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SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

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Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#151

Post by ericabiz »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #35

When I was a truck driver, Satellite Radio was practically a necessity. Sure I loaded up my ipod with music, but the selection was too damn limited and I would tire of hearing the same songs over & over again. The best case scenario for FM radio (when you would finally find something that you could tolerate) was 1 hour. 1 hour of variety to stave off bordem and try to save your sanity. The effective range of the FM s…

I'm definitely in the minority here, but I cancelled my Spotify subscription in favor of SiriusXM.

There were a couple changes they've made recently that made this make sense. One, all their car subscriptions now come with an app version. And two, they have a pretty cool Web UI (https://player.siriusxm.com) where you can listen to any channel live or experiment with "Xtra" channels (it's a Pandora integration.)

My use case is that I work mostly from home and want something mindless to play in the background while I'm working. Spotify playlists quickly become repetitive. Sirius is "set it and forget it"--I have all the channels and Xtra channels I want in a grid on their website, and I have it up on a second monitor so I can just click on whatever channel I want.

I still miss Spotify on occasion, but if I want a specific song or artist I can just go to YouTube and stream it.

Having said all this, yesterday and today I've just been streaming long house mixes on YouTube. I wanted something a bit more upbeat than the Chill channel and I've heard all the songs on BPM. But I'm sure I'll be back to Sirius soon. :)

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#153

Post by wcfields »

m4rtink wrote: post #33
unixhero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US and Canada only.. sigh

This might actually be the one case where this limitation is not entirely artificial. :-) The SiriusXM sattelites are in an inclined eliptical orbit with the highes point being over the norther hemisphere. This is the so called Molniya orbit, named after the first Soviet sattelites using it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit (Soviet Union had a lot of territory in higher latitudes where geostationary satt…

In 2016 Sirius discontinued broadcasting from tundra orbits. Their newest FM-5 uses geostationary. [1]

Satellite radio was tried a few times in other geographies, but only in North America did it succeed. [2] In 1999 Worldspace launched for EMEAI, and looks like it collapsed in 2008. MobaHo! was a mobile satellite digital audio/video broadcasting service in Japan whose services began on October 20, 2004, and ended on March 31, 2009.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra_orbit#Spacecraft_using_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_radio

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#154

Post by robdoherty2 »

braindongle wrote: post #115
malthaus wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hasn't been the case for a long long time. Especially reposting turned it into yet another spammy service full of promoters. Additionally, discovery is terrible. There used to be cases of people being discovered, im sure. But a lot of it is not quite the rag-to-riches story they make it seem, especially your example of Billie Eilish.

Do you create music independently? Have you tried to distribute it? If not, from where is your expertise? If so, maybe your music isn't that good? That's the responsibility that I take. I have just over 8,000 listens on Soundcloud. I have good reason to believe that the great majority of those are real. It's quite satisfying. My hobby has perhaps connected with some people, in the magical way that music does. If I we…

hey braindongle,

what is your soundcloud handle? I'd like to check out your work and add to those 8k listens! :)

(incidentally, I am patientfrog on soundcloud)

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#155

Post by taurath »

ericabiz wrote: post #151
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #35

When I was a truck driver, Satellite Radio was practically a necessity. Sure I loaded up my ipod with music, but the selection was too damn limited and I would tire of hearing the same songs over & over again. The best case scenario for FM radio (when you would finally find something that you could tolerate) was 1 hour. 1 hour of variety to stave off bordem and try to save your sanity. The effective range of the FM s…

I'm definitely in the minority here, but I cancelled my Spotify subscription in favor of SiriusXM. There were a couple changes they've made recently that made this make sense. One, all their car subscriptions now come with an app version. And two, they have a pretty cool Web UI ( https://player.siriusxm.com ) where you can listen to any channel live or experiment with "Xtra" channels (it's a Pandora integration.) My…

If you really want to lock in your long mix/specific moods, check out di.fm. Its all hand curated and the genre's all have a particular mood about them, many of which are just the right amount of vocal/nonvocal to push you through a day.

Also just a warning - SiriusXM doesn't just let you leave. They have some of the most aggressive "winback" salespeople in the business, and they will NEVER stop mailing you offers that look like something else, calling you, and emailing you offers once you manage to leave. Their skeevy tactics have put me off the company as a whole forever.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#156

Post by ericabiz »

taurath wrote: post #155
ericabiz wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely in the minority here, but I cancelled my Spotify subscription in favor of SiriusXM. There were a couple changes they've made recently that made this make sense. One, all their car subscriptions now come with an app version. And two, they have a pretty cool Web UI ( https://player.siriusxm.com ) where you can listen to any channel live or experiment with "Xtra" channels (it's a Pandora integration.) My…

If you really want to lock in your long mix/specific moods, check out di.fm. Its all hand curated and the genre's all have a particular mood about them, many of which are just the right amount of vocal/nonvocal to push you through a day. Also just a warning - SiriusXM doesn't just let you leave. They have some of the most aggressive "winback" salespeople in the business, and they will NEVER stop mailing you offers th…

Oh, that's wild...I had no idea they still existed. I was a paid subscriber of theirs for many years back in the day. I'll check it out again; thanks!

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#157

Post by BrianB »

RandomBacon wrote: post #32
owlninja wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also owned by Sirius btw

I didn't know that. At least it's extremely easy to cancel my Pandora subscription and they don't hound you like XM does. XM sends me a letter a month even though I never signed up. I'm curious how long they'll keep it up.

They used to send me a ton of letters, even phone calls. You can opt out of that, as I did, and they will stop it.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#158

Post by playing_colours »

nikisweeting wrote: post #102
malthaus wrote: post #97

Not sure what to think of this. SoundCloud has run its course and should just die, leaving space for a new player. There are some around but they can't gain critical traction due to the stickiness of SoundCloud despite having a product which has increasingly gotten worse over time. For an audio platform, the audio quality is subpar. Terrible discovery. Too many bots & marketing-spammers. No direct monetization scheme…

I completely disagree on almost every point. As a daily SoundCloud user, the discovery is a mile above and beyond every other platform I've tried, including Apple Music and Spotify. SoundClouds weekly "The Upload" playlist has more good music in it than any other automatic playlist I follow, I cant even remember the last time it had a song on it I didn't like. I'm not sure how some people get such a different experie…

A very curious bug, could you make it more than 2001-2002?

The limit on follower can be an related to a typical problem with building activity feeds on scale : push vs / with pull.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#159

Post by muglug »

nitrogen wrote: post #119
muglug wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first Actually, Vimeo's first videos[0] were uploaded a month before YouTube's[1]. [0] https://vimeo.com/15 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw

I think Google Video also launched slightly before YouTube, if I'm remembering and reading the dates right.

No, that was in April 2005: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2669287/google-launches-vi...

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#160

Post by tdhoot »

kingbirdy wrote: post #132
eric_cc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SiriusXM has no competition in the satellite radio space as far as I know.

It used to be that Sirius and XM were two separate companies providing competing services. Unfortunately in 2008 the US DoJ allowed them to merge on the basis that FM & internet radio were sufficient competition.

I don't think they were wrong. Sirius or XM may not have survived on their own. XM was on the verge of bankruptcy as it is.
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