Posts Tagged ‘Slacker’

Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) Seeks OK to Raise Fees

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Posted 25 Jan 2011 — by Amy Gilroy
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

By Amy Gilroy

Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI)Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) is seeking the right to raise subscription fees.

It filed a petition January 20th with the FCC asking the Commission no longer ban the satellite radio company from raising its fees, as of July.

The FCC originally blocked Sirius XM from hiking its rates for three years following the merger of Sirius and XM in 2008. It soon must determine whether to continue the ban beyond July of this year and that decision may rest on the level of competition seen in the radio market.

So last week, Sirius XM argued that competition is becoming intense. It said in its petition, Internet Radio services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, Slacker, Lastfm and iheartradio have grown in usage. Read More

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Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI): The Year In Review Part 5 — The Year Of Howard Stern

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Posted 04 Jan 2011 — by Brian Newman Rayl
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

By Brian “Newman” Rayl

Sirius XM's (NASDAQ:SIRI) Howard SternIt was well known that Howard Stern’s 5-year contract would be expiring at the end of 2010. What was not known was if Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) would be keeping Stern or if he would retire or move on to another competing company or platform. There was a ton of talk in the media about how Howard Stern was no longer relevant to radio, how Sirius XM paid way too much for Stern, and yet that Sirius XM would fail if it lost Stern.

In August, TALKERS magazine ranked Howard Stern as the #2 Most Important Radio Talk Show Host of All Time behind Rush Limbaugh. Stern went on a tirade when a caller asked him to respond. TALKERS magazine also put Howard in the #32 position of the 2010 list, citing his dwindling importance.

On August 4th, Sirius XM Radio hosted their second quarter conference call. At the end of the call, citing a question from the audience, Mel Karmazin stated that the company was in active negotiations with Howard Stern and they hoped to have a deal signed before the third quarter conference call. This news set the media ablaze and Howard Stern was yet again the topic (and target) of numerous articles. So much for dwindling importance, huh TALKERS?

As the third quarter conference call approached, there was more and more discussion regarding the future of Howard Stern. One of the first rumors (started by Howard himself) was that Howard Stern was leaving Sirius XM Radio – and radio altogether – to become the replacement for Simon Cowell as a judge on American Idol. Other rumors included being courted by terrestrial radio provider Clear Channel (OTCBB:CCMO), starting his own radio service, going the way of subscription podcasting, or moving over to an internet radio service such as Slacker or Pandora. Read More

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Sirius XM (SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin To Be Interviewed By Bloomberg Television

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Posted 18 Oct 2010 — by Brian Newman Rayl
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

By Brian “Newman” Rayl

Satellite Radio Playground - Sirius XM (SIRI) Radio's CEO Mel Karmazin to be interviewed on Bloomberg TVSirius XM (NASDAQ: SIRI) Radio’s Mel Karmazin will be interviewed by Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television tomorrow, Tuesday October 19th at 8:45 AM Eastern time. Karmazin is expected to talk about the outlook for satellite radio, how new media such as Pandora and Slacker, HD Radio, and the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone and iPod is impacting their business, as well as the state of the U.S. economy. Perhaps we may even get a sneak peak at what Satellite Radio 2.0 may offer?

Betty Liu is the anchor of Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop with Betty Liu” from 8:00 -10:00 AM Eastern, a daily business morning news program which covers the opening of the U.S. markets and financial, economic, and political news from around the world. Liu has been listed on the “Top 30 buisness journalists under 30 list” three years in a row and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for a series of articles on immigrant labor in the Southern United States. Read More

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Sirius XM (SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin Presents at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Conference

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Posted 15 Sep 2010 — by Brian Newman Rayl
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

By Brian “Newman” Rayl

Mel Karmazin

Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin

Sirius XM’s (NASDAQ: SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin spoke today at the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (NYSE: BAC) Media, Communications, and Entertainment Conference. The broadcast was streamed live through the Sirius Investor Relations page and was accompanied by a 25 page slide show which outlined many of the numbers talked about.

When talking about Satellite Radio 2.0, Karmazin said that he could not reveal much, but compared it to cable services. He said that you should think about how they had just their basic service until set top boxes came along, which then afforded the the ability to have on-demand, pause, the ability to skip things and go back to a library. This will allow them provide better features for their customers, enhancing the stickiness of the service.

