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SiriusXM to Acquire Pandora for $3.5 Billion
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You can negotiate a much better price with SiriusXM. This is one business where haggling usually works.
I pay around $35.00 (including the royalty fee) for 6 months of service and I just have to remember to cancel before my 6 months is done. I then have to re-negotiate for the same deal.
That being said, it's at the upper limit of what I will pay and I will cancel for good when they raise the price (plenty of good free options in my car).
This is exactly what I do. I set a reminder on my iPhone for the day before my subscription expires to call them and negotiate a similar or better deal.
The only time it's a real PITA is when you really do want to cancel service and you have to tell the Rep "no" 4-5 times to various packages before they finally process your cancellation.
Pandora is far, far superior at discovery. There music genealogy system is much more expansive and nuanced than Spotify.
Plus Spotify’s UI is a cluster**** with that design change. No cohesion whatsoever.
Plus Spotify’s UI is a cluster**** with that design change. No cohesion whatsoever.
By the time this all goes through, your year will be up anyway.
I like Sirius it’s great on road trips, also it’s not like there’s a Broadway or classical music channel with real hosts anywhere else.
I wish this was a joke. When I purchased my vehicle, it came with Sirius XM. I was not aware of this until the subscription expired 6 months later and I was hounded by Sirius (phone and junk mail) and eventually had to tell their rep to stop contacting me because I never used it nor had any interest in it.
On the contrary, XM ruined Sirius when they merged the channel lineups. We got all of XMs garbage channels, and lost all of actual good Sirius channels, and their better library, in the mix.
Their biggest remaining problem is they maintain both services, separately, rather than shut one down and then use the bigger chunk of bandwidth to improve their double-trashy sound quality. It's lose-lose with either side of that coin. Maybe they could just shut it down entirely and serve it as a data stream only from the sky...
I have liked Pandora since day 1. The algorithm they have is amazing. If they were struggling for cash, which many accounts point to, I’m happy they will continue on.
I also have an XM/Sirius account. Love that too. Has some nice add-ons to it frequently. Sure there are things I would like done differently, but overall, I’m happy with the service. I’m a big fan of Pandora joining them!
I also have an XM/Sirius account. Love that too. Has some nice add-ons to it frequently. Sure there are things I would like done differently, but overall, I’m happy with the service. I’m a big fan of Pandora joining them!
Spotify has 83 million paying subscribers. Pandora is nowhere near first — it’s almost last, has been struggling for a long time.
Same! It might be simply because I am old and curmudgeonly, but I used Pandora first, and it works well, so I have never actually even TRIED spotify. I am completely satisfied with Pandora.
Well, their service is definitely overpriced. They have awful customer service. You know that a companies product sucks when they force you to call and cancel. We will make it as big of a pain in the ass for people to stop their service, then maybe we can get a couple extra months out of em. This seems to be their attitude along with Comcast, etc. Hulu, cancel online, Netflix cancel online, Sling tv cancel online. Just a couple taps of a mouse and your out.......if you want. Not Sirius. Regardless of what they charge at this point, if you cant cancel it when you no longer want it, price becomes irrelevant. For this reason alone I have refused to ever subscribe to them again. And they dont seem to care. As far as them knowing what they are doing, they have never made a profit and are still not making money. Hence the ALL STOCK purchase. All worthless stock mind you. Stern came over for that massive contract. Sirius had a stock price high of almost $60 per share in 2000. Stern comes in 2006......stock price $6.28. Well Stern is a big hit right, surely he was worth the half billion they paid him right. And some more of those genius's that know what they are doing followed the next year. 2007 Mel Karmazin becomes CEO.
After four years of Stern and 3 of Karmazin the stock was a whopping 0.67 a share. Thats right, 67 CENTS per share.
Tack on another 6 years, up to 2016, and the stock fought its way back to $3.63 a share. But it took gutting the service. Howards "Revolution" became a 3 day work week and 5-6 months off during the year. So he gutted his channels. He barely can muster up the motivation to come in more then 3 days a week. They screwed up all the other channels and got rid of any talent they had left. Then jacked up the price. When Howard first came it was $12 and you got internet streaming included. Now its double and internet is extra.
I think they have clawed up their stock to around $6 now so they are up to 10% of what they were before the genius's came onboard. And they are right back to where they were in 2006,when Stern came on. 12 years and they have done nothing but bleed money and their stock is right back to where it was 12 years ago.
Oy.
You'll also have to call in to cancel in keep turning down offers of free months until they finally cancel your subscription.
I agree, I’ve been a Pandora user off and on for 5 years. Than just recently subscribed to the plus package.
IMHO, nobody does radio stations better than Pandora.
I like just clicking on a station based on an Artist or track, and listen to my music.
And especially since Pandora let’s you save 4 stations for offline listening.
Once you teach it what you like and don’t like it’s a great service. Like Apple, Pandora just works.
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