Sirius XM Is The Elephant In the Room

Jennifer Lane — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:35:22 +0000

Sirius XM grew their subscriber base by 8% last year – from 20.6 million subscribers to 22.3 million. First quarter 2012 revenue meanwhile grew at an even more impressive rate of 11% to $805 million. That puts them ahead of the largest broadcaster Clear Channel Radio‘s $672 million. For this year, they are forecasting revenue of $3.3 billion, compared to Clear Channel Radio’s $3.0 billion.

What’s even more impressive is the way they are monetizing their listener base. They make close to $138 per listener/subscriber per year against Clear Channel’s $12.55 (and Pandora‘s $5.84). Sirius XM sure makes the subscription model look attractive. In fact, they have the same number of subscribers as Comcast. They’re projecting household penetration of 13% by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, as I have mentioned before, Sirius XM continues to expand their offerings online. They recently announced a suite of enhancements for their online offering that will allow listeners to pause, rewind and skip, start shows and songs at the beginning, set alerts and record programming. These features will give Sirius XM listeners a highly interactive online listening experience. They’re also redesigning their player and rolling out new mobile device apps.

Sirius XM’s subscriber base is huge, and their ability to monetize it is impressive. While lots of media attention is focused on Pandora, Spotify, Clear Channel and others, when it comes to assessing the new audio marketplace, Sirius XM is the elephant in the room…

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Sirius XM Is The Elephant In the Room