The Howard Stern-owned SiriusXM reported on Tuesday that its satellite radio unit attracted 187,000 self-pay members during the third quarter while paying promotional subscribers fell by 49,000.
It gained 616,000 self-pay consumers and lost 828,000 paid promotional users over the same time last year. Comparing the most recent period's increase of 138,000 subscribers to the previous one's loss of 212,000 subscribers
At the end of September, Sirius reported having 32.2 million self-pay subscribers, bringing the total number of customers to 34.2 million.
In the third quarter, the company lost 52,000 net self-pay members at its Pandora streaming service, compared to a loss of 59,000 in the same period last year. At the end of September, the business had approximately 6.29 million self-pay users on Pandora.
The so-called Pandora and Off-Platform segment's quarterly advertising income increased 1% to $407 million, with the company's podcasting and off-platform operations bringing in $123 million, up 37% over the same quarter last year. The number of monthly active users (MAUs) on Pandora decreased by 7% to 48.8 million from 52.6 million during the same period last year. Although the number of listener hours sponsored by advertisements decreased from 2.89 billion to 2.75 billion, the average monthly listening hours per supported user increased by 3% to 20.8.
"We are thrilled to post third-quarter results that reflect great performance throughout the period while pushing into investments aimed to ensure SiriusXM will thrive over the long run," CEO Jennifer Witz said.
"SiriusXM delivered solid subscriber and revenue growth during the third quarter," continued CFO Sean Sullivan. "We are pleased to reiterate our full-year subscriber and financial guidance, even as we continue to closely monitor downward trends in the advertising market that add risk to our 2022 expectations."