During a question and answer session with Merrill Lynch senior Media and Entertainment Analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, Karmazin spoke about Satellite Radio 2.0. He stated that the “IP stuff” (or internet radio) could be released whenever they wanted and that they were targeting the fourth quarter of 2011 to release the first aftermarket Satellite Radio 2.0 radio. Karmazin said that they were actively talking to all of their OEM (original equipment manufacturing) partners. Unfortunately, auto makers have an extended roll out time for new services, and it looks like consumers may have to wait until 2014-2015 to get a Satellite Radio 2.0 radio as an OEM install.

Another topic discussed was the used car market and the Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) sector of used car sales. Karmazin said that as of right now, while they have made tremendous progress, the CPO sector is “very small” due to the way the economy has gone and the way that car cycles have gone. On average, a car is cycled through the CPO program about 4-5 years after it is initially sold. If you look back to penetration rates 4-5 years ago, that number is quite small — which in turn means that the number of available used cars with satellite radio is small. Karmazin stated that as we move ahead, the number of used cars with satellite radio are going to grow in direct proportion to the way their penetration has grown, and that this “growth opportunity is dramatic.” Read More

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Patent Reveals Sirius XM’s (SIRI) Satellite Radio 2.0 Possibilities

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Posted 27 Aug 2010 — by Brian Newman Rayl
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

By Brian “Newman” Rayl

Sirius XM Satellite Radio 2.0 A few days ago, my partner Dennis “Cos” Costa and I wrote an article speculating on the possibilities of a Slacker/Pandora type application for Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) and how it would benefit the company to create such a service or buy out one of the existing services. One of the key issues that we determined was in this paragraph:

“We also both agreed that Slacker and Pandora are feature rich with a very nice “jukebox” feel to it, allowing you to customize your very own personal radio stations, while providing users with some music discovery advantages at the same time. You can base your station on a certain group or a certain theme, as well as creating a ”hate songs” list so that they never play again. The personalization of these services is quite nice. Obviously you cannot do the this with Sirius XM, leaving the user only able to pick a genre of music, but not the artist.”

– Should Sirius XM (SIRI) Buy Slacker or Pandora?

Yesterday TWX, a member of our forums, brought to our attention a patent that was filed back on June 19th, 2008 and owned by XM Satellite Radio. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the basis of this patent is as follows:

“The present invention relates to a system and method for providing a broadcast radio service listener with the ability to generate a personalized radio channel play-list on a radio receiver from broadcast content as it is received. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for buffering content from a set of channels selected from among the broadcast channels of a source stream(s) as they are received, and for generating a playback stream using the buffered content that provides a multichannel listening experience to the user with preview, reverse, fast forward and other navigation functions for the buffered content.”

– United States Patent Application #20090320075

In fact, Slacker, Pandora, and Last.fm are specifically referenced within the filing as examples of what the purpose of the patent is geared towards. The filing states that “on-line personalized radio services [have] demonstrated its appeal to music fans as evidenced by the continued growth of personalized radio service providers such as Pandora, LastFM and Slacker. These providers assemble personalized play-lists for users by accessing a large music library where each song has a meta-data field containing ratings on multiple stylistic parameters.” The patent filing goes on to say that “a need exists for a live satellite radio offering with low cost hardware that does not require a large local song database to be built over time at a satellite receiver by recording content matches received over-the-air or via other broadcast method.” Read More

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Should Sirius XM (SIRI) Buy Slacker or Pandora?

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Posted 21 Aug 2010 — by Brian Newman Rayl
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

Co-Authored by Brian “Newman” Rayl and Dennis “Cos” Costa

Satellite Radio Playground - Sirius XM Satellite Radio (SIRI) Should By Slacker and PandoraA short time ago my partner Demian Russian wrote an article comparing Sirius XM Radio (SIRI) to a newly announced Slacker integration of ABC News. This sparked a conversation on our message boards and during our weekly Playground Radio show, which compared the pros and cons of each company’s offered services. Of course a discussion of these markets and operating platforms requires consideration of Sirius XM’s competition as a whole. Aside from the plethora of local Internet radio stations that we could talk about, whose programming is generally local and serves a different market, we instead turned our attention to the two audio players that are most frequently compared to Sirius XM as their competition — Slacker and Pandora.

