I can do in my house isn’t an indication of what I can do online, especially if everyone else on my ISP is trying to do the same at the same time.
Again, the difference between “theory I learned in class” and the real world. I have worked in the real world of communications since 45.45 baudot. Heck, last night I was looking at the peering exchange system, surprised by how little connectivity and peering some of the ISPs have out there.
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I see you didn’t even bothered with “theory I learned in class”, never mind real world.
Like I said: stick to layer’s stuff and you won’t embarrass yourself in gross incompetence.
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I think R Miles needs help getting his infinite internet installed. Perhaps you want to help him?
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Wow, Mike must have given you an extra cup of the koolaid this morning. You came out swinging without even reading the original post, I think.
Read the article, but decided to focus on your asinine assumption people want everything for free.
Digital distribution is neither infinite nor free.
Digital distribution is most definitely infinite. Here’s an example:
http://www.quillstorm.com/QuillStorm.png
(my logo, so no copyright infringement concerns needed)
I dare you to download this image until supply runs out. Good luck with that.
I will agree that costs of maintenance is not free, but to sit there and think people should overpay for the content to cover costs is bull, Harold. SERVICE pays for this, not the content.
It is impossible to corner an infinite supply. Or do you totally ignore the availability of sites offering digital content? Pirated or not, this proves the bolded statement.
there is a significant lack of bandwidth to do all these things.
This is where you are very wrong. Bandwidth infrastructure has never been better. People always assume that more downloads=clogged internet. While this may be true in some areas, it’s also a warning for the business supplying that bandwidth to upgrade, or else.
To think otherwise is laughable.
Also, if these industries would quite hogging distribution points, it’s rather feasible to agree many fans would, if legally allowed to, be more than happy to offset the server load by offering the same copy.
Don’t try to convince me otherwise, Harold. This is my industry.
Broadcast (radio and TV) and DTH / DTU sat services are effecient means of distribution because they scale
No, they don’t scale. In fact, each are regulated within a specific band of frequencies they can operate in, which definitely limits their ability to offer services.
This service is more prone to “bandwidth restrictions” if every damn radio station wanted to utilize this system as a distribution platform.
And in a world where customers demand playlists, by telling customers “We can’t offer this, so just shut the hell up and pay us!” isn’t good business. It will force (as the article denotes) customers to find alternatives which give them what they want.
As for your 100 songs, 500 songs, 1000 song example, all you are showing is that people have learned to shoplift better.
Fool. It’s amazing you see “shoplifter” where I see consumers who can’t afford to pay for all the content they want.
Such idiocy. If you were a business who lost these customers at $1 a song, you deserve to close.
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http://www.quillstorm.com/QuillStorm.png
(my logo, so no copyright infringement concerns needed)
I dare you to download this image until supply runs out. Good luck with that.
I wouldn’t do it because it might be considered a DOS attack, but making yoru server cry uncle wouldn’t be hard. Further, your service provider doesn’t have an unlimited amount of bandwidth. Considering your running IIS, well, I suspect that would stop accepting connections long before you ran out of actual connectivity.
I will agree that costs of maintenance is not free, but to sit there and think people should overpay for the content to cover costs is bull, Harold. SERVICE pays for this, not the content. It is impossible to corner an infinite supply. Or do you totally ignore the availability of sites offering digital content? Pirated or not, this proves the bolded statement.
Again, a misnomer – the supply isn’t infinite, it is near infinite as far as most end users can tell. But you can ask Mike here what they pay in bandwidth just to keep this site up and running, and he will tell you it isn’t that expensive, but it isn’t free. It’s certainly cheaper than it was 15 years ago. So downloads aren’t free, the costs are just forgotten because we don’t connect what we pay to what we get.
Broadcast (radio and TV) and DTH / DTU sat services are effecient means of distribution because they scale
No, they don’t scale. In fact, each are regulated within a specific band of frequencies they can operate in, which definitely limits their ability to offer services.
You missed the point entirely. If you make a steam online, and 1 person listens, it takes 1 connection. Add 10 people, you need 11 seperate connections. Every time you add a listener, you need another connection. Broadcast doesn’t need that – the equipment required to service 1 million listeners is exactly the same as 1, that is scaling.
No broadcast can’t scale the way you suggest (infinite number of channels for infinite numbers of people). That’s the trade off. Radio is free for the taking, personalized one on one streaming is not. It’s just the way things go.
Fool. It’s amazing you see “shoplifter” where I see consumers who can’t afford to pay for all the content they want.
I want a ferrari and a lear jet, I can’t afford to pay for them. Should I have them anyway? Stealing is stealing, doesn’t matter what you stole, if you have it without permission and without rights, it’s still stealing. You may look at it as a Robin Hood mentality, I just think of it as petty crook hoods. Just dressed up nice and hidden behind guys who spew on about the infinite.
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I wouldn’t do it because it might be considered a DOS attack, but making yoru server cry uncle wouldn’t be hard. Further, your service provider doesn’t have an unlimited amount of bandwidth.
Try it. I’m sure, if you’re correct, the server would stop because the request came from the same IP address, not due to the number of requests.
