SiriusXM Readies New Streaming App As It Tries to Get Listeners to Tune In Outside of Cars

Georg Szalai
·4 min read

Audio entertainment giant SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz is bullish on improving the personalization and mobility of the firm’s services thanks to upcoming technology upgrades, she told an investor conference on Thursday.

Appearing at the Bank of America Securities Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in a session that was webcast, she discussed future opportunities, particularly the company’s plans to later this year launch a next-generation streaming app, designed to better appeal to various audience segments, attract younger, more diverse listeners and offer enhanced search recommendations and other features.

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“It’s really about how do we continue to enhance the value of our subscriptions and [showcase] this tremendously valuable set of content that really speaks to every audio genre – music, news, talks, entertainment, comedy, live, on-demand, exclusive, non-exclusive,” the SiriusXM CEO told the conference. “I think the biggest gap we found is being able to get consumers into the content they love. “In the car, it’s been very much about turning the dial or hearing the on-air promotion, or get the email and then go find the content.”

But the next-generation platform will “give us a tremendous amount of capabilities to personalize these journeys across marketing and in the product, in terms of content marketing,” she said. “We’ll have a lot more data-driven personalization capabilities, so we can get consumers and listeners directly into the content they love.”

Plus, there will be a chance to keep SiriusXM users listening no matter where they are. “We’re going to be able to make it much easier for our in-car subscribers to carry their listening forward into streaming devices, and vice versa, in a very seamless way,” Witz said. “And so ultimately, I think it’s not going to be about streaming subscribers or in-car subscribers, but really just about subscribers, because we’re pretty indifferent as to how they listen or where they listen.”

That will also benefit the SiriusXM advertising business because it will give the firm “a lot more data on what customers are doing and listening to and provide us a lot more targeting capabilities, which will enhance our ad business.”

Asked where SiriusXM typically gets its streaming-only subscribers from, Witz told the conference: “It’s not that they’re really leaving other services to come to us. I can’t reinforce enough that we are a very strong complement to the on-demand music services. … We view the set of content we have as very differentiated from a streaming service. So usually we’re a complement in that case and not actually bringing people over from an on-demand music service.”

SiriusXM, the home of Howard Stern, lost 132,000 self-pay subscribers in its satellite radio unit in the second quarter, a much-narrowed decline after a 347,000 loss in the first quarter. Witz, in August, highlighted this “meaningful sequential improvement in self-pay net subscriber additions compared to the first quarter,” citing an improvement in auto trial starts. She concluded that this “sets us up for continued improvements in subscriber performance and a positive back half of the year.”

Touting nearly unchanged advertising revenue in line with expectations, Witz back then also said that “in today’s choppy market [this] is a testament to the strength of our sales offerings.” But she cautioned that a major ad rebound would likely only materialize next year, saying: “While we are cautiously optimistic the second half will see year-over-year improvement in ad revenue, there are still many variabilities in the marketplace we will be watching closely. It appears at this time that more substantial gains in the ad market will not come before 2024.”

SiriusXM plans to later this year launch a next-generation streaming app, which is designed to attract younger, more diverse audiences and offer enhanced search recommendations and other features. Witz had previously said that the company was “evaluating” its content packaging and pricing ahead of the launch. The goal was to “better appeal to each of our target segments, and in doing so continue to grow our subscriber base, revenue and profitability,” she had explained.

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