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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

SiriusXM is dying, if not already dead. Why do I need satellite radio when I can just listen to a podcast, or preload a bunch of music on my phone? Or just stream? 10 years ago, you could still do these things, but it was harder or very expensive. Now, you just open an app on your unlimited data phone, plug in the aux cable, and start driving.

So this purchase is about Sirius re-entering the market. I think they'll pivot pandora to be more self-serve and they'll merge the good things people liked about sirius (comedy, shock jocks) with the good things people liked about pandora (choice, freemium)

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"Why do I need satellite radio"

I'll answer my myself: For my car(s). SiriusXM just ... works. No pairing, no bluetooth on/off dance, no cables, no unpairing my wife's phone, no setting my car radio's source, Internet connection or not ... it just works. The only other time I listen to "satellite" radio is in my office, streaming from my Chromebook - which is just silly but don't judge me.

This just sounds like a problem with your car's stereo. For me, I get in the car, plug my phone in (always have a car-only charger cable), press "Media" on the dash, and it picks up whatever was playing on my phone.

I don't have sirius built into my car, I think this is an american car thing (did sirius pay them buckets of money for this integration? methinks so). If I wanted it, I'd have to have a ugly receiver taped somewhere on my dash.

*Multiple cars. High tech, low tech doesn't matter - it's a shit show. You know what still works? FM radio.

You must have a great local radio market, then. I wouldn't consider any of my local FM stations to be "working" radio.

It actually rebounded (post Internet era) and exploded locally (I live 1.5 hours from Boston). I listen to NPR, a top 40 station when the kids are in the car, and there's a local rock station that's just as good as any SiriusXM channel (the kids aren't wild about that one). More commercials sure, but sometimes you luck out and your 5-10 min car ride has tunes the whole time.

This isn't just an American car thing. My past two Japanese vehicles and two German vehicles had SiriusXM built into the radio.

I've had Sirius for

bugs me is that

drive under a tree or overpass. Seriously, having

really bugs me.

LTE

Does that too

I've had very few buffering issues with Spotify via LTE over the years when compared the constant dropouts from my SiriusXM in my various cars that have had this service. SiriusXM audio quality is also terribly compressed and tinny in addition to the constant drop outs. I've never had a good experience with their product.

Spotify can also download large quantities of music and playlists...so with minimal planing you will have no buffering issues.

Having your service pre-download stations/playlists when on wifi helps with this.

Actually owning your music and storing it on your devices in open formats helps even more.

Hard with a 16 (actually 14) GB iPhone. I deleted my iOS music library (to free up space) and only stream now. Even with the LTE issues, it's (streaming) better than listening to the same couple dozen songs and dealing with iTunes.

...Yeah, that's pretty accurate

I keep Sirius in my daily driver because the satellite cutouts are annoying, but so are cellular dead zones. And cellular dead zones are more common for me than satellite cutouts.

In regards to, "Why do I need satellite radio when I can just listen to a podcast, or preload a bunch of music on my phone?" you don't if you only listen to music or content accessibly on your preferred streaming service. Their strength is in their specific content, most notably Howard Stern to note one. If and when Apple Music/Spotify gets and/or can take away that big talent then yes Sirius will eventually be dead in the water. I use Sirius for things like CNN. I tried using CarPlay app for that and didn't work reliably enough compared to the simplicity of just knowing Sirius in car is always there and always work even if ones phone dies or any other random situations. Sirius has horrible customer support and they deserve what is coming to them, but still think they have a lot of gas left in in them as long as they continue to retain their headliners and come preloaded in new cars with free trials.

Sirius is in a tough spot. I've heard from many people that they only listen for Howard Stern. If Howard was smart, he'd pivot to selling podcasts and doing live streaming like Joe Rogan. He could cut out the sirius middleman and bring much more money home.

There are so many places to get news that I'm actually surprised to hear that sirius is an important place for you to get yours.

Howard Stern makes a risk-free $80M/year for 4 hours of radio 3 days a week. Maybe he could make that much making podcasts, but why risk it ? He's at the tail-end of his career anyway.

Do you know a lot of "smart" people who would trade a guaranteed $80M/year for possibly more doing podcasts ?

