Does Mel Karmazin Realize That XM Isn't The Only Competition?
from the anti-trust-may-be-the-least-of-their-problems dept
At a recent conference, Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin threw out the idea that if the price were right, his company would consider a merger with its fierce competitor XM. He also noted that since the two companies own the satellite radio industry between them, such a merger might raise red flags among regulators. But it may not be as much of an issue as Karmazin thinks, as it's all about how you define the market. If you think narrowly about satellite radio, then yes, it looks like they'd dominate the market. But if you think of satellite radio as itself a competitor to terrestrial radio, iTunes, subscription music services, internet radio and more, then such a tie up wouldn't represent a monopoly at all. This point might be seen as the legal counterpart to the idea that media companies should no longer be defined by their media. Going back to Karmazin, this is all something that he should understand. If he actually thinks that his main competition comes from XM, and not from these avenues, then his company is in trouble. Merger or not, he should be guiding the company in such a way that acknowledges that consumers have far more than two options for their music enjoyment. There's still one major problem though with the idea of a Sirius/XM merger: given all the animosity between fans of either service, will they be able to make peace if they're combined?
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howard
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I Coulda' Been a Contenda'
A few other contenders would be yahoo launch and Pandora. If you have a yahoo account, you have access to millions of songs, from alternative, to Chrisitian, to metal, to top 40. If you have not used or heard about Pandora...I seriously recommend checking it out. The Music Genome Project rolled this out. You type in a song or artist and it collects a playlist of music that you would like--songs you that are similar in beat or genre. I think its great and it opens your eyes to more bands and songs that you may have never heard of. pandora.com
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There's no direct competition to satellite
Internet radio requires a computer and a good connection to the internet, and the quality is very poor.
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I think I have to agree with Mel...
iTunes/iPod? Well, if you buy every piece of music you are ever going to listen to, then fine.
Launch/Pandora? Great services, but they aren't really available to me in my car... BTW... I love Pandora. I've bought more music recently because of them, than I have in the last two years. My wife wishes I'd never found the service. :)
Internet Radio - Again, can't play it in my car...
Terrestrial radio - Not even close to competition, unless you only listen to talk radio. The music stations on satellite are unencumbered by ads, something that makes the subscription fee more than acceptable to me.
That being said, my house has both systems... I'm a subscriber to Sirius, and the wife subs to XM. I prefer Sirius, as I think that they have a far better selection of music than XM, and the wife tends to agree. But the plain and simple fact that we can listen to a station as we drive from town to town, state to state kicks butt.
Is there competition out there for sat radio? Sure. But once you get it into a mobile environment, and add in the variety of music that you don't have on your iPod... Then that competition melts away to simply terrestrial radio. Add in the no-ads feature on music stations, you're down to no competition.
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Re: There's no direct competition to satellite
And to think that Internet radio will always require a computer to receive it is naive.
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Its all about location and how much you want to pay. I recently wanted to buy my boyfriend satellite radio, I was trying to decide between XM or Sirius. A friend of mine works at Z100 in NYC so I figured I would ask him his opinion. He said both are about the same price, the only major difference is baseball vs. football. He also said if my boyfriend has an iPod, satellite is, again depending on location, a waste of money.
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Soon to be a niche market
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Internet Radio...
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Satellite radio is nothing sort of wonderful.
Why does tech dirt always badmouth it?
It's really annoying.
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Sat Radio will be owned by terrestrial soon
Stern has proven that you can be a paid service and still have paid ads. best of both worlds.
i forsee a big company like CBS or Clear channel will buy both companies and convert their channels to extensions of the sat service and start charging for the service.
Oh and lets hope the sticker virgins dont invade the board because we said something about Siruis vs Xm..
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Sirius
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Just don't use it in a thunderstorm
The service has really come in handy on my many cross country road trips where nothing else would come in. Try driving Northern Nevada sometime. I had a place where there was no AM or FM.
I do like the new product from XM where you can save the music you listened to and replay. OOOPS the RIAA is on their ass for that one now.
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Re: bias
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I am a Pod Person
I am sure there will be a market for satalite radio...those people in Kansas probably love it...but there are a lot of people out there like me. I don't think it is ever going to be as popular as some people would like.
P.S. 4 hours to set up an iPod? Are you stupid?
