SiriusXm loses more than 404k subs....

[Sirius Rich]

This may be a little good news for those that follow the stock price:

Liberty Media CEO says DirecTV sale 'possible'
By DEBORAH YAO – 4 hours ago

.......
AT&T Inc. is one name that at least one analyst speculated could be interested. The phone company said it does not respond to speculation.
Commenting on Liberty's February agreement to invest $530 million in Sirius XM Radio Inc. and receive preferred shares convertible to a 40 percent stake in the satellite radio provider, Maffei said Sirius and DirecTV could bundle or jointly market their services.
Further out, Maffei said mobile video could be a possibility in a DirecTV and Sirius pairing, but it will need access to a greater slice of the nation's airwaves to do so.
......

Full article

 

[ctkatz]

I think the iPhone app coming out will help a ton though. But that's more than I would have thought. Things on our end seem like business is picking up again.

that also may push some iphone sales as well, especially if what they are reporting is true and you would be able to get all channels, not just the online only channels (not holding my breath on that one).

i think that sirius subs have dropped because of two reasons:
1. with an xm sub plus bos those listeners get a lot more value out of that than sirius subs with boxm. with the music channels merged, the only real difference between the two are sports offerings and talk channels. xm has a significantly stronger offering than sirius does by itself, and adding howard, playboy, nascar, and the nfl makes it that much more stronger. i think this has much more to do with it than anything else. sirius had the stronger lineup but no name familiarity. xm had name familiarity but a weak lineup. now xm subs with bos have the service with name familiarity AND the best channels of sirius. if i weren't locked in with a lifetime sirius sub, i would definitely jump on an xm+bos subscription. although i don't listen to the music, they have baseball, hockey, and a superior talk radio offering than sirius does.

2. the economy just sucks, therefore people can't afford more than one subscription.

just a hunch, but if baseball would finally relent and let boxm sirius subs get games and sirius fixes their talk lineup, that number of subs would either not be as bad or at the very least flat.

 

[Jon]

Some of those 400k are XM subscribers whose favorite channel went to hell. And therefore, they saw no reason to stick around. Why pay for FM Radio when it's already available for free?

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

Some of those 400k are XM subscribers whose favorite channel went to hell. And therefore, they saw no reason to stick around. Why pay for FM Radio when it's already available for free?

That would have been the previous quarter. I suspect most of the merger sub losses would be done now except for the adjustment of subs amoung dual subs and such.

But it is pretty clear they need to work on their new sub aquisitions. Sitting back and relying on GM to sell a car isn't working.

 

[Kryptonite]

Lots of competition for less subscribers. People may not get a SL2 and a G2 now. Sirius XM has to put itself as something people want to get. For the last 2 years they have been ignoring this (the retail market) and putting all their eggs in the OEM basket. Well, OEM market is gone right now and so is this stream of subs. They need to get back to making retail work. The OEM stuff will just be gravy.

Yeah. People aren't buying from the car dealerships. Sirius XM needs to refocus on the retail outlets.

With merged programming, many dual subscribers had an option to drop their Sirius or XM. New subscribers appears to have gone stale. If they continue to lose current subscribers, will get worse.

This is a valid point. People may have had a Sirius radio and an XM radio. Now that a lot of programming can be heard on either radio, there'd be no need to have two different services.

 

[Jon]

That would have been the previous quarter. I suspect most of the merger sub losses would be done now except for the adjustment of subs amoung dual subs and such.

But it is pretty clear they need to work on their new sub aquisitions. Sitting back and relying on GM to sell a car isn't working.

I suspect there are those that 'gave the new service a chance' that are now leaving since it isn't what they wanted. I have ridden with people in cars that had the satellite radio equipment, but it wasn't activated, or they didn't bother to listen in the first place.

 

[sodomite]

Maybe that I love Siriusxm campain didn't work.:idunno:

 

[Fergz99]

I suspect there are those that 'gave the new service a chance' that are now leaving since it isn't what they wanted. I have ridden with people in cars that had the satellite radio equipment, but it wasn't activated, or they didn't bother to listen in the first place.

Xm was also giving 3 months free when the channel mergers happened. Those three months ended in first quarter.

 

[ResedaCC]

The Sirius XM suits don't want to talk about it, but a lot of people left because the quality of the music programming went downhill.

Today, Bodhi took over Hairnation and Jose took over Octane. The Hard Rock/Metal channels are being redesigned/tweaked starting today.

