What If...SiriusXM Became Free?

Here's an intriguing thought: What if SiriusXM went free?

Media blogster and Broadcast educator Dick Taylor posed the question in a weekend blog.

As Taylor sees it,  satellite radio currently captures about ten percent of radio listening and mostly in vehicles. When they do one of their free listen promotions, they don’t turn on all the channels, just the ones they think will hook a person to listen.

Dick Taylor

So, Taylor imagines, they could create a group of channels that could be on all the time and carry a limited commercial inventory attractive to national advertisers. Like the most popular musical venues, such as adult contemporary.

According to Taylor, even if they only turned on the top five music formats, it would mean drivers could listen to them wherever they drove across America, plus SiriusXM would have the ability to pop in promos for their other channels that remained behind a paywall.

He writes it’s almost "too scary" to consider the possibility.

"AM/FM radio has been built on free. That’s an advantage that too often gets taken for granted. According to Nielsen 61% of people find out about new music via their AM/FM/satellite radio.

"It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to see satellite radio one day deciding to have the best of both worlds. Offer premium pay channels to those willing to pay for them and at the same time create a free tier of channels that could be ad supported by national advertisers.

"What history shows us are things that happen in other industries and services eventually make their way around to virtually all of them. It’s only a matter of time", Taylor concludes.

Read Taylor's Entire Posting: Click Here