Those are the words of SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer who sees the growth of smart speakers and the ubiquity of the smartphone as additional distribution points to get SiriusXM content in the hands of more consumers. Meyer told investors and analysts on the SiriusXM conference call Wednesday that enormous new opportunities to consume audio are being created and audio is thriving like never before.
As consumers find more ways to consume their audio, SiriusXM is aggressively working on ways to move its product outside the vehicle, with an improved app and deals with Amazon. According to Meyer, this creates opportunities for many new businesses to flourish and existing businesses like SiriusXM to evolve and grow in new directions. “And this is not a zero sum game. The entire pie of audio consumption is growing. Clearly we remain focused on extending on our winning position in the vehicle. But we are also following through on our efforts to drive engagement and subscribers out of the car as well.”
Meyer said Alexa has been very very good to SiriusXM. “We enabled our Alexa skill with Amazon in 2017. It’s clear to me that audio on smart speaker clicks. We immediately found traction. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers rushed to use our service on the Alexa voice interface.”
Currently, consumers who purchase an Amazon Echo are getting a free trial of SiriusXM. Meyer expects to announce additional deals with Amazon in the future.
Since radio can’t find its own ass on the matter of device-friendly radio reception, maybe a re-introduction of some snazzy, super-portable, super efficient transistor sets would be in order. (Maybe include a calculator.)
I mean, the arguments and the lies that people know what they want and are sophisticated enough to make appropriate decisions are being tossed aside every day.
So, yeah!
“Transistor radios. That’s the ticket. This is the way to go! The rubes can be so easily tricked! Just remember: Lousy content. shabby commercials – and too many of them – might be just ever so slightly detrimental to the ‘transistor’ proposition.”
Interesting how profits never looked more rosy while staff is overworked and underpaid, content suppliers from the XM merger onward have been dumped with the explanation that they couldn’t afford them any longer and programmers who know nothing about certain genres are asked to put channels together. It’s never been a better time to find or offer a service that cares about the level of quality of their content. Clearly, Sirius/Xm and iHeart do not. Just slap some ‘stuff’ up there and call it whatever the listener is looking for and move on.