Since you skipped the point, now that this image is out there, it can now offset ONE server’s demand by simply copying it to another.
Thus, destroying your defense about server load.
But given you defend the 1 server = 1 and only method of getting digital content, it’s no wonder you feel this way.
the supply isn’t infinite
Supply is infinite. Why are you constantly comparing the product with the distribution method? No distribution is free, I’ll give you that, but it’s much, much less expensive than shilling out plastic discs.
If digital distribution was truly that expensive, iTunes and Amazon would stop selling digital content.
Think, please.
Broadcast doesn’t need that – the equipment required to service 1 million listeners is exactly the same as 1.
Fine, if you want to discuss costs of distribution, let’s do that.
There’s the cost of owning the receiver (a specialized piece of equipment required to receive the signal).
There’s the cost of sending the signal from earth, to the satellite, to redistribute. In your terms, electrical power.
There’s the cost of maintaining satellite control. Even geosync satellites need monitoring to ensure they’re in the proper orbit.
I’ll stop here, because as you can clearly see, this is extremely far more expensive than any web server (or even 10 servers for that matter) maintenance + bandwidth distributing the same damn digital content.
I want a ferrari and a lear jet, I can’t afford to pay for them. Should I have them anyway? Stealing is stealing, doesn’t matter what you stole, if you have it without permission and without rights, it’s still stealing.
Again, you have such foolish notions of understanding the difference between a finite supply and an infinite one.
The Ferrari and Lear Jet are FINITE in supply. There’s only so many one can buy. Even new models make old ones a finite supply.
But you can’t copy a Ferrari, now can you? If you went to the showroom, and took the car, it’s gone. NO ONE ELSE CAN ACCESS THAT PRODUCT.
As my logo demonstrates, anyone can have it. ANYONE. It can satisfy the demand of every human on this planet because its supply will never run out. Ever.
I’m beginning to understand why you are so uptight over the $0.00 cost model, and that’s because you have no firm grasp between an infinite supply, a finite supply, and distribution costs.
Do us all a favor and educate yourself, please. Without these basic fundamentals, none of your statements defending the current models will have any merit.
It just makes you look completely ignorant when trying to use “facts” in this misleading way.
Wait. You work in a distribution industry, don’t you? Because you sure like to spin the numbers to favor your argument against piracy.
So, what company do you work for? I understand if you don’t want to say. It’s bad enough your job is on the line due to a changing market.
Getting fired now will only take away your pirated profits of overcharging consumers.
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Haha. My job? I work for myself, and do what I like. I don’t currently work in music or in movies (although I have credits in both industries). And no, I am not planning to fire myself any time soon.
You answered my point for me completely – digital distibution isn’t infinite or unlimited. Your server has a limit. Adding more servers raises the limit, but the limit is there (and as a side note, IIS is a terrible webserver, which means you are more limited than most). There are absolute limits all over the place, just none that you want to accept as relevant. If you add servers, you add cost. At what point is the cost not free?
As for your long discussion of costs of sat or even broadcast radio, well, here’s the difference: ALL of those costs (except the receiver itself) is at the cost of the broadcaster, not the receiver. If I want to listen to FM radio today, I can do so for about $10 total investment, and listen to it for life (until the receiver dies). heck, I could get one of those wind up AM receivers and I wouldn’t even pay electricity. From the broadcast side, the costs of sat are fixed, and the potential infinite. The digital world? The costs escalate directly in proportion to the number of users, and continues to increase as you add users.
My internet bill, on the other hand, well, I pay that every month. But because I didn’t pay it specifically to last.fm,I mistakenly think their service is free for me. It isn’t, I am subscribing, but in a different manner.
The reality? the sat broadcast is an infinite resource, and your digital server internet deal isn’t. the sat company can service everyone in the nation for exactly the same costs as serving one. Nothing on the internet can come close to that. What you are trading off is the ability to tailor the content online for each individual user, where as the sat is broadcast with a limited (hundreds) of choices.
But in all of this lies the truth: the internet isn’t infinite. The cost isn’t zero, and it never scales down to near enough to zero. So it isn’t infinite at all.
Also, Finite or infinte supply isn’t relevant when talking about ownership – if you didn’t pay for it but should have, you don’t own it. Ferrari or film, Lear jet or the latest hit song, the reality is exactly the same. You are trying to make a difference between easily and not so easily reproduced goods. It’s a misdirection, a way of explaining away theft of services or goods on a grand scale.
Here’s another way to look at it: Directv broadcasts encoded signals all over north america, and charges $x for the rights to decode it each month. However, it is easy enough to buy a cheaper FTA receiver and using hacker cards, to receive the signal for free. Now, is that stealing or not? After all, their signal is infinite, not like decoding it deprived them of their original copy or anything. No animals were hurt when I decoded it without paying. Is that or is that not theft?
