Where you really surprised with today’s news of Sirus XM getting ready to file for backruptcy? I sure as hell wasn’t.
I have been a faithful XM subscriber with multiple radios since early 2004. The main reason I originally subscribed was to listen to Opie & Anthony, which were making their exclusive (forced out of commercial Radio) return to radio, only on XM. I was very pleasantly surprised with all the music content as well, and for a very long time I enjoyed my XM.
From my prospective things started to go wrong right around the time merger talks with Sirius began, and by the time the merger was finally approved everything seemed completely out of place. For a while XM was playing some sweepers promising and reassuring XM customers that if the merger were to happen, nothing would change, the service would remain the same if not get better, and prices would stay as they were. Well, it’s no secret that very soon after merger a lot of people working for XM were let go, and XM channels (including some awesome music channels) began to disappear and getting replaced with channels which were on Sirius. This is how Sirius XM as it’s known today was formed.
Sirius XM then announced that prices would be going up this March, and tried to scare customers into locking rates by prepaying for service. Satellite radio is already expensive enough to begin with, specially considering that it’s radio that you are paying for, so with the new prices quickly approaching it certainly did not become any more attractive to new subscribers, or existing subscribers.
To me it seems that big corporations often do the opposite of what they should be doing when they’re in financial trouble. Sirius XM is a great example. They already have the satellites in the sky and it really doesn’t cost them anything extra to add subscribers. So why raise the prices, specially now when so many people are unemployed and cutting back on most luxury spending?
Why not drop the prices, even by a small amount? The press alone would probably make it worth it, existing subscribers would be happy and you would very likely draw in a whole new crowed of people that are curious about satellite radio. Going one step further, why not just offer 3 months of free service to all new subs? Now, I know that XM already offers what they call ‘3 Free Months’, but if you read closely it’s just a marketing scheme. You save the equivalent of three months by paying in advance. You are not really getting three months of service for free.
So instead, the powers over at Sirius XM chose not to do anything beneficial for the consumer. What they did was take away some of the best music choices, add a ‘morning zoo’ type of talk show to one of their most popular all-music channels, and raise the prices to what is no longer reasonable. Satellite radio is now heading down the same road as commercial radio has, and will probably soon share the same fate, if not worse.
FM used to be really awesome and profitable at one point in history, but eventually the companies which owned the stations became more and more greedy. They saw the many opportunities in advertising and took careless advantage of them, which eventually made commercial radio the mess it is today. It’s silly that there’s 25-30 minutes of commercials every hour. Who wants to listen to that? One thing commercial radio did do was make the iPod more popular by pushing people away by the masses. Sirius XM is now desperate and greedy, and it wants more dollars out of it’s existing customers. They are also pushing people away.
So here we are today. Promises were broken and the service is just not what it used to be, so I am on the brink of canceling the rest of my radios and closing my account with XM. Everyone that I know that’s had Sirius XM subscriptions has already cancelled or is doing so very soon, because it’s just no longer worth it.
I will miss my XM, but it’s been a bitter love hate relationship for the past year.