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Re: I Coulda' Been a Contenda'
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So then I'll have to pay for a custom HD radio receiver that knows how to bill me for the time or on a monthly basis for the station I listen to? I doubt it. It will operate exactly like HDTV does. I get 3 channels of HD from my local Fox affiliate, none of which I have to pay for, and the FCC won't allow them to charge me. Additionally, how would design a system that wouldallow you to pay for such a thing? I'd subscribe my radio to one stream from one company and another from another company? That's a cumbersome and unworkable business model.
Lastly, to Lisa... It still has definite merit in NYC if you want to listen to top 40. You can listen to top 40 unencumbered by ads. I certainly don't miss ads. Nothing like listening to 38 minutes of music in an hour, the rest of which is filled by ads for local restaurants, megastores, etc. When I want to listen to music, I want to listen to music. And my iPod? Sure it's good quality. And yes, I have a lot of great music on it... But I'm not going to get exposed to new music listening to my iPod.
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Yes, that was the last time you checked - but I'm talking about 2 years time when 95% or more of the population will have high speed data connections with their cellphone.
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It's about the delivery system, not the media....
Also, remember that different "pipes" have different things to offer. A print ad on a billboard can reach a lot of diverse people in a small area, making it excellent for regional messages but costly for national campagins, on the other end, a well done TV ad on a national station can reach a lot of people, but doesn't have the ability to be tailored to a particular region.
Content is a lot more than the bitstream, its also the pipes used to carry the bitstream. I guess this is why I always get so frustrated when techDirt goes on about "new business models" and such, you keep thinking you can magically divorce distribution (the pipes) from the message (media/ads).
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Re: Sirius
1.) You don't have time to use an Ipod because it takes 4 hours to set up.
Having trouble with that headphone jack, are you? Can't quite wrap your brain around the "connect USB port to computer and dock connector to bottom of iPod" concept? They must not cover iPod usage when you go back for your GED.
2.) You spelled the word legit "ligit"
Note to 'sirius': Mispelling words and using incorrect english will give away the fact that you are a mental midget.
3.) You claim to work in an office.
I'm sure your bosses are all thrilled with your performance.
4.) You are either "too productive" or too lazy to use an iPod.
I choose the latter.
5.) Podcasts are a pain in the ass to get.
Last I checked, to subscribe to a podcast, one only had to push the subscribe button on iTunes, as simple as buying a song from iTunes. This consitutes a "pain in the ass" apparently. Be honest. Its the reading you can't handle. Never got past See Spot Run, did you?
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Verizon's EVDO Network
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Re: I am a Pod Person
For all of you posting about how great satellite radios are and how there's no competition to it, I would have to agree that yes satellite radio probably has great sound quality and having no commercials is great as well; however, I think it's naive/biased to say that no other medium can compete with it.
All of the technologies listed, iPods, terrestrial radio, hd radio, sat. radio, and internet radio have pros and cons associated with them and each consumer has different wants and needs. As a result, XM+Sirius may corner the satellite radio market, but not the entire music/radio listening market. I think this article is merely trying to point out that if the CEO broadened his definition of his 'target market' he would realize that there are other competing technologies out there, and that he could be missing opportunities.
And no, an iPod doesn't take 4 hours to setup.
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Geez I feel like a nerd
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Re: Sat Radio will be owned by terrestrial soon
Uh, no. Opie & Anthony proved that model worked on XM well before Stern even left KROK for Sirius.
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4 hours to set up ipod
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Re:
http://shop.sirius.com/edealinv/servlet/ExecMacro?nurl=control/StoreItem.vm&ctl_nbr=26 40&siId=601930&catLevel=1&scLevel=0&thisCatLevel=&oldParentID=7870&catParent ID=7870&scId=7874
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So then I'll have to pay for a custom HD radio receiver that knows how to bill me for the time or on a monthly basis for the station I listen to? I doubt it. Additionally, how would design a system that wouldallow you to pay for such a thing? I'd subscribe my radio to one stream from one company and another from another company? That's a cumbersome and unworkable business model.
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its not that hard, recievers could have the same standards, and like sat radio you have to sub and sign up then the reciever has a code on it that you enter when you sign up...then the radio stations "transmit" the ok that you are signed up, and you are now authorized to listen to the HD stream.
technology is quite easy and only requires a one way communication since you sign up on the phone or internet like sat. the tech already exsist.
now the bad part would be if you had to sub with 3 different companies, like clear channel, infinity and bob's radio company. but that too can be solved by mergers and "packages" that allow you to buy several companies "programing" under one plan.
Oh and if you expect internet radio to remain free you are quite nuts. if this does become more popular the fees from artist, and licence holders will become more and more expensive...
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Karmazin addressed these issues
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my opinion
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