In the end, it’s all a little misleading, because it fails to do what all good business should do: Follow the money. Mike continues to post up examples of this or that doing well for this or that artist, but never addressed the real question: Where will the “more” money be made. If the music business and it’s reported 2007 earning of 10 billion disappear tomorrow, where will that 10 billion land? With music diminished to a valueless infinite product, and so many other potential uses for those entertainment dollars, is it not likely to think that the 10 billion will end up spent on better gaming consoles or vactions or something else? I have read a fair bit of this site, and I still don’t see the place where it says “and the 10 billion goes from record sales to ticket sales” in a meaningful way. I would say it is just as likely that a big chunk of that 10 billion leaves the music business altogether and goes somewhere else. So rather than chase new models for the music business, perhaps it’s better to look at new ways to seperate people from their cash – after all, that’s business.
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While I agree with your general argument Miles, WH is actually correct for once in the area of scaling. He isn’t saying that it costs less to broadcast, he is saying that the costs are essentially fixed. If you decide to broadcast, your costs are the same for a given area of coverage regardless of how many listeners are tuned in. Streaming radio requires more and more resources as the listener count goes up, and past a certain point you then need to add more servers, more pipe, more servers to coordinate those servers for load balancing, etc.
The other related advantage that broadcast has in this respect, is that the listener count can spike unexpectedly with no adverse effects on other listeners. If I were listening to talk radio and something exciting happened, and I called all my friends, they called all their friends, etc., and the whole city started listening all at once – it would not affect any users.
If the same thing happened on an internet stream, it would fold up and fry in a matter of minutes. The vast majority of internet radio stations support less than 100 connections on low quality, and maybe 50 connections at higher bitrates.
Distributing the distribution load by using .torrent files and such is great for everyone, but cannot work for live content. Hopefully someone will find a way to make streaming viable before they find a way to make in-vehicle broadband accessible.
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As a Cisco Certified Network Professional I find your argument to be both more retarded than a hatful of periwinkles and more devoid of intelligence than two bags of smashed assholes.
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WH, this comment doesn’t make any sense. There is large amounts of unused fiber sitting out there not even tapped, anyone who has worked directly in the industry can tell you that. “Bigger Pipes” issues come into neighborhood choke points when distributing the internet, but these are widely unmodified and left to sit there until they break and customers currently pay for the out dated hardware sitting there. Typically something other than internet traffic will break these things down, like a power transformer that was located next to the node, bad weather, etc. Cable companies spend more money giving free tech support to “Joe Blow” asking why his toaster isn’t getting internet access. Or why they can’t get email when the power is out in their house. If anything they should start charging people by the minute for stupid tech support calls to generate revenue. Network providers of hard wire internet make plenty of money since maintenance of the actual hardware is so low, the problem is the initial setup.
There is no way 25% of people can magically switch to electric cars overnight unless A LOT of factories switch to electric cars and some how 25% of the people in California buy them up real quick. As you defuse your own silly comment more money will go into the grid to increase the capacity… and even then the car chargers are being designed to be controlled by the electric companies to charge the cars during times off times when the grid isn’t normally being utilized so the companies will have more than enough time to adjust through growing demand.
It’s obvious that everyone doesn’t want it for “FREE!” it’s a mistake that crazy capitalists and anarchists make all the time. There are dozens of examples in techdirt itself of people paying for things, even when it doesn’t make sense to… off the top of my head I can think of World of Warcraft. A subscription service that costs quite a bit of money but yet over 1% of the planet population pay for it every month even though there are free servers out there.
I suggest you don’t need to hold you breath because the world you wish for is already here. Just stop hating so much and embrace the world for what it is.
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It isn’t the fibre in the middle of the desert that is the issue (although it is at times), but rather when happens between your ISP’s peering points and your computer. The same discussion comes up when it comes to traffic shaping and bandwidth caps. Your net connection speed is no indication of the true bandwidth or network coverage available.
Your personal connection (say 10mbps) goes to a central, where it joins 100 or 1000 other 10mpbs connections to share a 100mpbs connection where it joins hundreds or even thousands of other similar nodes, which all in turn share a number of connections. So now, as long as you are all web surfing and spending a good portion of the time doing nothing (or typing, which uses no bandwidth), there is plenty for everyone.
The problem is clearer when you hit TV: If you replaced TV with an entirely on demand system, and 50% of your neighboorhood was watching HD TV via the internet, the demand of bandwidth would be insane. 5mbps per household – it doesn’t take long to fill even a 1 gig connection, and it isn’t that much further to capture 20 gig.
In a city of 2 million people with 50% of the people watching TV, do the math: that would be something like 5000 gigs of connectivity required. Considering that most ISPs are peering less than 100 gigs total, you can see where this would fall down.
Worse yet, out of those 1 million people watching, half of them are watching the SAME football game. Now it’s not only bandwidth greedy, but massively wasteful of network resources as well.
As for WoW, I suspect if the free servers were just as fast and as well publicized as P2P music downloads are, that the WoW business model would expire pretty rapidly. The only reason it isn’t happening is because there is no way to avoid the cost of bandwidth to run the servers. If they could P2P or otherwise make it distributed, you know it would go that way in an instant.
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Seriously, Weird Harold you are amazing. Your ability to create rebuttals so quickly is staggering. You are some sort of literary monster. You should make a website that you blog on exactly everything that techdirt does just with your personal spin on it.
