Sirius XM Raises Subscription Rates

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

It was a huge surprise when it was found that Sirius could legally merge with XM, but subscribers of either service were the ones who had the right to remain really skeptical. With these two giants together, they have caused a monopoly on the market in every sense of the word - I don't think there exists a single competitor in this space. But, as long as the prices kept where they were, there would be nothing to complain about, right?

Well, that's not the case anymore, since Sirius XM has just announced some price hikes on all of their services. Whether this was caused by the recent drop of subscribers (over 400,000!) or not is unknown, but chances are it was. Sirius XM hasn't been making a profit for as long as I remember (if at all), so to make money, someone has to pay, and that's clearly going to be the customers.

Prices for the family plan have risen from $6.99 to $8.99, while the previously-free Internet version of the stations will now cost $2.99. I admit I've never once touched either Sirius or XM, so I'm not sure how good either service actually is, but given what I pay for my cable every month, $8.99 doesn't seem all too bad. Of course, it's the programming and reliability that matters, nothing more. Do you have experience with either? Let us know in our comments.

Now that Sirius XM is the only game in town, it's nudging up fees for subscribers. Nice! The one and only satellite radio company's boasts of its ever-increasing subscriber base are gone now, and the decline is significant. The number floating around the Internet is a loss of 400,000 subscribers. That still leaves 18.6 million, but there's no way of knowing how many of that number are full-price-paying subscribers.

Source: The Audiophiliac​

 

[THUMPer]

I'm not going anywhere. Premium internet radio is nice.

 

[Merlin]

I just save MP3's to my EeePC, hook up the IRIVER FM broadcaster, tune my FM radio to the broadcaster and there you go, My own radio station going down the highways and byways.

 

[Kougar]

I used to use XM radio... I definitely enjoyed it and preferred it over FM radio. Eventually decided it wasn't worth it for the amount of driving I do though, and because it is problematic to convert from a car receiver to an indoor receiver it got axed. When I was a member XM charged about $2.99 for internet access to their radio stations, but after I dropped my subscription they made it free which was rather annoying.

Unfortunately from what I've been told by friends and acquaintances Sirius XM botched the merger. Most Sirius users have complained the channels they liked were removed or the content changed drastically enough they stopped listening and quit subscribing... most XM users don't appear to like the current station lineup either. I saw they did axe a couple of the stations I used to listen to.

What I don't understand is that one condition they accepted in order for the FTC to allow of the merger deal was that they couldn't raise their prices for a certain period. Maybe that didn't end up in the final deal... the only thing I can see is that the FTC forced them to agree to charging rates based on # of channels / tier service they opt in for.

I just save MP3's to my EeePC, hook up the IRIVER FM broadcaster, tune my FM radio to the broadcaster and there you go, My own radio station going down the highways and byways.

FM broadcasters don't work so well here, there's almost no interference free spectrum. I found one single channel I can get mine to work on most of the time but I get tired of listening to the same mp3s after awhile... it was one big reason I enjoyed my XM subscription as I always heard nothing but new songs that I didn't recognize. It's another reason I first tune in internet radio beforer playing my own music collection.

 

[On_Wisconsin]

Our family had XM for a year (2007). I liked it - eg, there was a modern rock station called Squizz that had a great variety of alternative and metal songs from the 90s to today - from the big alternative hits to small bands. Better than the local alternative station in Milwaukee. However, the quality was good but not great, so we dropped it.

 

[Rob Williams]

I at one point wanted to sign up for Sirius' online service, but I held back for some reason. I figured I might as well listen to my own music and Last.fm radio stations if I wanted new music (although those aren't free anymore to Canadians). It's too bad that Sirius XM did more harm than good... I had no idea about the channels being all swapped around. Nice... do the thing that people didn't want them to do. What's the point? They seem to be hurting themselves more than anything.

 

[Kougar]

Well, their arguement was that they had to much overlapping content and duplicate channels. Of course most people rather disgree in hindsight, as whatever content they chose to settle upon seems to have ticked off the subscribers from the other service that lost their channel or type of music they preferred.

I agree, they are hurting themselves and the entire situation is their own fault. There is no reason their service should be spotty when they could use both XM + Sirius's frequencies to boost their signal strength, now can use both XM and Sirius's satellites to broadcast (although "satellite" radio has always been rebroadcast on local radio and repeater towers, ironically enough). They should also have plenty of spectrum for all of the original channels, or at least most of them.

It's annoying but I can't find one article I read a long time back. One mother used one XM or Sirius's children channels to sooth her newborn and occupy her young kids. After the switch she noticed the channel remained, but the content completely changed, the biggest issue of which was the addition of quite a few vulgar words in everyday use in the new children's programming. Before the merger the station was completely free of vulgar language. I wish I could find that link because it was pretty shocking to read...