more on XM Radio pulls PC-based receiver over piracy concerns

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Joe Crawford <artlung () artlung com>
Date: September 8, 2004 1:17:47 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] XM Radio pulls PC-based receiver over piracy concerns
Reply-To: Joe Crawford <joe () artlung com>

PVRBlog, run by Matt Haughey of Metafilter, has a great take on this
decision -- essentially it's a huge missed opportunity to serve 
customers
who love radio.

http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2004/09/xm_radio_is_tot.html
XM Radio is totally taking its ball and going home over TimeTrax

========

While not directly TiVo related, recently on a few threads here 
mentioning
the radio features of networked appliances and Microsoft's Media Center,
we've talked about how great it'd be to get a "tivo for radio."

Everyone has their favorite radio shows, but we've all got our own
schedules that rarely allow us to catch them. Well, someone heeded our
call and made a program called TimeTrax that schedules recordings off 
your
PC-based XM satellite radio and saves them as MP3s you can listen to
later.

So let's look at this for a second. XM radio is a subscription-based
satellite radio network that runs $9.95 per month. There are several 
types
of receivers but one of the cheapest is a USB-based unit that works on
Macs and PCs, costing around $50. Simply put, folks that get XM radio 
are
big fans of radio.

XM radio is fairly well scheduled, with daily talk programs, super hip 
DJs
on music channels, and various bits of esoteric comedy and news 
programs.
I myself tried it out for about 5 months earlier this year. I originally
got it to hear some BBC and Air America, but quickly found myself 
spending
more time enjoying the various jazz and alternative stations. In 
addition
to talkshows, the music channels are superb, almost seeming like a 
college
station where all the DJs are way into their kinds of music and the 
boring
corporate stuff is nowhere to be heard. Eventually I gave it up when I
couldn't always be around to catch various comedy and talk shows on 
time.

TimeTrax not only lets you schedule recordings, but you can have it 
search
for keywords like bands you like and people you want to hear on shows.
Basically, it gives big time radio fans a powerful tool to let them 
enjoy
their radio even more. So what did XM radio do when they found out?

They decided to stop selling the USB-XM radio hardware altogether. They
claim piracy, but if someone's paying $10 a month just to save a few 
MP3s,
I seriously doubt they are redistributing it to thousands of folks that
would otherwise be XM customers (unless someone can show me an XM radio
archive somewhere of all these pirated MP3s). XM shouldn't be pulling
devices off the market that get them new subscribers (duh, the units are
inoperable without a subscription), they should have bought the TimeTrax
product and incorporated it into their PC control software, which did
allow you to set alarms when your shows were on (you still had to 
actually
sit in front of the computer and listen to them though).

XM dropped the ball, picked it up, and is now taking it home instead of
giving their most loyal customers a chance to further enjoy their
subscriptions on their own time. But at least for me, there's now an
upside. I can take my $40 XM radio PCR unit and sell it on eBay for
upwards of $400.

=========


        Joe
--
Joe Crawford             Web Building, Blogging, Product Evangelist
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