XM has gone right into the crapper since the merger. Lately I find myself listening to XM less and less because they’ve turned into “Clear Channel From The Stars.” Every station plays the same rotation day in and day out and even the comedy channels have gotten to where if you listen to them for a week you’ve heard everything they’ve got to play. I’m not alone on this either: everyone I know who has either Sirius or XM has had the same complaint. That and the fact that all the popular stations have as many commercial breaks now as regular radio.
I am probably going to dump XM when my subscription runs out in a few months. I had Sirius previously and was about to drop it anyway when we bought a new car that had XM radio built-in.
If SiriusXM want to pull their collective asses out of the fire they need to stop pissing money away on Howard Stern and other celebrities who eat up a huge chunk of their operating budget. Right now Sirius|XM reminds me of when ten years ago we were saying, “hey, remember when MTV showed music videos?”
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While I agree with the comments about pissing money away on celebrities like Oprah, Martha Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, etc. Howard Stern is the only one I would say is the best thing they have & the subscriber growth rate proves it. He has paid for himself over & over. At least he puts a lot of value into his two stations. He undestands what good radio is.
But please explain about commercial breaks being equal to regular radio I don’t see it. On the music channels there are zero commercials. Talk stations yes there are commercials but the DJ does need to take a break every once in a while & Sirius is in the hole so they do need to generate some extra money.
Also on some of the stations they do play the same rotation of songs those are those stations for those who like the way radio generates playlist but if you listen to some of the more obscure music channels they play a very unique playlist all of they time.
Who listens to some dumb ass who paid to have his nuts cut off ??
Old news bro. It’s already been confirmed by SiriusBuzz that’s the
original article’s author is hiding behind a media company that will
be in direct competition with SiriusXM. It’s just another calculated
trash piece.
see: http://siriusbuzz.com/sirius-xms-british-invasion.php
To me satellite radio is nothing more than niche product. The only person I can possibly see using it would be long distance truckers. Anyone who goes home each night could simply refill their portable media players and go back out the next day. (But then again, even a truck could bring a laptop with him or her.)
The worst thing about XM (my dad has it) is that it nickels and dimes the customer. For my dad to get a portable player, he’d have to pay an additional amount each month (I think it was 7 dollars a month several years ago) to use the very same service he was already paying for. Why should he have to pay twice to use the same service?!
My dad decided not to get the portable player but stuck with the service. There are plenty of bizarre niche talk shows that my dad loves.
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The same reason cable charges you at least $5 dollars for each reciever you have after the first one.
All this doom and gloom is the kind of publicity that has not only knocked down Sirius-Xm but the whole economy of the world in relatively short period of time. It is irresponsible for one writer and a former founder to be so sure of what might happen in the future through their crystal ball. The negativity and vague projections might be disseminated for other reasons…
Shut the hell up already….
Sincerely submitted.
When I had XM radio it was great. Huge playlists, no announcer, no commercials. When they merged with Sirius the rate went up, there were commercials, the songs got repeated a lot, and they hired annoying announcers to basically make XM the same as FM radio.
So as soon as my subscription expires, I’m throwing my receiver away. Sirius destroyed XM.
Re: Re:
I disagree. It wasn’t Sirius that destroyed XM, it was the merger. I LOVED Sirius pre-merger. Then, after the merger, not only were there commercials, they ditched a lot of my favorite music channels and had the announcers talk right over the music. AND the kicker: most of the content is edited now. I hate it, and originally thought it was XM that destroyed Sirius, but I’ve been talking to a lot of users and after the merger, the company implemented a lot of practices that did not come from either original company. I dropped my subscription, but my hubby refuses to drop his until Howard Stern retires. And after that, I’m afraid that the satellite radio era will be over, because no one is happy with their current service.
Re: Re:
What commercials??? The only commercials they have are on talk channels. Actually XM did have commercials on some of their music stations. That is why they had to drop zero commercial advertising.
But personally, I like some of the DJs or announcers (but only some, there are a lot of annoying ones). They add a lot of knowledge to what you are listening to.
Siri
This is whats wrong with this effing country…any a-hole can say what they want to maipulate a stock and the effed up media reports it like some kinda real news. For one I think media in this country should have some kinda censorship. Just like the banks they have shown they can’t be trusted to govern themselves. This country suxs anymore!!! oh yes, I was born in the USA
Boots, DE
Re: Siri
Yes…let’s spur on our flight to fascism hastily. We’re already going that direction so WHY NOT?
comments on siri
This note has been out for days -it means nothing to sirius-sirius is a satellite radio company with great content-get real its old means nothing news-sirius has 19 million customers and is a 2 billion dollar revenue company- growing
Re: comments on siri
Did you even pass English class? I can not make out heads or tails of what you said.
Re: comments on siri
i guess you can enter Techdirt comments by telegram now?
It comes back to content, content, content. There is free TV, who here ONLY watches that?!!! This is just another negative spin by RBA. Go SiriusXM!!!
Re: Re:
*raises hand*
About the only other TV-linked content I get is The Daily Show, and that I get via Hulu.
