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Jonathan S. Geller |Feb 17th, 2010 at 01:59PM
It’s pretty incomprehensible that until about two weeks ago, I had never used a piece of Sonos equipment. Heard about it, and read about it? Sure, but never used it. What MP3s did for personal audio enjoyment 5 years ago, Sonos does for your home, office, or wherever you want today, ingeniously creating a seamless and practically unlimited expandable system. Sonos is literally one of the coolest things I’ve seen in years; not because they reinvented the wheel (even though they kind of did in some places),...
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Zach Epstein |Mar 12th, 2009 at 05:44PM
A lot of of chatter was generated when the team behind StarPlayr announced it was dumping its project to bring Sirius XM content to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Naturally, is was presumed that one of the main reasons for Apple’s decision — though logic is seemingly not always a consideration when Apple rejects apps — was a Sirius XM streaming app already in the works from the Satellite Radio provider itself. Sure enough this morning’s earnings call was the forum the struggling company ch...
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Zach Epstein |Feb 17th, 2009 at 04:32PM
D-Day has arrived for the struggling satellite radio provider and for the time being, all is not lost. Liberty Media has indeed swooped in and pumped $530 million into Sirius XM in order to prevent the company from defaulting on $175 million in debt owed to Echostar today. Echostar’s Charlie Ergen had offered to take control of the company in an effort to “help” it avoid bankruptcy but the Sirius XM board seemingly wouldn’t even consider Ergen’s offer as a possibility. Instead, S...
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Zach Epstein |Feb 14th, 2009 at 03:46PM
This past week we gave you a brief glimpse into the nightmare that Sirius XM’s business has become and since then things have basically been a cluster… err, mess. Sirius did take a big step in restructuring some of its future debts – $172.5 million that was due in December is now due in June 2011, a move that cost the company 60 million shares of stock. Forget the fact that Sirius XM has $227.5 million of December debt remaining, it also still has $175 million that comes due to Dr. Claw Char...
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Zach Epstein |Feb 11th, 2009 at 09:19AM
It might not have happened exactly as terrestrial radio had planned while it was sitting in the shadows, stroking a hairless cat and plotting the downfall of satellite, but it looks like the delays it caused by lobbying against the Sirius XM merger may have ended up doing enough damage. According to a report from the New York Times, the only game in satellite radio town is preparing to file for bankruptcy. With over $5 billion in assets the company would surely be gobbled up one way or another, but its curren...
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Zach Epstein |Jan 22nd, 2009 at 05:31PM
Well, satellite radio lovers, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that the positive stipulations to the Sirius XM merger deal will finally begin to bear fruit and a variety of new programming packages will be available. The bad news is that many current subscribers will see their fees increased. First and foremost, the basic subscription fee for the current programming package will not budge – as the providers stated during the merger battle, the core subscription will stay fixed at $12.95 ...
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Zach Epstein |Jul 26th, 2008 at 02:20PM
It seems like a lifetime ago that Sirius and XM first announced the intentions to merge and form a single satellite radio powerhouse. Subscribers were generally overjoyed by the possibilities; twice the content, a la carte options, the promise that current subscription rates would not increase, etc. It sounded like everyone would be a winner. There was just one problem though… Terrestrial radio and its “relationship” with the FCC. We won’t go into this mockery of government yet again, ...
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Joshua Karp |Jul 8th, 2008 at 11:28AM
If you’ve been looking for a way to get your XM Radio fix while rockin’ your iPhone, we’ve got a bit of news that might make your day. Millard software has just released version .53 of uXM for the iPhone, which should bring most of the functionality of a standalone XM radio to your iPhone handset. For those of you with sharp eyes, you might notice that this is, in fact, the same company that brought us uSirius. They did a great job with their first iPhone satellite radio app, and this looks ...