RSSSirius Aims for 3 Million Subscribers
By Ed Oswald | Published October 4, 2005, 12:45 PM
Sirius announced Tuesday that it had nearly doubled its third quarter subscriber numbers, adding 359,000 new customers during the quarter. Sirius ended the quarter with 2.17 million subscribers. In comparison, XM said on Monday it had added 617,000 subscribers during the quarter for a total of 5.03 million.
XM's growing lead doesn't seem to bother Mel Karmazin, Sirius' CEO. "We continued to experience strong subscriber growth during the third quarter, which was the best third quarter in our history, and increased our market share from the year-ago quarter by more than 20%," Karmazin said. Sirius said it expects to have three million subscribers by the end of the year.
SIRIUS...best of the new breed of Radio...
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|Part of the lure of satellite radio is the fact that there are no advertisements... at least on certain channels... and the clarity of digital broadcasting. I hate commercial radio. Not so much for the endless advertisements... but for the mind-numbing repetition of the same crappy music, day-in and day-out. Still it hasn't been enough to persuade me to subscribe to a satellite service. CD's and Tape players get me through.
If Sirius and/or XM s***ed to an advertising based revenue structure instead of relying on monthly subscriptions... I would put up with their commercials and buy their hardware... just so I could tune directly to various stations that I KNEW would be playing music that I would enjoy!
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|I could not agree more, I love my Sirius reciever, partly because i know im' going to be able to find my favorite station no matter where i am, and partly because i dont have to deal with Commercials, bleeped out lyrics, or other FCC controled nonsense.
Sirius and/or XM switching to a commercial format, would largly defeat the purpose of satellite radio.
Now i have no doubt that at some point they will need to add commercials to some stations, (actaully they already do) but to switch to a total commercial format would not bode well.
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|I'm just curious, but why can't Sirius or XM just be free? Then instead of being a competing radio station, they'd be competing against ALL of radio. Think about it. If 50 million people had Sirius, and Sirius owned all the stations, what kind of major dollars would be paid in ads?
Can't you generate $36m in ads now? Imagine if you multiplied your user base 20x...
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|I pay for satellite radio for only one reason. NO COMMERCIALS on the music channels. American's are bombarded with in your face advertising from all directions 24/7. Yes, I know, people buy what they are selling. I will never buy a satelite delivered music service that includes advertisements.
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