SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion • Hacker News Board

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#41

Post by koolba » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

sigstoat wrote: post #36

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…

> 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. they don't really have an ongoing per-customer costs, right? so long as they extract the all the money you're willing to pay them, be it $20 or $90, that's fine. i expect they worry more about total customer count.

They probably have per user pricing with some of the content sources so there would be some cost.

There is also the cost of having a call center contact deal with the renewal every 6 months. 20 min on the phone costs at least a couple bucks.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#42

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

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

#43

Post by Janeman544 » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #24

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 t…

I am told SiriusXm pays car manufacturers around $150 for thi s bundle. For many low end cars even this matters to the car companies. SiriusXM is equivalent of toolbars that laptop companies bundled with the preinstalled browsers.

If you buy a high end car though things are different. I have got 5 years of SirusXM subscription for free.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#44

Post by izzydata » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

sigstoat wrote: post #36

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…

> 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. they don't really have an ongoing per-customer costs, right? so long as they extract the all the money you're willing to pay them, be it $20 or $90, that's fine. i expect they worry more about total customer count.

Audible has a similar ridiculous thing going on. At any point you can cancel your $15 a month subscription and they will ask if you want to pay $7 instead. Anyone with this knowledge can easily get the service for $7 forever. Or you can start infinite trials and get infinite free books.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#45

Post by thehashrocket » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

bpick wrote: post #33

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…

Pandora spent much more effort attempting to get me to sign-up (and re-sign-up) than they ever did trying to retain me. The customer service experience was harrowing, featured slow response times, an indifferent attitude to my issues and a wholly inadequate resolution leading me to quit the service. Every so often I would see news coverage about them struggling and all I could think was, "guess things on the customer…

I feel this way about Sirius/XM. It was such a hassle to deal with them every 6 months or a year to get a better rate when it came up for renewal. It just didn't feel like it was worth it anymore. And once I finally left they would snail mail me offers to come back constantly. I couldn't help but think that all that money spent mailing me to come back could have been spent just providing a more affordable service in the first place.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#46

Post by JaggerFoo » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

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…

It took me only 10 minutes to cancel a SiriusXM account I had for over 5 years.

The webapp was unusable and Howard Stern is now boring to me.

I went with a Pandora-ish/Spotify-ish service named Slacker Radio, which costs only $2.50/mo pro-rated, has a 320k bit-rate and is commercial free.

SiriusXM may need Pandora to survive in the future. Pandora/SiriusXM can be re-worked to compete with Spotify.

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#47

Post by josefresco » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #32

josefresco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I've had Sirius for bugs me is that drive under a tree or overpass. Seriously, having really bugs me.

my

LTE

Does that too

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#48

Post by josefresco » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

jbob2000 wrote: post #25

josefresco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 tape…

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

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#49

Post by pkaye » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

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.

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

Re: SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

#50

Post by Thrymr » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

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 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.