Sirius has been screwed for the last 6 months, I don’t know where the founder has been, but, I think he’s a little late with his or her call. Give it a rest, this co. is not going anywhere, internet radio, just like terrestrial radio is a vast wasteland. Internet radio on the go,(car,etc) is not free, wifi is not widely available yet, even if it does become widely available, do you really think there going to just give it away, somebody has to pay for it. Royalties are going to increase, internet radio can not provide a free service and pay the fees, it’s radio not video, you don’t need to stare at your computer screen, how would they advertise? If you do it through commercials, what’s the point, that’s the reason people pay for sirius, commercial free. Look at HD radio, they couldn’t give it away, so, in conclusion, sirius is not screwed, maybe in the end the shareholders will be (I doubt it,but you never know), but the service will go on. Television is free with rabbit ears, it’s also all over the internet, for free(almost), so why are people still getting ripped off by cable and sat.t.v. Co’s ? Ask the founder for an answer to that!!
iPhone
iPhone 3G…check
Pandora app…check
youtube favorites…check
mp3’s stored on phone…check
hmmm…
raise revenue
Do what cable TV had to do to raise revenue after it first came out.Get more commercials,get more revenue, and save the stock holders.
Re: raise revenue
See, that’s seems to be the problem. XM didn’t have commercials but Sirius does. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to pay a subscription to listen to commercials.
Re: Re: raise revenue
They only have it for talk shows. And even then, commercials are very short. But if you think about it, talk show hosts need a break, so it is a good opportunity to sell advertising and for listeners to learn of new products and services that are essential.
Re: Re: Re: raise revenue
“and for listeners to learn of new products and services that are essential.”
really? essential? what flavor of crack do you prefer?
Re: Re: Re: raise revenue
That’s a cop-out. Commercials are annoying to everyone. If they want to take a break then they can put sound-bytes from related archived shows they did or comedy or something.
I got the Internet SiriusXM for my wife. She does not listen to anything else. The content is awesome, music is 100% commercial free, comedy channels are a nice change, and of course Howard. Awesome service, worth ever penny.
SIRI founder
You make a habit of releasing what everyone else released two days ago. Give us current stuff please. Unless maybe it is news – because this apparently disgruntled founder says it every day.
these writers are pretty lousy
In the past month this article has been done by every writer that evidently can not come up with their own article you all just alter it a bit its an Old article why not go talk to that Martine person now !!!!! these copycat writers I really hope they do not get paid!!!
Everyone is going to want TV in their car. As far as I know SIRIS is going to be the only one to provide it. I would pay $ 20.00 a month to keep the kids in the back seat occupied.
about time
I went with them along time ago. Bought the radio, they try to lock you into a contract. It took me three months to get them to stop sending me bills. If the radio’s worked better I woudl have stayed with them. I bought the setup for in my home, and it worked fien the first month. Second month I could only get a signal for an hour a day. Shortwave is better unless you want it in the car. LOL
*cue intern David voice*
“WHOA NOOOOO!!”
the real reasons Sirius is tanking
Blaming internet radio, podcasts and portable music players is specious. The percentage of the population who possess the savvy to avail themselves of these services is miniscule. Even for those who can, refreshing content on a portable device for a daily commute is a painful exercise.
Here’s why satellite radio is in trouble:
-Poor sound quality. The bandwidth shell game ensures that the big revenue generators like Stern sound great, but many music stations sound like low quality .mp3
-Continually changing channel lineups. In my 3 years as a Sirius subscriber, many of my favorite channels were whisked away with little to no notice. Many were replaced with single artist channels. Do we really need 24/7 Sinatra and Springsteen? They think so. The merger also mucked up the channel lineup.
-Economy. New cars are rotting on lots. Sirius/XM has lost the majority of their new subscriber base. Many people are also cutting back on “luxuries” like satellite radio.
-The merger also made many older receivers obsolete or at least unable to receive certain channels.
-They just cut free streaming unless you signed up for an extended contracting. Way to further alienate your dwindling subscriber base.
Content is still the key
I’ve been a Sirius subscriber for a lot of years now and I love it. They have great content and their internet streaming works great. The satellites are expensive and probably will be the eventual downfall of the company. But having that much talent and original content is something no internet radio company has shown me yet. Podcasts are ok, but I want up to date live content talking about breaking events, not to download something today, listen to it tomorrow and they’re talking about stuff that happened a few days ago.
I’m sticking with Sirius until its dead (or they fire the hosts I like)!
Any comment on the huge increase per share or does SIRI just suck?
Old CEO badmouthing job fired from = agenda & motive!
Huge Stock gains / by the risk = Profit per share!
Gigantic volume mover = easy to sell up or down!
I jumped on at the bottom and I thank all the doomsayers for driving the stock prices down. My profits are over 500% to bad none of you opinionated stiffs recommended to you paid clients to jump on the day Liberty bailed SIRI out you would be Heroes instead of ZEROS.
Basic fact, the auto industry will be bailed out and recover, too much at stake for the US economy to let it fall. That being said; every auto manufacture installs Sirius XM radios in their autos, high conversion rates, 19-million paying consumers times $12.95 = $3-billion per year and that is a long cry from doomed.