Stern is smart :) He obviously could do that but can't be bothered. He's not starving to death. So unless he's going to leverage his brand to build others and broaden his (a la Oprah) by having a family of stations under his control then it's probably not worth it to him. How can he not go to bed thinking, "I'm one of the luckiest schmucks in the world"?

The entire US podcast ad revenue in 2017 was $314 million. Stern is paid $80 million a year. Seems like the smarter choice.

There are a lot of people that have to do long distance driving (truckers mostly) and having a live selection of music to choose from when data connections fail is nice.

Loading music and podcasts is possible, but takes work and never feels like you're "connected" to the live world. You're always a few days behind the rest of the world, even though it's some of the best content.

I like the randomness of content that I didnt program.

Also, effectively XM was the winning company - its the XM platform that continues on, and the XM billing platform as well - its more like XM bough sirius.

If you travel in places without good data, XM is invaluable to have.

What you describe takes a lot of thought, planning and self curation. With Sirius we can just hop in the car and play music, listen to talk when we get bored flip around the channels. It also works in areas where cell coverage does not.

> just hop in the car and play music, listen to talk when we get bored flip around the channels

This is nice, but is it $21.99-a-month nice? It's $300 a year, that's the problem. That's twice as expensive as Apple music and Netflix. That's the cost of a data-only cellphone plan.

I guess it depends on how often you drive through areas with no cell phone coverage.

> Why do I need satellite radio when I can just listen to a podcast, or preload a bunch of music on my phone?

Anyone who is away from a good data connection for a significant amount of time. E.g. long haul truckers, rural areas (especially in the western US), mountainous regions. If most of your car time is commuting in the city/suburbs, that may not be an issue.

That doesn't seem like it would be a very large or profitable customer base.

My podcasts are all downloaded with multiple episodes for each podcast and so is a large collection of my Spotify music. I get what you're saying but it isn't that big of an issue with a reasonably modern mobile device and a little customization of the app to do the downloads for you.

My spotify playlists download to my phone

The audio space has been going through extremely cutthroat competitions and consolidation. Even today, most of the major players are operating at loss. SiriusXM is still one of the largest revenue-wise, and possibly the only profitable company in the space.

Its current business model may be at risk as car companies start to get more smartphone integrations. But with the money and content they have, they are uniquely positioned to selectively buy out streaming competitors to diversify their income streams.

There is risk if they can successfully integrate Pandora with their existing business, of course.

It's built into my new car's stereo system, and it's as quick and easy to use as an FM radio. Using my smartphone and various services takes more effort.

That's definitely changing as more and more cars are shipping with Android/Apple Auto. Even if it is slightly more effort to pair your phone once, for most people once paired they don't have to fiddle with it again beyond launching an App.

For more power users it's trivial to setup a Tasker/Llama/Automate rule to launch your preferred music app when paired to a particular Bluetooth device.

Smartphones are getting increasingly well-integrated into the car's stereo, though - especially in the Appleverse.

From a contingency planning perspective, even if their business is healthy now, they might also want to hedge against a long-term decrease in private car ownership. We're seeing quite a few trends that point in that direction: increasing use of ride share services, self-driving cars, wealthier folks moving back into the cities, increasing cultural interest in moving away from motorized transportation as the default, more remote work.

> Smartphones are getting increasingly well-integrated into the car's stereo, though - especially in the Appleverse.

My personal threshold for usability is that I need functionality while wearing thick winter mittens.

1. I don't have unlimited data. I pay for usage so I tend to download podcasts and music before I leave the house to save money. 2. I really like the new music and playlists the Sirius DJ's have come up with. In fact in terms of music curation and discovery I've not found anything better personally.

I only know a few people that are SiriusXM subscribers still. One of them only subscribes to listen to Howard Stern. He will also only rent a car that has SiriusXM. He is a bit of an outlier though. I'm not sure of other motivations beside those two (Him and rental company).

A large portion of my listening is to talk content. Either news (live) or sports (again, live).

TBH the sound quality is too bad for even casual music listening unless I'm really desperate.

SiriusXM is worth $30-40B USD and is profitable.

Truck drivers and other industries with volatile connectivity is where satellite radio shines.

i pay full retail for sirius xm in two cars. I dont even know how much it costs.

My wife listens to her LA stations, I listen mainly to news and talk radio.

When we drive cross country it works regardless of cell reception.

I dont listen to music at all.

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