No. of Recommendations: 7
Car buyers—particularly younger ones—seem increasingly reluctant to pay $18.99 a month for a Sirius music and entertainment subscription when they can listen to music from their phones.
A subscription to Apple Music is $10 a month, and most new cars are going to support CarPlay, so why XM?
That said, I have a new car which came with a 3 month trial subscription. After being dunned and harangued for weeks, I finally gave in and subscribed … for $4 a month for a year. I’m not sure it’s even worth that, but at that price I’ll give it a shot.
It’s still linear media, which means I’m at the mercy of the DJ (computer) whim. If I subscribe to a music service I can decide what I want to listen to, when, and for how long. I don’t see a big future for XM except for expensive, special programming (Stern, etc.) but there aren’t enough of those to make it a business, I don’t think.
