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SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

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Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#21

Post by josefresco »

jbob2000 wrote: post #5
relaunched wrote: post #3

This makes me side. I am a long-time, paid subscriber. We'll see what happens next, fingers crossed. I'm not sure if this was a win for the team or a mercy killing. But, if someone can explain what's in this for customers, that would be very helpful.

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 p…

"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.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#22

Post by jbob2000 »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #20
jbob2000 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

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.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#23

Post by chrisweekly »

Spotify Premium for family at $15/mo is still gonna be pretty hard to beat. But. IMHO SXM has been doing a great job with exclusive content like recent live recordings (eg phish and other jambands), which is immune to the "shazam->spotify" escape hatch I'd otherwise use. They are desperate to get onto people's devices, and as the early leader in the space Pandora's still got "eyeballs" (eardrums?) galore in terms of installed user base. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out....

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#24

Post by cptskippy »

wil421 wrote: post #9

Cancelling Sirus is always interesteing. I always say I don’t want to pay the $90 or however much for 6 months of access. No $50 is also too high. How about $30? Ok sure I’ll pay. I think Sirus only makes money off the folks who forget to cancel after the promotional period. It’s like $20 a month and I’ve forgot to do it my self for a couple months. Pandora always had the best selections on their radio channels. Spot…

After buying an XM enabled car from a dealership, I was extremely disappointed when I started receiving weekly mailings and phone calls from them as my "trial" was expiring.

I am still pissed off about the lengths I had to go to in order to stop receiving communications from them. They refused to remove my contact information from their system and could not promise I wouldn't be contacted again in the future. I had to ultimately change all of my contact information to false information, fortunately the guy I was talking to was sympathetic to my plight and had no objections testing out the system to see what BS info it would take.

The whole escapade landed them on my short list of companies I will never do business with ever again.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#25

Post by jbob2000 »

josefresco wrote: post #21
jbob2000 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

"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.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#26

Post by [deleted] »

treis wrote: post #15
chollida1 wrote: post #2

Poor Pandora and their investors. This is for about a quarter of what they were worth just 4 years ago. Saddly this is almost all self inflicted. While Spotify, Apple music and Google music really worked hard to get people to actually pay for the service Pandora continued to act like it was a VC backed company in hyper growth mode long after that was the case. They fought with the record labels longer than most of th…

>Poor Pandora and their investors. This is for about a quarter of what they were worth just 4 years ago. They also got 3.5 billion for a company that hasn't made any money in its 18 year existence so it's hard to feel too bad.

[deleted]

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#27

Post by toomuchtodo »

jbob2000 wrote: post #5
relaunched wrote: post #3

This makes me side. I am a long-time, paid subscriber. We'll see what happens next, fingers crossed. I'm not sure if this was a win for the team or a mercy killing. But, if someone can explain what's in this for customers, that would be very helpful.

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 p…

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

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#28

Post by cptskippy »

nsxwolf wrote: post #11
jbob2000 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

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.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#29

Post by tcbawo »

wil421 wrote: post #9

Cancelling Sirus is always interesteing. I always say I don’t want to pay the $90 or however much for 6 months of access. No $50 is also too high. How about $30? Ok sure I’ll pay. I think Sirus only makes money off the folks who forget to cancel after the promotional period. It’s like $20 a month and I’ve forgot to do it my self for a couple months. Pandora always had the best selections on their radio channels. Spot…

Sirius also has almost all major sports and a decent amount of non-music content. I like having it built into my car vs needing to deal with bluetooth, lag, and the various interruptions that my mobile likes to make.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#30

Post by nicobn »

jbob2000 wrote: post #14
heavymark wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 ?

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