The automotive market is where it’s at for Sirius and XM in contending for subscribers: with millions of new cars coming on to the road each year, it’s a sure source of fresh blood. While XM picked up the whole Hyundai line today, Sirius added Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and Land Rover models

Jaguar will let dealers install Sirius on 2005 X-Type sedans and sportswagons, S-Type sedans, and XJ sedans, as well as for the 2006 versions of the same models.

Mercedes-Benz is pushing Sirius as a factory-installed option on its M-Class SUV. They also expect to add Sirius as a factory-installed radio on six 2006 model year vehicles and four 2007 model year vehicles.

Land Rover will offer Sirius factory installed on 2006 Range Rover and Range Rover Sport models.

Hyundai said that a XM radio will be standard equipment in all of its models by 2007. And…that’s the whole news. It’s apparently a sweeping, and brief, announcement.

In 2006, Hyundai will install raidios in the Sonata, Santa Fe, Elantra, and XG350 replacement. The other models will follow by 2007, which Hyundai and XM estimates will be 500,000 units in 2007.

The Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard is in crisis, says an columnist at Radio Netherlands. The standard is based on 20-year-old technology and didn’t start rolling out until a few years ago. Adoption is still quite spotty by both broadcasters and listeners. Audio quality is poor because of the tradeoffs of frequency versus compression, so there’s no audiophile advantage here. The UK is the one spot of bright light in which 1.2 million DAB receivers have been sold to date.

There are newer proposals that the commentators doesn’t mention, such as iBiquity’s IBOC (in-band on-channel) used for high-definition (HD) radio in the U.S. and DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), an in-progress standard for creating a harmonized worldwide modern specification.

iBiquity would like IBOC to spread further as they own a number of key patents, but I would strongly state they’re not asking for ruinous fees to judge by what radio stations pay to install HD and the upcoming expectations of sub-$300 HD radio receivers this year.

Sirius radios will be a factory-installed option in the 2006 model year Mitsubishi Raider mid-size truck; Mitsubishi will add three more models for the 2007 model year. Mitsubishi will throw in the activation fee and six months’ free service.

Sirius also announced today that Volkswagen is extending its factory-installed support for Sirius from the Beetle and Beetle Convertible to the 2005 Jetta starting this month. The 2006 Passat will offer Sirius later this year.

Orbitcast notes that only a few carmakers haven’t signed deals with one or the other of Sirus and XM—or both: Hyundai, Subaru, Kia, and Porsche. The site speculates that Hyundai is a logical next candidate for Sirius because Mitsubishi and DaimlerChrysler, two legs of a troika, are both Sirius partners.

This charming story involves mothers, missed birthday, midnight shifts, and a dead car battery. The poor blogger who posted this found himself in possession of a Sirius radio which died on him when the battery went out in the middle of activating the radio. So he calls his mom. Whose birthday he forgot. But she still takes him to get a new car battery. The battery killed his radio (temporarily), not vice-versa, but he thought it made a better headline as did I.

The story ends on a cliffhanger: is the radio activated or not?

Volvo is the latest car manufacturer to offer factory-prepared, dealer-installed satellite digital radio; they’ve chosen Sirius for their S80, S60, V70, and XC70. Factory-installed radios are an even higher tier of this kind of deal, but factory-prepared means that a dealer has a guy or gal lie in the passenger seat foot well, plug in a couple of idiot-proof connectors, and strap the digital adapter in. Maybe five minutes of work for an experienced installer.

Volvo is offering two months for free for 11 months of prepaid service—a weird set of time units—and has a short-term promotion until the end of May to rebate the entire subscription cost.

Orbitcast alerts us to the Next Next (Next) Big Thing: Radio over third-generation cellular (3G) data networks. Virgin Radio is “broadcasting” two stations for free that anyone with the right cellular phone can listen to by downloading a small application. The capable audience is nearly 15 million.

This is just the beginning, too, as hybrid cell phones that handle 3G and Wi-Fi will allow opportunistic networking in which if you’re streaming radio—or audio or video or downloading a file—a handset will switch from cellular to a cheaper or better or faster signal as it’s available.

3G is a worldwide phenomenon, although a little muted in the U.S. where a scarcity of spectrum has led to late deployments and initially high pricing. In South Korea, Japan, and parts of Europe, 3G is widely available, fast, and not terribly expensive. (In Europe, Wi-Fi is incredibly expensive, so 3G is a cost-effective alternative in many cases.)

XM says, hey, take that Sirius! Steal NASCAR, will ya? We’ll sign IndyCar for several years.

XM will start broadcasting these races with the Indy 300 on Sunday on Extreme XM (152). XM is sponsoring a variety of events and pieces of IndyCar, too, including the Indy 200.

