With its subscription base falling, Sirius XM is looking beyond the old car stereo recruitment model to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
In a slideshow that was part of Sirius XM's annual shareholder meeting, one slide describes social media as driving subscriber growth and interaction. MySpace and YouTube are listed along with the other two sites mentioned above.
As Silicon Alley Insider noted earlier this month, the failing auto industry is causing major concerns for the satellite radio service. Chrysler, which has filed for bankruptcy, provided 900,000 new Sirius XM subscriptions last year. With car factories idling, a major source of new satellite customers is lost, and the auto company may kill its agreement with Sirius XM during the bankruptcy process. Sirius XM is also worried about General Motors.
So now, Sirius XM is turning to social media. It's not clear from the slides what the strategy is, but the company is presumably hoping that word of mouth advertising will come through sheer willpower. Surely, people will evangelize the service to their friends, right?
But without a compelling service to sell, Sirius XM will have a hard time peddling its wares in the wild world of social media. The merger between Sirius and XM caused outrage among subscribers, myself included, who lost some of their favorite channels. These angry customers could be just as loud as whoever Sirius XM enlists to do its guerilla marketing.
