Two million subscribers and a million in the last eight months alone. Financially, Sirius is simply dead. If you figure that XM is pulling in about 15M per month in subscription fees and some change from advertising, they are well on their way to being financially self-sustaining. Sirius, on the other hand, had revenue of less than that for all of 2003. Now I hear you saying, “But they had that bond offering…” True and they are spending that money like a red-headed step-child with an inheritance. - fast and loose and on the wrong things. Their current business plan is going to have them DOA in 2006 with a bunch of really cool content deals. This is mismanagement at the highest levels.

These guys are at war and Sirius is losing - bad. They need subscribers. This “if we build the content, they will come” crap needs to stop. What Sirius needs to do is start giving away radios. GIVE THEM AWAY. They have the money. Screw the retail channel. They haven’t help thus far. OK, don’t screw the retail channel. Let them have the add-ons and second radio business.

I figure that for 200M they can give away 2.5M radios. Hell, I’ll take two and I’ll take a small consulting fee for the idea too. 250K sounds about right given that I just gave them dominance in satellite radio.

And now a few words from Hugh at XM on reaching 2M subscribers -

“The second million is even sweeter than the first,” said Hugh Panero,
President and CEO of XM Satellite Radio. “It took us almost two years to
reach 1 million subscribers, and only eight months to double that figure.
With more than 200 million vehicles on the road and 100 million households,
we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of our market. Our rapid growth in
both the retail and automotive markets puts us on our path to reach 20 million
subscribers by 2010.”

[Hugh Panero via
PRNewsWire]