XM or SIRIUS?

XM has done a poor job of marketing their product, especially at the strategic level. They were product-focused rather than market-focused for far too long. Early adoptors care about technology features, everyone else wants content. Then they panicked when Sirius was generating all the buzz from Stern, and XM started trying to match them in the spending spree. That's why the board member (can't remember the name) resigned earlier this year. I like XM's new promotional campaign, but they'll probably blow it up at the first sign of danger.

While I agree that the music on both services are equally as good, they seem to take a slightly different approach to programming. Sirius seems to give people what they want to hear, while XM's philosophy is more "Hey, check this out" (although the Clear Channel channels have F'ed that up). That distinction is what drove me to XM, but it's also what turns a lot of people off of them. Different strokes...

And I agree, it's sat radio versus "free FM"

 

not so,they had 600k listeners before stern and 5.5 million now at 13 bucks a month,plus they landed huge ad contracts from heiniken(sp?) and the bodog.com and the betting sites are really kicking in the big time bucks to cover his contract and then some,alot of then some!

 

music "sirius vs xm" is definitely a wash....... radio nascar is actually is pretty fucking interesting to me.. if you aren't into radio nascar , you ain't into nascar .....as far as stern on sirius not paying for itself . if that's what u believe. u aren't paying attention

 

well, the nfl channel isn't just nfl games. it's all nfl all day long. so, if you want to bring up true fans, then why wouldn't you want to listen to nfl radio. plus they have keyshawn taking it to the house so we have one of the panthers with his own show. sounds good to me. stern may not be for everybody but his channels have good content that isn't just howard stern. i'm not sure about xm but i do know that sirius has whole channels dedicated to certain artists and music that is similar to said artist. the who, rolling stones (i think), jimmy buffet. Honestly, the only thing sirius doesn't have is baseball and for me that would never be an issue.

 

http://www.bridgeratings.com/press_10.04.06.SatQ4Subs.htm

i follow these market analysis. it's great stuff to read.

 

those numbers aren't correct.

 

Those numbers are completely accurate. Although obviously every single new subscriber didn't sign up for Stern and it was right before Christmas they made the big ad campaign for him and other stuff, but the numbers do not lie. Will be over 6 mil by the end of the year with X-mas coming up again. Kicking butt.

 

"Sirius originally set a goal of one million subscribers to justify the Stern $500 Million deal and even by Bridge's impartial estimates (lower than Stern's own estimate of 4 million) he's directly responsible for bringing 1.2 million members of his old audience with him to Sirius. Naturally, many of these would have signed on sooner than later. Stern's Sirius show began broadcasting last January. Sirius plans to increase marketing of Stern this fall in advance of the holiday season."

 

So they didn't overpay for Stern is what these dudes are saying, right?

 

There have been countless articles bashing him for not bringing in any subscribers, just like that one. The thing is, just about all of them are owned by Viacom or Clear Channel and have an obvious stake in his failure.

I'd like to know how they came up with that figure? I'm not saying he brought every single customer in, but there is no way to justify it. I listen to him just about every day, but I didn;t buy it for him per say, more for music and NFL radio, but if it came down to XM or Siriius, I would have chosen Sirius over XM b/c of him.