Internet Killed the Satellite Radio Star 368
theodp writes "As Sirius XM faces bankruptcy, Slate's Farhad Manjoo reports that the company has bigger problems than just the end of cheap credit. While it has what seems like a pretty great service — the world's best radio programming for just a small monthly fee — Sirius XM has been eclipsed by something far cheaper and more convenient: the Internet. Load up Pandora or the Public Radio Tuner on your iPhone, and you've got access to a wider stream of music than you'll ever get through satellite. So forget the satellites, the special radios, and the huge customer acquisition costs, advises Manjoo, and instead focus on getting Howard Stern, Oprah, the NFL, and MLB on every Internet-connected device on the market at very low prices."
Good Riddance (Score:5, Informative)
It was centralized anyway. However, what we need is a mesh network, because otherwise we will lose net neutrality and then you'll be back to having to listen to clearchannel because no other kind of internet radio will work on your mobile internet connection any more. WE MUST DECENTRALIZE.
So how's this gonna work in my car? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm tired of subscription-based service (Score:3, Informative)
Re:$800 per year for a cell phone? (Score:4, Informative)
The family owns four vehicles, and not one of their car stereos has a line-in jack. What workaround has worked for you?
You can get a USB/SD mp3 player that plugs into the lighter socket AND has a line-in which feeds into its FM-transmitter for $15. At least, that's what I paid for mine, shipped, from dealtime I believe.
Most media-playing phones have a way to get a line-out.
Re:Radio? What's that?? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:flycast.fm replaced it for me. (Score:5, Informative)
Poor Sound Quality (Score:2, Informative)
I had SiruisXM service and eventually had to cancel it due to the poor sound quality. As they added more channels, they had to increase the compression on the existing channels to make room. After a while the music channels began to have the tinny quality of AM radio. It was intolerable. I've never been able to figure out why more people don't seem to be bothered by the inferior audio quality. When FM radio begins to have a richer, more satisfying audio quality than subscription radio, then the value of satellite radio becomes dubious. This is the reason I canceled, and one of the other reasons I don't see them lasting.
Re:Internet radio was not a major downfall of SIRI (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget the biggest mistake of all: the merger.
Had the merger not occurred, Sirius would be mostly breaking even today. Still operating at a slight loss, but its existence as a going concern would not be in jeopardy. XM, on the other hand, would have gone bankrupt a few months ago, and now be in the hands of new owners. The big debt that's coming due in a few days is *XM* debt. Sirius' original debt wasn't due to cause problems for a few more years.
Mel has destroyed Sirius as a company. He took on XM and its debt load, and achieved nothing besides alienating the customers of both networks for no good reason. The amount of money he saved by consolidating channels was literally pocket change compared to the cost of owning two sets of satellites. I'll give Sirius a pass on Howard for the moment, because he probably WAS worth it to pre-merger Sirius. Remember, before Howard, XM was clearly in #1, and Sirius was the struggling "also-ran". By the end of Year H+1, Sirius was in the lead, and almost making a profit (mostly through creative accounting, but that's still better than XM could do). He wanted XM's bandwidth to launch seatback Barney videos for kids, but ended up gutting the audio quality of both services to add more channels with lower audio fidelity.
The REAL cost savings would have been for Sirius to sell off both of XM's geostationary satellites & broadcast the two data streams formerly handled by them using Sirius' Molniya satellites(*). Rural indoor users would have either needed a proper outdoor antenna with view of the entire sky, or had to move the antenna puck from windowsill to windowsill like Sirius users do, but it would have improved XM's mobile coverage in mountainous areas (where cars were in the shadow of mountains relative to geostationary satellites) and literally saved them hundreds of millions of dollars.
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(*) Sirius has a constellation of 4 satellites in modified Molniya orbits. Basically, one satellite is a spare, and the other 3 are arranged so that at any given moment, one satellite is (more or less) "straight up" (relative to Iowa), one satellite is near the horizon, and one is on the other side of the earth. XM's constellation consisted of two satellites in conventional geostationary orbits over the equator.
Sirius and XM divided their bands into 3 slices, each of which carried the full bitstream. Two slices were broadcast by satellite, and the third slice was broadcast via terrestrial repeaters. I'd be seriously shocked if Sirius' satellites were physically incapable of broadcasting a slice of XM's band, and vice-versa. For one thing, satellite transmitters tend to be designed with fairly open-ended capabilities ANYWAY (they're so expensive to launch, with so much lead time, that the satellite's owner would be financially suicidal to not launch them with a "Plan B" in case the original user falls through. For another, I'm sure XM and Sirius both entertained the prospect that the other's satellites could be knocked out by space debris, solar flare, or some other malfunction... and faced with the prospect of shutting down or paying the other extortionate fees to carry their signal, would grudgingly pay the fees.
Re:$800 per year for a cell phone? (Score:3, Informative)
go to a car radio place, and ask options. Most car radios use proprietary plugs but do have an audio input jack. Crutchfield.com has a list. select your car, model and options and what you want from it. Also sticking with as close to generic audio input is best(not everyone has an ipod)
Well your not the market. If you want the data plan that is sold separately. Just like your ISP is separate from your phone, and cable, and electricity, and water. I do find it odd that I need two ISP's. it would be great if I could pay just for one connection however this way if one is down the other is available.
Re:$800 per year for a cell phone? (Score:3, Informative)
I pay 45$ a month
And I pay less than $7 per month on Virgin Mobile, because I use a land line when I'm not trying to arrange a ride.
You just have to know how to play the game
Satellite radio has the convenience advantage that there's no "game" to play. You buy the radio and the connection kit, and then the plan costs $12.99 per month.
where do you get that? (Score:2, Informative)
People out in the sticks don't have gadgets? Are you for real? It's exactly the same on a per capita basis near as I have ever seen. Probably much higher once you get into tools and mechanical things, but for electronics, about the same. We don't have as good broadband plans, that's about it for lack, everything else is the same. I work on a farm, it is definitely in the sticks, deer and turkeys around, etc, we can target shoot on the property no problem, including long range rifle, we heat with wood,(establishing official sticks bona fides there) but just in this room I am sitting in are half a dozen computers, two active cellphones and several more in the drawer, two TVs, one with the converter for digital (I was just playing with it, switched antennas and went from 4 to 9 channels..)(although most people have sat dishes), about a dozen radios including HAM and shortwave gear, etc, we have various music players, etc and we are some of the poorer folks around here! Heck, I pulled a vid card and 80 gig drive out of the damn dumpster nearby, just three days ago.
Rule of thumb: when you see every other guy driving 40 grand pickups with ten grand worth of customization, they ain't hurting for the scratch to by cheap iPhones and such like gadgets.
Really man, get out, meet some folks in the country, it isn't 1950s andy of mayberry all over with technology in some sort of locked time warp. Broadband, that's it, no cable or anything, and wireless doesn't cut the mustard yet here..yet, but I am sure it will eventually penetrate to us yokels. Hopefully, when they get done dicking around with the TV digital switchover the freed up spectrum might lead to that broadband problem being fixed as well. Ya, have to drive pretty far to a starbucks..whoopedy zing.
Wait until you're actually a parent (Score:3, Informative)
You'll be doing all kinds of stuff you said you wouldn't do.