Sirius Radio (SIRI) Faceplants on iPhone App; But Maybe it’s Not Their Fault

By Matt Van Hoven 

The much awaited Sirius Radio (SIRI) iPhone app released today and, whoopee, it’s free and comes with a free week of service. After that it’s $2.99 a month, and you can plug the thing into your car or whatever, making the app the cheapest way to access their premium content.

But a bunch of folks are complaining about a few stations they can’t get through the mobile device. It’s all stemming back to ZDNet, which notes that the Howard Stern, NASCAR, MLB and NFL stations aren’t available on the phone.

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Maybe that’s because NASCAR, MLB and NFL have their own apps and, furthermore, Sirius doesn’t own rights to broadcast NASCAR, NFL and MLB content over the Web. Why? Again, the sports organizations retain those rights because they want to be able to charge for the content online. It just makes sense for them to license the content for TV and radio because setting up the infrastructure to disseminate their programming would be immensely expensive. Would it make sense to deliver games via their own apps and Sirius? Maybe, but most likely that would dilute the success of their apps.

The Sirius response:

“Some select programming, including MLB Play-by-Play, NFL Play-by-Play, SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, and Howard Stern, will not be available on the iPhone and iPod touch. Listeners will continue to be able to access that programming through the platforms they are currently offered on.”

I don’t know what the deal is with Stern. My best guess is that his show’s absence has something to do with his $500 million/5 years and the ultra-low $2.99/month service price point? It’s a bit odd though because we heard Stern was included in the beta version of this app, which was only released to a limited group of users. So, is Stern vying for his own app? One way or another, users better get what they want.

So, why the faceplant remark? Well due to the lack of Sternage, it’s getting low star points.

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