There a lot more competitors to SiriusXM than when the two compaines launched, Sirius in 2002 and XM in 2001. There is a strong cause to be made that the entire audio business has changed since 2007 when the iPhone was introduced along with the iTunes app store the way that we know it today. Of course Apple is only one of the major technology companies that has outfitted the world with smartphones and our interconnected life and that has become a major way that the consumer receives audio today.
How do you listen to the radio? Or do you even own a radio? There are millions of people in the US who the only radio they own and therefore listen to is the one in their car. But almost all of these same people own a smartphone and probably have downloaded Pandora and might even pay for the $4.99/ month subscription.
Out of the millions of those people who own the one radio in their car how many of them care to pay to listen to the radio? And when you compare the sound quality of SiriusXM to FM it is like comparing apples and oranges, as FM is so much more clearer and has more depth than any satellite radio channel.
My favorite go-to audio app that I listen to daily for sports, NPR programming and music is TuneIn Pro. At the time I paid .99 cents for the upfront cost of purchasing the app but all of the audio that is streamed through the app is free. The one real plus of paying for the Pro version of the app is being able to record and playback an unlimited amount of times any audio stream that you want to record through TuneIn. And of course the app is transferable between newer versions of the iPhone that I buy. Talk about a good 99 cent investment three years ago. Hate using a touch screen in the car? Yes, TuneIn even has a car mode that uses the most important buttons on a radio in a large format so that they are easier to tap while moving.
When both Sirius and XM were younger companies one of the main appeals of both of them was their exclusive broadcasting rights that both companies had with NFL, MLB, NHL and the NBA. While I'm not a big fan of the NFL, NHL or the NBA, I am huge fan of Major League Baseball and during the regular season I pay to listen to games on my iPhone. The MLB app offers both home and away feeds of broadcast, something that only SiriusXM offers during the playoffs. While SiriusXM still does maintain broadcasting rights with all of the major sporting leagues, each one of these leagues also has their own app that they can market towards individuals who only want to listen and pay for games of a certain sport.
Could there be a chance that you subscribed to SiriusXM because you love their music selection and channels? Depending on what Sirius, XM or SiriusXM model receiver that you own you could have any where from 65 to 76 channels music channels. In this variety of channels it appears that the company has a great depth of musical programming choices and only when you spend some serious time listening to many of the channels do you realize the repetition that is heard on many of them. CH 22 is Pearl Jam Radio (a band that I love), the channel plays PJ songs almost exclusively, including concerts, interviews and B-sides. There have been many times when I have turned it to CH 22 and heard one of their classic songs and I am thankful that Pearl Jam has their own station. Although if you listen to CH 34, Lithium for any period of time you are bound to hear the top 10 PJ songs of all time, because Lithium is 90's Grunge and Alternative. And if you tune in to CH 9, or the 90's on 9 for an hour or two on any given day you are bound to hear Pearl Jam there also, probably playing Nothing Man or Elderly Women Behind The Counter In A Small Town. SiriusXM just has too much duplication across it musical lineup to justify the $9.99 per month cost of its Mostly Music subscription package. With that being said, SiriusXM also doesn't have enough arms length to push it apart of from FM/AM or internet radio.
In the pre-merger days Sirius and XM both had channels that set them apart from one another. Believe it or not each of them had an identity. One of the focal points of XM was the companies vast selection of music that couldn't be heard anywhere on the FM dial. One of the prime examples was a channel strictly dedicated towards playing movie scores and that are originally placed by XM on CH 27, the pop category. In June of 2011 SiriusXM announced that the channels would be taken off of the satellites and that it would be available online only. And recently SiriusXM announced that the number of classical stations that it would offer would drop from 3 to 2, when Pops are dropped from satellite receivers and also moved to an online only channel. It's niche channels like Cinemagic and Pops that made satellite radio unique when it was introduced in the early 2000's. These days the channel lineup features much of what you can find on the FM dial for free and with better sound quality.
In summary, SiriusXM is their own largest competitor. The price point that their advertise for the companies All-Access package, which includes all of the premium channels such as Howard Stern, all the sports coverage that you can listen to and internet listening is $18.99. Out of these three only Stern is exclusive to SiriusXM and while he might have his millions of fans and decades worth of old shows that run 24/7 on his two channels, Howard 100 and Howard 101 I highly doubt that he is the main reason that people are wanting to subscribe to SiriusXM today.
The reason that many people subscribe is because its ease of use. Odds are that the one radio that you do own in your car has a satellite radio receiver built-in to it and that you probably got a free three-month to a year free long subscription to the service when you purchased the car. You thought, "This is pretty cool. And if I drive long distances I never have to find another channel because satellite coverage is everywhere in the United States." And yes, you would be right in thinking that. Maybe you love the "60's on 6" like my Dad does cause it takes him back to when he was going through high school, and the local oldies station doesn't play oldies from the 60's anymore because its 2014 and now oldies are in the 1980's. My Dad also doesn't care about the sound quality of the stations, would never listen to a station like Cinemagic or Pops and doesn't know who Bob Edwards is, or that he spent he last 35 years in public broadcasting up until last week. As long the customers have their 5 to 10 channels, they don't change very often and they play the hits SiriusXM will continue to stay in business. Although they will also be their largest competitor to a certain group of people who was a subscriber pre-merger, when CH 2 was XMX, country music stations divided up the decades and pop music categories and that POTUS was supposed to cover the Presidential Election of 2008.
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