SiriusXM needs to attract a younger audience — its new app isn’t enough

Yesterday, SiriusXM executives previewed the company’s rebrand and new consolidated app with much pomp and circumstance. (Kelly Clarkson sang! Kevin Hart did a lot of bits! There was pizza!) I don’t have much of an opinion on the logo (though a lot of Verge readers do), but I did come away with a few thoughts. The new app functions more like Pandora and centralizes content from SiriusXM and the SiriusXM Podcast Network (formerly Stitcher). The app certainly seems more sophisticated. But without a defined pipeline between its podcast listeners and its premium satellite offerings, it is unclear how the app will achieve the company’s main goal: attracting younger paying customers.

SiriusXM, the home of Howard Stern and curated stations for Gen Xers, boomers, and elder millennials (no shade! First Wave slaps) needs to find a way to bring in a younger audience. This is not just a long-term problem — the service has lost 336,000 subscribers since the beginning of the year. The revamped app is supposed to be the next step in achieving that goal.

SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz announced a $9.99-per-month streaming tier, which represents a $1 price cut. But if the company is really going for the under-30 set, the best way to do that is by pulling a Spotify and introducing a free tier within the app. When I asked CTO Joe Inzerillo about whether that was part of the plan, he said there is nothing official yet, but it sounds like something may be on the way. “You probably do want to have some sort of opportunity for people to get into the application that is not necessarily coming in through a paid subscription,” he said.

Until then, the strategy is to blur the lines between podcasting and satellite. The company rebranded Stitcher as SiriusXM Podcast Network earlier this year and then shut down the Stitcher app. Plus, it has been methodically bringing its top podcast talent like Conan O’Brien, the Pod Save America crew, and, now, Crime Junkie’s Ashley Flowers onto the flagship service. That means you can expect a lot of promo on their popular podcasts. “As we figure out the demos and use the data of what they’re listening to, we’ll be able to better promote something that they might be interested in,” chief content officer Scott Greenstein told Hot Pod. “There will be natural crossovers.”

In a similar vein, the company announced a new deal with comedian and former Late Late Show host James Corden. I thought it was telling that the deal was for satellite and not podcasting. Corden isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but he is admittedly the mediocre prince of celebrity chat. And people really, really loved “Carpool Karaoke.” A few years ago, he would have been a slam dunk for a podcast deal. But as the economics of podcasting have changed, it seems the company decided it was a better value proposition to put him on SiriusXM and hope that, with enough promo, he would attract younger listeners.

While Corden does have mass appeal, Greenstein did note that he wants to look into more niche content that could appeal to a younger, more diverse audience. He said that shows discussing fashion, art, and culture could be on the docket. To me, at least, that sounds more interesting than another run-of-the-mill celebrity chat show. But until SiriusXM develops an effective pipeline between its podcast audience and its premium product, it may go unnoticed by the young listeners it hopes to attract.

Podtrac released its October numbers today, and they seem to underscore the theory that Apple’s latest iOS update is impacting overall download numbers. Measuring global downloads among the top 20 publishers it tracks, Podtrac reported a 1 percent drop since the prior month and a 9 percent decline year over year. It’s not quite as dramatic as September’s numbers, but the decline is not insignificant.

In September, Apple changed the way its automatic downloads work. It used to be that if you subscribed to a show, forgot about it, and then returned, all of the intermediate shows would download automatically. That could be just a few episodes or hundreds, depending on how long you stopped listening. The update made it so when you return to a show, it resumes without initiating those past downloads.

That said, not everyone downloads the new iOS when it immediately comes out (like me — still haven’t done it), so the impact is expected to trickle out over time. I have been hearing anecdotally from a few readers that they have seen some dropoff since the update, so feel free to reach out if you have noticed a similar decline.