What do you do when you rival in a duopoly raises its prices to essentially match yours? You increase your prices, too.

Huh?

Sirius’s CEO Mel Karmazin speaking at an analyst’s conference (suspiciously close to spring training venues) said that XM bringing their price up to meet Sirius’s means that Sirius can choose to raise its prices because it offers superior programming though less sophisticated equipment.

It’s a strange logic, I have to say, because it means you expect the market to understand and value the difference in programming choices at a level that I’m not sure is practical. With 150 channels or thereabouts on both services, a careful shopper may scroll down the list and do side by side looks. But I doubt that most people spend that much time. They either have a radio factory installed or as a dealer option based on one or two factors, such as baseball or football or NASCAR or (if you’re like me) public radio programming.

In the DVD rental business, NetFlix countered Blockbuster’s price and late fee moves by lowering its price because they’re offering a commodity service that people may differentiate between less. But there’s risk there, too. My brother-in-law stopped his Blockbuster subscription after the late-fee policy was revised: he says there are no longer any videos in stock because people keep them for days and days. NetFlix has constant churn as people return DVDs to get more.

XM and Sirius might be advised by that industry to understand that the small points of consumer behavior are much more important than ones that they spend all their marketing money on.

XM launched their live coverage of Major League Baseball’s spring training this week. They have an extensive schedule available for the next few days.

A report commissioned by two of the three Canadian satellite radio licensees states pretty boldly that Cdn$2 billion in economic activity would be generated in Canada if proposals for the service are approved. Canadian Satellite Radio is XM plus a Canadian-owned firm; Sirius Radio Canada is the Canadian Broadcast Company plus Sirius.

The survey they conducted shows that about four million Canadians would subscribe to a satellite digital radio service if it were available. The press release stumbles, saying that 4 million people is one-fifth of Canada’s population. In fact, Canada has over 32 million residents, but it must have about 20 million adults, since the survey was only among adults. The release makes the same mistake later saying that 17 percent of Canadians would be interested.

With that lack of knowledge of the country, they may be sabotaging their efforts.

In any case, the economic activity includes artist royalties, sales of gear, automotive maker income, taxes on services, and so forth.

For those anxiously awaiting the news, XM Radio’s third satellite, XM-3, successfully reached orbit. Due to flaws in the solar panel design of XM-1 and XM-2 (Rock and Roll), XM-3 and XM-4 will need to be launched to eventually replace the early failing power of the first two. Rock and Roll will move to supplementing each other’s signals until XM-4 is launched potentially later this year, according to some reports.

Interesting story relates the idea that terrestrial broadcasters might use the new high-definition (HD) digital broadcasting format to create national channels that could be rolled out by consortiums of stations. HD radios are in scant demand as pricing has kept them from mass appeal. But prices will drop this year.

You can’t read this interview at Engadget with Elliott D. Frutkin, CEO of TimeTrax, and not think, “Smart guy.” He’s the head of the firm that offers time-shifting and space-shifting for satellite digital radio broadcasts by connecting a satellite radio receiver with PC software that can grab the tags and records discrete chunks. The recorded audio can be played back anywhere, but it has your subscriber ID embedded which makes it less likely you’d share it. (I had this idea with a colleague long ago: you’d put an eBook buyer’s credit card number on the first page, making it very unlikely they’d share it.)

Read the rest of the interview over at Engadget. It was conducted by my friend and colleague J.D. Lasica who is writing a soon-to-be invaluable book on the war Hollywood is waging against what he calls the digital generation.

XM is switching its subscription plan to bring them more revenue but they’re also cutting the price of unbundled services by making them standard features. XM formerly cost $9.99 per month for the first radio and an additional $3.99 per month for Internet streaming (70 channels out of their lineup) and $1.99 per month for High Voltage, which includes Anthony and Opie.

The new $12.95 per month price bundles that all together, but XM is offering the chance for existing subscribers to buy one to five year subscriptions at the current price. This is definitely a price increase for subscribers who don’t about or for streaming XM—I, for one, don’t yet—but a price drop for what is a reasonable subset of their users. The new pricing goes into effect on April 2.

Sirius charges $12.95 per month including streaming (65 channels, but who is counting, really?). They’ve trumpeted the price difference on their Web site against “Brand X.” I guess they’ll have to revise that page.

It’s probably not bad timing for XM to make this switch: they have millions of locked-in subscribers who will be vaguely annoyed and then (if they check) discover that Sirius has the same prices and a similar line-up. If you’ve already bought XM equipment, are you going to sell it, buy Sirius, and pay the same subscription fee?