PenguinSix

Next target, rock and/or roll..

When I published my thoughts on how the iPhone would kill Sirius / XM, I was linked in the Sirius XM financial messageboards (probably by some shorts). Needless to say some of the longs went after me screaming ‘this guy is a moron’ and some other harshness. Even today when I talk about how amazing it is to play radio on my iPhone, I get some radio purists come in an whine ‘but but but, HD radio is better because…’ or something like that. (It reminds me of the guy who told me mp3’s would never take off because they didn’t sound as good as CDs).

Anyway, SiriusXM are preparing to file for bankruptcy. Told you this would happen.

It’s not really the iPhone that is the killer, directly. It is the mountains and mountains of debt that were attached to Sirius. These guys borrowed BILLIONS to put their birds up in orbit. It just never made sense–NEVER MADE SENSE–to recreate the broadcast radio model up in space with a hugely more expensive infrastructure, not when a simpler hack together system is available to deliver more content easier (iPhone tethered to a car stereo). And with more and more 4G services being planned (wimax, LTE) I can understand why investors were running scared about satellite radio.

Sadly, a bunch of truckers are going to be really depressed. One of the strongest fan bases for satellite radio is long haul truckers who got their fix of news, information, music and even trucking stories no matter where they were in the USA. I suspect many of them are going to have some withdraw pains should the service shutter.

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