Sirius XM Raises Subscription Rates

It was a huge surprise when it was found that Sirius could legally merge with XM, but subscribers of either service were the ones who had the right to remain really skeptical. With these two giants together, they have caused a monopoly on the market in every sense of the word – I don’t think there exists a single competitor in this space. But, as long as the prices kept where they were, there would be nothing to complain about, right?

Well, that’s not the case anymore, since Sirius XM has just announced some price hikes on all of their services. Whether this was caused by the recent drop of subscribers (over 400,000!) or not is unknown, but chances are it was. Sirius XM hasn’t been making a profit for as long as I remember (if at all), so to make money, someone has to pay, and that’s clearly going to be the customers.

Prices for the family plan have risen from $6.99 to $8.99, while the previously-free Internet version of the stations will now cost $2.99. I admit I’ve never once touched either Sirius or XM, so I’m not sure how good either service actually is, but given what I pay for my cable every month, $8.99 doesn’t seem all too bad. Of course, it’s the programming and reliability that matters, nothing more. Do you have experience with either? Let us know in our comments.

Now that Sirius XM is the only game in town, it’s nudging up fees for subscribers. Nice! The one and only satellite radio company’s boasts of its ever-increasing subscriber base are gone now, and the decline is significant. The number floating around the Internet is a loss of 400,000 subscribers. That still leaves 18.6 million, but there’s no way of knowing how many of that number are full-price-paying subscribers.