Satellite Radio Playground - Sirius XM Satellite Radio (SIRI) Should By Slacker or PandoraIt was decided that we would do a “Bull vs. Bear” type debate, written about the Internet platform and the competition represented by these well known companies. A funny thing happened to us on the way to the debate table –  both of us could not come up with a valid disagreement between the two of us. Instead, we determined that the main disagreement between us was the impetus for Sirius XM to commit to such a move in the first place. Should Sirius XM Radio develop a more complete package for the Internet platform themselves, or should they consider an outright purchase of either of these two companies? Integrating either’s feature-packed software into the satellite radio company’s superior content might be the more preferred option, building on already well known and received services which both companies now enjoy. Read More

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Slacker’s ABC News Integration Is No Match For Sirius XM’s News Content

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Posted 21 Jul 2010 — by Demian Russian
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

by Demian Russian

Demian RussianSlacker, the internet radio service provider, added the integration of ABC News (NYSE: DIS) to its service yesterday. While news content is a welcome addition to the Slacker service, there are several drawbacks which highlight why it’s no match for Sirius XM’s (NASDAQ: SIRI) superior news content. Slacker seems to be taking steps to be more like Sirius XM Radio. First they added a couple of comedy channels, and now a news channel, and it’s not free. Did I just hear “subscription model?” Well, it is free for the 14 day trial period, but after that it will run you $4.99 a month ($3.99 a month with a prepaid annual subscription). After the free trial period, users who want access to the ABC News channel must subscribe to Slacker Radio Plus. In addition to the ABC News channel access, Slacker Radio Plus features no banner or audio ads, unlimited song skips, song lyrics, and mobile station caching. Sounds great right? It depends on how you look at it.

I tried out the free trial of Slacker’s ABC News and I discovered several drawbacks compared to the Sirius XM Satellite Radio service. Slacker’s ABC News channel consists of segments from ABC News programs, which means they are prerecorded, which means they are not live, which means you are listening to old news. I like to listen to live news as it’s happening. I know the Slacker ABC News content isn’t live, because the player would allow me to skip to the next segment when I first turned it on. I was not able to determine exactly how old the news was that I was hearing, as no indication of time was offered at any time during the programming I listened to.

Only one news channel is offered with the Slacker service. Besides not being live, Slacker’s ABC News channel only offers snippets of stories — which means you don’t get the whole story. Sirius XM’s subscribers get live access to several different news channels, including CNN, Fox, CNBC, Bloomberg, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, and The World Radio Network. Sirius XM’s news channel offerings include: financial, political, medical, entertainment, human interest, National and International news. You don’t just get the top stories, you get in-depth analysis and opinion of those stories. Read More

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Wunderlich Securities’ Matthew Harrigan Ups Sirius XM (SIRI) Forecast, Maintains HOLD Rating

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Posted 22 May 2010 — by Demian Russian
Category Sirius XM (SIRI) News

by Demian Russian

Wunderlich Securities media analyst Matthew Harrigan raises his forecast for Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) on the heels of the company’s raised guidance and recent OEM channel sales projections. While increasing estimates and noting several positives in his research report, Harrigan maintained his HOLD rating and $1.25 price target on shares of SIRI. “We retain a favorable bias on Sirius XM Radio despite a continued Hold rating,” Harrigan said. While he does find the long-term free cash generation prospects of the company compelling, Harrigan still sees vulnerability and uncertainty in the U.S. macroeconomy.

“Our $1.25 target shows caution on the economy despite the build up of latent replacement vehicle demand.”

Matthew Harrigan, Wunderlich Securities Media Analyst

In his report, Harrigan pointed to a recent A.T. Kearney consultancy projection (issued May 18th) which calls for new U.S. vehicle sales to reach 16.8 million in 2012, 17.8 million in 2013, and 18.6 million in 2014. A.T. Kearney expects full-year 2010 light vehicles sales of 11.7 million, with a recovering economy bringing auto sales back to historical levels by 2012. A.T Kearney analyst Daniel Cheng views much of the recovery attributable to an easing credit market combined with pent-up demand. Kearney’s report marks the current average age of U.S. vehicles at approximately 9.9 years, but sees the average age rising to 10.1 years in 2011. From 1999 – 2007 annual U.S. vehicle sales hovered over 16 million. Annual vehicle sales fell to 13.2 million in 2008, and then to only 10.4 million in 2009 — the lowest rate (considering population) since World War II. Read More

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