They said don’t by Bank America when it dropped to $2.50 few weeks ago look yesterday it was around $7.50 per share good thing I didn’t buy that one I might have made a huge profit.
NUFF SAID!
Of course they were going to fail. Most car stereos require you to purchase a receiver which depending on the model is around 200 bucks. Then you have to pay the monthly fee. They should have made the receivers affordable to start with. More people would have tried it initially and got hooked. Also like any other company I’m sure they are grossly mismanaged. Companies get in these situations because their focus is on shareholders and not customers.
SIRI XM
I HAVE HEARD NOTHING BUT POSITVE COMMENTS FROM PEOPLE THAT HAVE SIRI RADIO. THE DAY TRIPPERS KEEP DOING A NUMBER ON THE STOCK, THAT DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACT THAT PEOPLE LOVE THE AVAILABILITY OF SEAMLESS RADIO AND I THINK THE DISGRUNTLED PREVIOUS OWNER WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT GO DOWN AND IS OF THE ATTITUDE OF A RECLUSE.
I have had Sirius radio since Howard went there. I have been happy with it until recently. With the merge they got rid of the punk channel, boombox, and now starting this weekend they got rid of the metal channel to play nothing but Metallica 24/7 for month. It was irritating they put 24/7 AC/DC for a few months on the punk channel before changing it to an all acoustic channel. So other then Howard they got rid of the 3 stations I listened to the most. They are about to lose my two subscriptions.
this article was originally posted by a competitor and has since been disproved it has been run about a billion times since then and i don’t know why. Most likely by media outlets with some affiliation to terrestrial radio or alike
Current customers still getting screwed
As a subscriber for over 4 years, XM just keeps giving me more reasons to hate them. Not only have the subscription prices gone up since the merger (which they said would not happen for at least two years), but XM radio online is no longer free.
They even said we could keep listening to XM online until the end of our current contract, but what they didn’t tell us was that it would be downgraded to the crappy sound quality. I am pretty sure I paid for free high quality internet radio when I signed up.
XM is unfortunately going to die because they care about money more than their customers. You can say all you want about them needing the money, but if you piss your customers off, good luck staying in business.
Affordable recievers?
Hey, Gooner. New autos have it built into the stereo so they don’t charge you for installing anything, as fare as the high costs maybe you should try Radio Shack I think the recievers are $29.00 this week. If you cant afford get a loan, if you can’t get a loan find a clue.
Content is what matters
I loved Sirius at first. It covered a lot of the niche musical genres that terrestrial radio ignores. Bit by bit, I have seen these niche channels disappear, to be replaced with more generic channels or with single-artist channels covering acts that are already in heavy rotation on my local radio stations. I don’t need a channel dedicated to Springsteen, Metallica, or AC/DC. I’d bet money one of them is playing on my local radio right now. This trend has only gotten worse with the merger.
It still beats 99% of my local radio stations, which are truly worthless. I feel like I’m getting less and less value for my dollar though, (Pay extra for an internet stream? Really?) so I will probably be canceling service on both of my receivers when my contracts are up. I’ve written Sirius about this many times and just don’t get a good feeling about dealing with them.
I think there is a market for providing a very diverse set of musical options. I’m certainly willing to pay for it. It just doesn’t seem like SiriusXM cares to be in that business anymore.
WRONG !!!, R-miles Bad
Are you kidding ?? only $500 year on CD’s…
In the 80’s & 90’s, it was very common to buy 1 or 2 cd’s per week and they were about $15 each. Pretty easy to reach $500. Those were boom times and that cost was nothing compared to the $3 per minute for Cell Phone use and $2500 for a 286 machine with 128K of memory. Not to mention the amount of $$$ spent on “mind enhancements”. People used to spend money on Quality Analog systems, CD’s were (and still are) Junk , but people got used to the lower quality sound and no matter how good your stereo was it could only sound as good as the CD itself. Then once people got used to “JUNK” they could compress the junk to “MP3” and it sounded even worse but it was easy & cheap and easy to trade. so people got used to that. I miss the days of when music was played by real musicians and not sampled, and re-sampled, mono-tone rap driven, headphone oriented crap.
“Just my opinion I could be wrong”
But I’m not.
xm radio
This company will strive and survive I have total confidence that this company wiil make it over 4.00 a share again
y are you keeping on posting the same s!!!!! siri will be back to 4.00 IN 30 DAYS
for serius?
If Sirius could open up it’s satellite technology to allow people to stream, for example Pandora, radio from the web in an integrated car stereo, they’d get a ton of subscribers. I don’t know anything about their bandwidth capabilities, but it seems like the whole satellite radio mechanism could serve as a go-everywhere link to putting the internet in everyone’s car. Which will happen sooner or later. Maybe it’s not as cost effective as putting up 3G networks all over the country, but there should be a time window of opportunity for them, no?
Threading gets tight, so...
Haha. My job? I work for myself, and do what I like. I don’t currently work in music or in movies (although I have credits in both industries). And no, I am not planning to fire myself any time soon.
