Saddly this is almost all self inflicted.
While Spotify, Apple music and Google music really worked hard to get people to actually pay for the service Pandora continued to act like it was a VC backed company in hyper growth mode long after that was the case.
They fought with the record labels longer than most of their competitors did to their own determent and they didn't end up getting any concessions for their extra effort.
And when everyone else was letting you select any music you wanted in playlist, they insisted on staying radio style only.
They also got 3.5 billion for a company that hasn't made any money in its 18 year existence so it's hard to feel too bad.
This is really the nail in the coffin. After a couple days on a Spotify trial, I converted to a paid Spotify account. The only reason I logged onto Pandora after converting was to get the list of my favorited songs to add to my playlist on Spotify.
I would thumbs down live versions or comedy skits, then it would skew the entire system.
This was years ago.
Years ago I spent a week recreating my long lost high school and college CD collections on Google Play was able to find almost everything, even some of the most ecsoteric remixes.
And when entertaining, people always gravitate towards DJing through YouTube videos on the TV, and so I wired everything up with Chromecast / Chromebook pairs to make it easy. Even though they can go to any app/site they want, everyone uses YouTube.
The customer service experience was harrowing, featured slow response times, an indifferent attitude to my issues and a wholly inadequate resolution leading me to quit the service.
Every so often I would see news coverage about them struggling and all I could think was, "guess things on the customer service side haven't changed."
I think Sirus only makes money off the folks who forget to cancel after the promotional period. It’s like $20 a month and I’ve forgot to do it my self for a couple months.
Pandora always had the best selections on their radio channels. Spotify is not as good for random radio selections. I would never pay for Pandora after having so much music available on Spotify or Apple Music.
I am still pissed off about the lengths I had to go to in order to stop receiving communications from them. They refused to remove my contact information from their system and could not promise I wouldn't be contacted again in the future. I had to ultimately change all of my contact information to false information, fortunately the guy I was talking to was sympathetic to my plight and had no objections testing out the system to see what BS info it would take.
The whole escapade landed them on my short list of companies I will never do business with ever again.
Things I want in an OEM receiver: 1) Carplay/Android Auto, 2) Software updates for 1, 3) Radio, 4) To never do anything else (call me, install bloatware apps, reorder menus, etc).
Unfortunately, though not a subscriber, my car stereo often defaults to the Sirius input when I start it. This mean I'm greeted with Sirius ads when I start my car. Usually, this ad literally consists of playing a really annoying buzzing/screeching sound, followed by someone explaining that if you subscribe, you won't have to listen to that sound. That's an .. interesting .. strategy.
And they automatically rotate and update based on your listening!
they don't really have an ongoing per-customer costs, right?
so long as they extract the all the money you're willing to pay them, be it $20 or $90, that's fine. i expect they worry more about total customer count.
There is also the cost of having a call center contact deal with the renewal every 6 months. 20 min on the phone costs at least a couple bucks.
The webapp was unusable and Howard Stern is now boring to me.
I went with a Pandora-ish/Spotify-ish service named Slacker Radio, which costs only $2.50/mo pro-rated, has a 320k bit-rate and is commercial free.
SiriusXM may need Pandora to survive in the future. Pandora/SiriusXM can be re-worked to compete with Spotify.
These days I mainly use http://www.gnoosic.com for recommendations and then look for the artists on the web, Youtube, Bandcamp, Soundcloud etc.
Not sure if that makes me one of a kind?
This approach gives me more of a "discoverer" feeling then using one monolithic service that spoon feeds me my musical life.
For me, an algorithmic feed of music just isn’t interesting. Music is art, and art is for humans, not computers.
What worse was it was bit off from type of song I asked for, and particularly I couldn't stand to listen to. I switched back to Google Play Music, which has a mix of my own uploads and (smaller for things in my taste, but doesn't complain I can't skip) music from the service.
I'm not sure if this was a win for the team or a mercy killing. But, if someone can explain what's in this for customers, that would be very helpful.
Second sentence of the article
>The satellite radio company says it intends to maintain the Pandora service and brand, along with its roughly 70 million monthly active users (5.6 million of which are paying members)
So this purchase is about Sirius re-entering the market. I think they'll pivot pandora to be more self-serve and they'll merge the good things people liked about sirius (comedy, shock jocks) with the good things people liked about pandora (choice, freemium)
I'll answer my myself: For my car(s). SiriusXM just ... works. No pairing, no bluetooth on/off dance, no cables, no unpairing my wife's phone, no setting my car radio's source, Internet connection or not ... it just works. The only other time I listen to "satellite" radio is in my office, streaming from my Chromebook - which is just silly but don't judge me.
Loading music and podcasts is possible, but takes work and never feels like you're "connected" to the live world. You're always a few days behind the rest of the world, even though it's some of the best content.
Also, effectively XM was the winning company - its the XM platform that continues on, and the XM billing platform as well - its more like XM bough sirius.
If you travel in places without good data, XM is invaluable to have.
Anyone who is away from a good data connection for a significant amount of time. E.g. long haul truckers, rural areas (especially in the western US), mountainous regions. If most of your car time is commuting in the city/suburbs, that may not be an issue.
Its current business model may be at risk as car companies start to get more smartphone integrations. But with the money and content they have, they are uniquely positioned to selectively buy out streaming competitors to diversify their income streams.
There is risk if they can successfully integrate Pandora with their existing business, of course.
TBH the sound quality is too bad for even casual music listening unless I'm really desperate.
My wife listens to her LA stations, I listen mainly to news and talk radio.
When we drive cross country it works regardless of cell reception.
I dont listen to music at all.
[1] http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-release...
They don't really expand my horizons and play the same crap over and over.
My favorite is chirpradio dot org. Real DJs who are real music buffs.
I've noticed that YouTube (just plain YouTube, not the new YouTube Music) is actually decent at recommending music though. I played some songs by The Meters and Herbie Hancock, and through its recommendations I learned about the existence of Lafayette Afro Rock Band and learned that Prince made a funk/fusion album in 1977 before his pop stuff. I wonder if it's just using its regular video recommendation algorithm and not anything music specific, which might be a different approach than the music services.
EDIT: And by really strange coincidence, I just checked out Chirp, and the last song they played was by The Meters, and before that they played another band (Cymande) that YouTube recommended in the same session.
