SiriusXM Pandora says it will soon lower the cost of its most-expensive streaming radio package by $2 a month.
The move will see the price of SiriusXM’s Premier Streaming radio package drop from $13 a month to $11 a month, the satellite radio company said, with the new price set to take effect on June 21.
The company is in the process of notifying customers with an active Premier Streaming subscription by e-mail. Some customers have already started receiving messages alerting them to the price change.
SiriusXM Pandora says no programming will be lost as a result of the price decrease. The Premier Streaming package includes access to Howard Stern’s live and on-demand programming, play-by-play broadcasts of major sporting events, hundreds of live music channels and a Pandora-like feature called Personalized Stations Powered by Pandora.
In addition to those features, SiriusXM Pandora says Premier Streaming customers will now get play-by-play broadcasts of Major League Baseball games, something that was once exclusive to rival streaming radio service TuneIn.
The decrease in price is one of the few times SiriusXM Pandora has cut the cost on any of its packages. Historically, the company has been known to raise subscription prices and other fees on its customers in order to cover costs associated with operating the radio service. It began charging customers a separate music royalty fee shortly after merging its legacy operations, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio.
Currently, Premier Streaming subscribers pay an extra $1.14 per month to cover the music royalty fee on top of the advertised subscription rate.
The price decrease announced on Friday puts SiriusXM’s top streaming package in line with the cost of both Sirius and XM Satellite Radio when each operation first started up. At launch, XM cost around $10 a month, while Sirius cost $13 a month.