Selling on eBay, are you? Because you don’t seem to me in having essential business skills to survive, especially if you can’t even determine the difference between product and distribution.
digital distibution isn’t infinite or unlimited. (stripped the rest of the crap)
In the current distribution model, you’re absolutely right because every damn industry wants to tell you where to go and download.
But P2P systems proves without a shadow of a doubt scalability is infinite because, based on demand, people will open and share the song.
Don’t believe me? Read this:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/17/even-free-cant-compete-with-music-piracy/
Proof that even Radiohead’s server costs were instantly reduced because of sharing.
Dude, I keep telling you, this is my industry. Don’t you dare try to tell me the costs are so high, it can’t be done.
It’s called file sharing, not file cornering.
Get it now?
ALL of those costs (except the receiver itself) is at the cost of the broadcaster, not the receiver.
I’ll keep this in mind the next time users have to pay their contracted, monthly fee.
While I get your purpose of distribution via broadcast, you’re still missing the point that it is based on a controlled distribution method.
When you can take that FM radio and listen to a Sirius broadcast, come back to me.
The digital world? The costs escalate directly in proportion to the number of users, and continues to increase as you add users.
Really? Are you done downloading my image in search of that finite supply amount?
Cost to me: $0.00. Already paid for.
Now granted, the hosting site where the image resides is a shared community, but had I been a business to offer services for $0.00 digital content, I would have my own server, with unlimited restrictions in bandwidth.
But again, people would share, taking the load off my server.
The reality? the sat broadcast is an infinite resource, and your digital server internet deal isn’t.
Okay, you’re the one not reading the article. This resource only exists if consumer demand warrants it. Once subscription costs no longer cover the infinite broadcast spectrum you so love, boom…. no broadcast at all.
And you are in business for yourself? Given you’re here most of the time, customer base seems pretty thin.
Starts to explain quite a bit, WH.
But in all of this lies the truth: the internet isn’t infinite. The cost isn’t zero, and it never scales down to near enough to zero. So it isn’t infinite at all.
But yet, every day, people manage to give away $0.00 websites all while covering these so-called costs. Whether these sites be hosted in a serverfarm (such as mine) or individually run, costs seem to be driving down to $0.00 to me.
Notice I said DRIVING DOWN TO, not at. Don’t even think about using this as rebuttal to your crap notion of business operation.
if you didn’t pay for it but should have, you don’t own it.
Idiot. If you buy it, and have it, you still don’t own it.
Copyright insists this be true.
Otherwise, genius, piracy wouldn’t be a damn issue now, would it?
Ferrari or film, Lear jet or the latest hit song, the reality is exactly the same. You are trying to make a difference between easily and not so easily reproduced goods. It’s a misdirection, a way of explaining away theft of services or goods on a grand scale.
AHAHAHAHA! OMG, my coworkers are staring. I literally laughed out loud with this one.
I can’t even reply to this stupid remark (but I will on your next reply).
*tears up laughing*
However, it is easy enough to buy a cheaper FTA receiver and using hacker cards, to receive the signal for free. Now, is that stealing or not?
Nope. Because the digital content is free. The monthly fee people pay is for the service, tech support, etc.
Oh, and yes, the bullshit licensing fees demanded by the industry requiring payment so we can enjoy their ad filled crap called content.
😉
(had to say it)
Is that or is that not theft?
Nope, it isn’t, especially since no animal was hurt in the processes. You can’t steal an infinite source. I’m still waiting for you to try with my image download example.
Mike continues to post up examples of this or that doing well for this or that artist, but never addressed the real question: Where will the “more” money be made.
And why the hell should we give “more” money when everyone seems to be bitching about giving back money to the artist?
No damn offense to any artist out there, but if your purpose in life is to be a multimillionaire for singing off key, go screw yourself. I’ll support your cost of living, but I’m not going to support your greed.
It’s bad enough we consumers shell out more and more money to artists we are forced to choose upon to support, but to think we can pay everyone is insulting to us. $1 per song? Getting “disheartened” because we decide not to pay $5 for an album? Sounds of greed to me, so I wouldn’t pay you anyway.
There, Harold. I think I sum up quite a few customer feelings with that statement. Go read my 100, 500, 1000 post again.
If the music business and it’s reported 2007 earning of 10 billion disappear tomorrow, where will that 10 billion land?
This $10 billion part of that “more” statement you just made?
If so, bye bye. It’s gone. Customers don’t want to pay it.
If this $10 billion went directly to artists involved? I’d have to say Trent Reznor, Radiohead, and other musicians proved there is MUCH MORE to be made by selling directly.
Meh. Spin that anyway you want.
With music diminished to a valueless infinite product, and so many other potential uses for those entertainment dollars, is it not likely to think that the 10 billion will end up spent on better gaming consoles or vactions or something else?
Actually, if you want the truth, I will say that $10 billion gets spread around to many, many more artists.
So yes, Britney Spears earns $3 million less of $5 million next year, but 10,000 new bands get a piece of that new distributed $3 million.
Sounds like a fantastic plan. No ISP tax needed. No costs of bandwidth required, as music will be freely distributed by the fans. No overpriced markup from distributors looking to treat customers like thieves, forcing them to buy a copy of the same song to play in 3 devices.
