Sirius in Negotiations With Apple

An anonymous reader writes "Sirius Satellite Radio Chief Executive Mel Karmazin announced that his company is in talks with Apple about bringing satellite radio to the iPod. Karmazin met with Steve Jobs Monday and he says the technology is the easy part. The hard part is negotiating just how they will split the profit from equipment and monthly subscriptions." We've covered this before, but now it seems they are getting "more Sirius," or something.

maybe he should keep quiet

I know he's just trying to make sirius look more viable since they seem to be losing out to XM, but shouldn't he consider Apple's general attitude towards not announcing stuff ahead of time and keep his mouth shut.

Sirius losing to XM? I think not

Sirius signed a contract with Stern, who will be producing quite a few shows. The big question is will his listenership follow? If a large enough percentage of them do, Sirius stands poised to take the lead in the satellite market share race. Maybe a monster one.
Hooking up iPods with Sirius would be quite interesting . . . maybe an XM killer.

Content is not King

And while they have all of this content, they only got it by dramatically overpaying for it. XM has, to their credit, refused to play that game. Meanwhile, Sirius has been ignoring certain less sexy aspects that drives growth in this medium.

Sirius is losing the car partnership race. Folks that buy new cars have something like a 30-50% conversion rate for whatever ships in the cars. That is becoming, increasingly, XM. Their new deal with Hyundai is going to probably bring in more subscribers than Stern ever would, but it didn't cost half a billion.

Sirius is also seen as losing the hardware race. They don't have the resources to make desirable hardware. XM isn't doing the best here, either, but they're doing better than Sirius.

Lastly, Sirius cannot afford to launch another sat, and they need to. They're going to burn a lot of money keeping a repeater network going. XM has the resources to continue lofting birds, and saving money from having less of a ground presence - and eventually, having the sat bandwidth to offer new services.

The fact is that Sirius is acting a lot like a dot.com company. They're betting that they get a lot more subscribers before they burn through the cash - and I think that's a bet that they're going to lose.

Sirius will be calling for a secondary stock offering soon. I'm sure that Stern is going to be just thrilled when his huge deal suddenly is worth a whole lot less. That will be the beginning-of-the-end event for Sirius.

jh

Re:Content is not King

You, my friend, are crazy.

While XM's sattelites are generally way, way, way out there on the horizon near 30 degrees, Sirius has a sattelite (three in opposing orbits) over 60-90 degrees overhead. This is why XM has to worry about a repeater network and that Sirus doesn't have to deploy nearly as many repeaters. (ie: cities with tall buildings, not just places with semi-tall buildings) Its not an indication that 'Oh sirius has less repeaters so its not as good.' Its: "Oh, they picked a far better technology for mobile radio reception from sattelites."

Sirius and Apple together - could be good...

As a subscriber to Sirius sat. radio AND an owner of Apple machines, I like the idea of being able to hear my favorite sat. radio stations on my iPod. Hopefully, the route they take will finally make that an affordable reality.

Let's Get Sirius Here...

Gee, I don't think I've ever seen that incredibly hilarious pun anywhere [elvisnews.com] else... [autoblog.com]

iPod format

How much would this change the format of the iPod? As far as I remember (which isn't much I must admit) satellite radios must require some sort of antenna to pick up the signal. Would a relatively bulky add-in be required to pick up the signal?

Podcasting link here?

Evidently Sirius will be teaming up with Mr. Adam Curry who helped to make podcasting famous (and could arguably be the "inventor" of podcasting).

This kind of a system may benefit both Sirius and Apple. Rather than trying to make some sort of Apple/Sirius bastard child, perform an Audible like system: subscribers to Sirius could get satellite shows and download them as podcasts as well automatically through iTunes, or do a "Sirius Lite" with delayed Podcast versions of shows available for a monthly fee (again, like Audible).

Apple sells more iPods (especially if they do it as an exclusive), Sirius would get more subscribers (heck, I've no interest in a satellite radio system, but I'd pay a small monthly service fee for good radio/music shows I could auto-sync to my iPod - key word "good"), and consumers - eh, I'll let individuals decide if its good for them or not.

Re:What is Sirus?

The CRTC has not approved services like Sirius and XM in Canada yet, but expect to have either or both here soon. It's basically high quality digital, (largely) commercial-free, subscription-based radio programming.

I don't know that there's any technical reason why you couldn't receive satellite radio in Canada, but neither company will sell it to you. Likewise, if you're an American passing through Canada there's no reason why your satellite radio wouldn't work. I guess that reception in Europe and elsewhere would depend on how they have their satellites positioned and what kind of orbits they are in.

Screw that

When is the iPod going to get a frickin' FM reciever?? One of the things that I hate about Steve Jobs is that if he doesn't like something, then NO ONE should be allowed to have it. He doesn't like FM, therefore no one should listen to FM.

Would it really be that hard to add a radio? And I don't want satellite radio. Sorry, Steve.

Ah well. If an iPod had radio, I might tempted to get one, and I've sworn a holy oath never to give Apple any of my money because of their business practices. :D

He spoke to EVERYONE, not just Apple

From TFA:

said the company has "had discussions with everyone," including makers of cell phones, digital music players and other devices.

It wasn't just Apple, its just a generalized thing

Let Me Summarize the "Negotiations"

Sirrus: Please, please put us in the iPod!

Steve Jobs: Nope.

Sirrus: I'll be your friend!

Steve Jobs: Nope.

Sirrus: If you don't put us in the iPod, I'll sign an exclusive deal with RealPlayer!

(pause)

Sirrus & Steve Jobs: AHAHAHAHH!

Sirrus: That's a good one. But seriously, how about putting us in the iPod?

Steve Jobs: Nope.

-Crow T. Trollbot

Podcasting.

Since Sirrus has lots of Satallite Radio channels. Maybe Apple can sell Podcasts of Sirrus radio channels to iTunes 4.9 users.

Not quite satallite radio, but a neat way of delievering quality content to iPods.

This way people could copy yesterday's episode of Howard Stern to their iPod, and listen to it inside an underground bunker with no outside communication.

Sound quality?

Aside from having to strap an antenna on your head to use this (you'll know what I mean if you've ever used any portable satellite radio), the awful and somewhat embarrassing sound quality will be VERY noticeable when it's played right beside actual CD quality audio. It's gotten so bad with both Sirius and XM that normal non-nerds are complaining about it.

Most of the time you ignore it...but going from a track ripped in Apple lossless format to satellite radio will be like jumping back 10 years in technology.

First rule about talking with Steve Jobs

..is that you *don't talk about talking with Steve Jobs* seriously.. it pisses him off.

Sirius is a flash in the pan

XM will get as many as 1 million subcribers every year from their deal with Hyundai - which didn't cost half a billion dollars.

XM currently has 2 million more subs than Sirius. There is simply no way that Sirius is going to catch up, Stern or not.

Sirius paid a lot of money for potential Stern subcribers - at least a couple of hundred bucks each. It is extremely unlikely that Sirius will actually make money on this deal any time soon.

Sirius is betting the farm on some risky deals, while XM has had strong and steady growth - and will absolutely turn a profit years before Sirius does.