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Shame those nice folks at Sirius went and spent a whole half-billion dollars to bring on that Fartman guy. While the satellite radio network’s initial subscription gains were highly encouraging, suggesting their astronomical expense might just pay out, some enterprising young whippersnappers may have thrown a wrench in the works. Since the presumable goal of overspending on Howard Stern was to draw and keep paying subscribers for the long haul, that business model would be vulnerable if Stern’s program were instead made available to the masses for free, no satellite subscription required. And that, dear friends, is exactly what has been happening. Since the very day of his satellite debut, pirated copies of Stern’s show have been made available via online file-sharing sites “just hours after he signs off,” according to the LA Times. Enraged Sirius execs vow to “vigorously protect [their] intellectual property rights,” but so far have been unsuccessful in permanently squashing the online pirates. And, if past file-sharing furors are any indication, Stern’s new employers have a Sirius problem on their hands. These file-sharing pirates aren’t going to change their ways just because you ask them to. Because, hey: Farts want to be free.
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I was listening to Opie and Anthony last week on XM in which they were discussing a recent issur of Barron’s magazine which featured Howard on the cover and a big headline that reads “Don’t bet on Howard.” I looked the piece up online and basically the author of the piece is just talking about how XM was already and will remain the more profitable satellite radio network, even if Sirius did gain X amount more subscribers for a month for the first time than XM. They then played some clips of Howie saying how sorry he felt for O&A and how XM didn’t step up to the plate for him in terms of negotiations, going further to insinuate that if he had signed with XM, all the Sirius listeners would have followed and there would be only XM. What a complete jackass. It let Anthony to say that there were plenty of people in the world who never heard of O&A and couldn’t give a shit less if they ever did, and it was the same for Stern. As in, not everyone’s going to Sirius to listen to just him.
I find this amusing that his show is being pirated now. I dunno how much O&A’s show is in comparison, though I’m figuring it undoubtedly is, since pretty much all audio is these days. I do know that they offer their shows up for pretty much nothing over at Audible.com, and that you can even subscribe to a few months of their shows if you like.
Sirius made a huge mistake giving Hoo-hoo half a bil, and now they’re paying for it. XM was more than smart to not ’step up to the plate” for Howie and keep their business model the tight running ship that it has been.
My question is this: how on earth did they not see this coming? Fools, the lot of them.