SiriusXM Case Study

The Challenge

Radio Becomes Subscription-based, and More Popular than Ever.

Radio. From FDR’s fireside chats and Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds, to Casey Kasem and A Prairie Home Companion, to Howard Stern and Ryan Seacrest, radio has informed and entertained us for generations.

From the first AM station in 1920, to the higher fidelity sound of FM radio in the late 1930s, to the introduction of satellite radio in 2001, radio evolved with the times. Today, 90% of Americans over the age of 12 said that they listened to the radio weekly, making US broadcast radio an estimated $24 Billion market.

The introduction of mobile devices and streaming services caused media consumption to explode with 60% of Americans over the age of 12 tuning into both weekly. Globally, this $21 Billion market is expected to grow to nearly $77 Billion by 2027.

Shifting from a Broadcast to an Online Distribution Model.

Technology isn’t just changing what device we use for media, it’s changing the way we want to listen. Streaming services, with 60 million US subscribers and growing by 1 million subscribers per month, enable listeners to curate their playlists. While 90% of Americans still say they listen to the radio, 41% say they listen to online radio through their phone while in the car. For SiriusXM, the world’s largest radio company with 35 million subscribers using in-car and mobile unit receivers, aligning with this trend was mission-critical.

Extending their programming from satellite broadcast to online and mobile platforms also gave SiriusXM an opportunity to extend its offerings from purely audio to include video and live video events as well. Using TIBCO Businessworks, a framework technology that utilizes plug-ins and results in a complex data architecture, the challenge went beyond migrating their programming. SiriusXM needed Software Engineers who could also create new services able to flex with listener demand.

The Solution

Problem Finders. Design Thinkers.

Initially, the SiriusXM team needed additional TIBCO developers and QA experts, but to get from where they were to where they were going required experienced software engineers who were not just experts at getting things done, but at anticipating the issues integrations inevitably cause and developing solutions that enabled efficient integration and scalability required for growth.

BairesDev used its proprietary skill-matching software AI-powered Team Recommendation Engine to identify an initial team consisting of a scrum master, TIBCO developers, and QA engineers who excelled at automating procedures. The unifying trait of the team was a design thinking approach, essential for large-scale projects.

The Outcome

Delivering on a Singular Goal: To Deliver a Better User Experience.

Transitioning from a broadcast company to a provider of cloud-based streaming services required a dual-path approach – maintain and improve the legacy platforms while designing and implementing a new architecture, migrating all applications to the flexible and scalable AWS platform, and adding new features.

BairesDev engineers aided in the development of new video streaming capabilities and actively improved development processes for SiriusXM by codifying best practices, automating deployment, automating the testing in support of new deployments, and installing a user-centric approach to improve the overall experience.

Improved Listener Experiences + Scalability = Profits

The migration to AWS was a strategic move to give SiriusXM both short and long-term impacts. BairesDev helped improve the listener, and developer experience by delivering: