On May 1st, speaking at the Sirius-XM results, CEO Mel Karmazin suggested that main shareholder Liberty Media’s 40 per cent holding in Sirius-XM “wasn’t the new 50!” It was light-hearted throw-away comment on Liberty’s attempt to persuade the FCC to permit Sirius-XM’s valuable transmission licences to be re-allocated to Liberty. Perhaps Karmazin spoke just a day or so too soon, [...]
A French-backed scheme to launch satellite-based pay-radio is getting closer to operation. Last November, the French broadcasting regulator (Le Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel, CSA) announced its own beauty contest for national L-band frequencies. Onde Numerique (ON) last week formally declared that it will participate in the tender, and is planning an IPO probably in October. Madrid-based Ondas Media, once also [...]
Liberty Media owns 40 per cent of Sirius-XM and has made no secret that despite its shareholding influence over the pay-radio broadcaster, it would like to formally take ownership of the Sirius and XM operating licences. It applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in March for the FCC’s approval. On May 4, the FCC refused Liberty Media’s application, saying [...]
There’s money in pay radio, implies Sirius-XM’s latest numbers. The broadcaster reported an extremely successful Q1 adding subscribers and boosting profits – although the bottom line was also helped by a price rise. Sirius-XM’s net income grew from last year’s Q1 of $78.1 million to this period’s $107.8 million. Overall revenues grew 11 per cent from $723.8 million last year [...]
While the BBC Trust is agonising over whether to pay its next Director General anything more than about £400,000 (c. $620,000) in annual salary and bonus, US pay-radio operator Sirius-XM has rewarded Mel Karmazin, its CEO, a $1.5 million salary plus $9.2 million in bonuses. His rewards (up 13 per cent) reflect the growth in subscriptions at the radio broadcaster, [...]
Timbre Media, backed by music label HMV Saragama India, is now playing out its 10-channel all-music bouquet on Vodafone’s cellular system. WorldSpace India has been quietly recruiting staff over the past months, and Mathewkutty Sebastian, CEO at WorldSpace India (and he was previously MD for India & the Middle East at WorldSpace Inc) says Timbre is following a subscription model [...]
Radioplayer, the online radio platform offering all the BBC and major commercial stations, is celebrating its one year anniversary by launching iOS and Android mobile apps. The platform went live in March 2011 with 157 radio stations, including all the BBC’s national and local stations, as well as commercial networks such as Global’s Capital and Absolute Radio. More than 310 [...]
Pay-radio operator Sirius-XM, which operates in North America, added 1.7 million net new subscribers last year, according to the company. Sirius-XM finished the year with almost 21.9 million subs, up 540,000 net new subs in the pre-Christmas quarter, taking the overall gain for the full year to 1.7 million. Actual end-of-year numbers will emerge in February. “Based on preliminary subscriber [...]
David Frear, CFO at US satellite radio broadcaster Sirius-XM predicts that its pay-radio service will be on the road to more than 100 million cars, vans and trucks by the end of the decade. Frear, speaking at the recent UBC Global Media conference, told analysts that while predicting the number of new car sales in any given years was always [...]
Spotify, the digital music service, is seeking to emulate the success of Apple and Facebook by opening its platform to outside developers. Daniel Ek, Spotify founder and chief executive, said that new applications from Rolling Stone, Last.fm and others would run inside Spotify, offering users a richer experience. The Rolling Stone app, for example, will offer suggestions and reviews by [...]