In fact, sounds to me this levels the playing field for artists who want our money. All use the same distribution method. All have their own business models.
And here’s the best part: It actually forces artists to get off their damn asses to promote themselves, instead of letting my radio station do their damn work.
🙂
I would say it is just as likely that a big chunk of that 10 billion leaves the music business altogether and goes somewhere else.
You’re 100% correct, the way it should be. This way, people can try new things, buy new things, without having to be forced to buy plastic discs or watch 10×10 pixel web streams.
Hell, Harold! They may even take some of that $10 billion and support your own business! Ever think of that?
Of course not. Narrow-minded people rarely have time to broaden their mind.
😛
So rather than chase new models for the music business, perhaps it’s better to look at new ways to seperate people from their cash – after all, that’s business.
So, you don’t think this is true when an industry states:
“Buy our movie for your DVD player, but if you want to watch in on your PSP and your iPod, you have to pay again two more times.”
Same with music.
Oh, but wait! Let’s go after anyone who has a superbowl party with more than 15 guests!
Ah, but then let’s also support the newspaper industry on the stupid pay-per-read mentality!!!
So, Harold, the damn industry is already using the “separate people from their cash” business model.
With all your posts, I don’t believe you’ve convinced a single person your stance in defending the distributor business model.
Why is that?
Re: Threading gets tight, so...
I agree in every way man. W.H. ain’t a musician or a technician but he acts like both. He’s not even a good debator (logical fallacies and whatnot).
Look at my band. Mystic Slaughterbeast is totally upstart, we refuse record labels and promote ourselves. All of our music is free in high quality and yet, somehow, we make money. Yeah, it’s called donations. And all that money we get in donations goes right back to the fans by making more music or upgrading our equipment.
The problem is greedy fuckin artists these days. No one wants to make music for music’s sake. Everyone wants to make music for money. This is an art, people, not a hollow skill. This ain’t something you take to a job, this is a method to create something wonderful. Making our fans part with their money would grieve us. I don’t see how mainstream artists even sleep at night.
Satellite
Who would ever comes out say they are screwed, lol; just bad business all together, once again the media controlling stock activity, I for one believe that Siri has the capacity to control the Internet and media outright on the fact that it owns satellites that orbit the earth right now! do you understand the capabilities?
If any companies that wants to expand into a global media super giant and understand how significant these billion dollar pieces of equipment can revolutionize the world as we know it !!!! does anyone understand???
I’ll take another 50,000 shares now get off your ass and let the money rain Siriously.
plus in any global catastrophe this would be the only center for information God forbid, Steve jobs should see the potential West Coast-East Coast-Space that’s a hell of a triangle
I REALLY PUT A LOT OF WEIGHT BEHIND MARTINE OR IS THAT MARTY’S COMMENTS… NOT
THIS GUY/GAL IS OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE
too bad
It’s too bad satellite radio is going down the pooper.
It’s the only thing that saved my sanity on the drive to Yellowstone.
Streaming wouldn’t have worked since there’s no cell coverage in many places.
Dish Network
When it come right down to it Ergen knows that he’s getting all Sirius’s and XM’s satellites at a discount because of the recent shift in the economy as well as Sirius 1 billion dollar dept coming due not only that but Howard Stern making unfair deals with Sirius, gambling that they would pay him to jump on board but in fact he would have come for substantially less, XM was doing OK getting subscribers without him , too bad XM was not acquired earlier and Stern would have come for free saving Sirius 500 million, anything to get away from censored terrestrial radio! “a Howard” You freaking con, your no better that Bernie Madoff lmao
but the future uncertain unless Sirius uses its Satellites more wisely I can see them turning a huge profit in the near future being a global media center. I’m buying 50,000 shares tomorrow. Piss off
Questionable business model
If I lived in one of the central states and didn’t go any distance away from home I would have subscribed long ago. But I’m in a border state. We’re not given any option of listening to Canadian news, for example. Nor is a Canadian subscriber allowed to hear US news on Sirius, not even when he’s right plumb in the middle of the country like Kansas City of Memphis.
That’s a very poor business model IMO, reducing its value by 50%. If we were given 50% off to suffer this — because we’re essentially need two subscriptions, one Canadian and one American, I’d subscribe.
But as long as the want to maintain their status quo, so will I — keep my money in my pocket and get my news and entertainment elsewhere.
VRP
Free 3 mth service not a mth
My daughter purchased a Sirius radio fm Radio Shack for Xmas for her dad. When she purchased the equipment, it was free service for three months. We decided to have it installed March 2009. It has not been hardly a month. They are sending us a bill. My husband and I called the company. It was somebody from India. He told us in order to get free 3 mth service. We have to give him a credit card number. He was giving us the going around about giving him creadit card number. Asked for Manager. Same thing if he were the manager.We were planning to test it out for 3 mths to see if its okay. After three months, we will make the decision not the company.It is a waste of time calling the company. Is there someone that we can talk to about this scam?
Re: Free 3 mth service not a mth
WHY Buy a sirius radio and then avoid paying for the service , is the real question here ??