Hmmm?

Read what you want into it, but a lot XM people (the majority) were disappointed with the move to Sirius FM type music programming (Small playlists with no variety and lots of repetition!).

 

[Kryptonite]

Xm was also giving 3 months free when the channel mergers happened. Those three months ended in first quarter.

That probably makes sense, although cancelling the "best of" packages wouldn't really mean a reduction in subscription counts. I cancelled my BOXM a while back, but am still a subscriber to Sirius.


Pay for 6 months of "best of" and get 3 months free. If you don't like it, then cancel. You'll either get your money refunded back, or credit towards existing bills. (I got credit when I cancelled my BOXM.)

I'm also betting that as NBA and NHL teams drop out of the playoffs, a lot of BOXM packages are being canceled as well, although like I said above, this wouldn't necessarily mean a loss in subscription counts.

 

[Grüpsaar]

Jose used to run Octane, so that won't be too much different than the old octane, which IMO is probably a BAD move, I hope he keeps some of the changes that were made to octane after merge and not revert back to the same old. Who knows.

 

[TX WJ]

1) The Channel Merge, people that were unhappy with the changes, the dual subscribers who no longer had a reason to have both.

2) Better choices, now with Slacker and Pandora (i-Phone app) people can make their own stations, if Apple comes out with a similar application its lights out for Sirius. Sirius needs to offer a solution like this.

3) Economy, less car sales, people are looking for places to cut.

4) Content, they have not done anything to fix the talk problem that they have, plus we have no MLB option for Sirius?

 

[Jon]

1) The Channel Merge, people that were unhappy with the changes, the dual subscribers who no longer had a reason to have both.

Not to mention the XM subscribers who got hosed.

2) Better choices, now with Slacker and Pandora (i-Phone app) people can make their own stations, if Apple comes out with a similar application its lights out for Sirius. Sirius needs to offer a solution like this.

They need to get away from hardware and become Pandora. Just have the app for other devices.

3) Economy, less car sales, people are looking for places to cut.

I don't doubt it for a second, there are a few dealerships near me that are close to closing very soon.

4) Content, they have not done anything to fix the talk problem that they have, plus we have no MLB option for Sirius?

The talk problem is, their in-house talk sucks! Stern's not going to be around forever, Bubba is now in syndication. Only R&F, Jay Thomas and Jason Ellis are reasonably worth it.

 

[Jon]

double post.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

They need to get away from hardware and become Pandora. Just have the app for other devices.

While having apps in addition to hardware can't hurt, I am very grateful I do not need an expensive I-phone and and expensive data plan in order to listen to satrad music.

 

[xan_user]

Add my name to the list of cancellations.

Finally done with satrad. (well not really I still get some sirus from DishNetwork)

reasons.
SAC
poor ala carte unit.
no reception in redwoods. ( and no hope of merging sat signals to offer dual coverage)
thinner playlists than pre merger.
loss of my favorite 5 presets due to merger.
oh and...
SAC again. ( i made sure the cancellation dept wrote that part down twice in my acct notes)

 

[sodomite]

Add my name to the list of cancellations.

Finally done with satrad. (well not really I still get some sirus from DishNetwork)

reasons.
SAC
poor ala carte unit.
no reception in redwoods. ( and no hope of merging sat signals to offer dual coverage)
thinner playlists than pre merger.
loss of my favorite 5 presets due to merger.
oh and...
SAC again. ( i made sure the cancellation dept wrote that part down twice in my acct notes)

It feels good to be rid of Satrad yes ?

 

[mrpacs]

Add my name to the list of cancellations.

Finally done with satrad. (well not really I still get some sirus from DishNetwork)

reasons.
SAC
poor ala carte unit.
no reception in redwoods. ( and no hope of merging sat signals to offer dual coverage)
thinner playlists than pre merger.
loss of my favorite 5 presets due to merger.
oh and...
SAC again. ( i made sure the cancellation dept wrote that part down twice in my acct notes)

Are you a Slacker?

 

[Jon]

The only reason I had thought about subscribing was WRN. But that's available on the Wunderradio app on the iPhone through Radiotime. So that's no longer an option. I'll stick with slacker and pandora for music, and Wunderradio, AOL Radio and others for everything else.

 

[xan_user]

It feels good to be rid of Satrad yes ?

Are you a Slacker?

"Doods, like totally 'fer sure.."