Is SiriusXM ignorant, or racist, or both?
That’s the question burning up the social media as the Latin music community reacts to the satellite channel’s dropping 8 out of 10 Latin music streams.
With little notice to listeners, labels or artists over the last few months, SiriusXM has eliminated eight out of 10 of its Latin music channels on their satellite platform.
And now some Latino civil rights groups are blasting the decision.
Of the two remaining Latin stations, with genres such as regional Mexican, reggaeton, Latin rock, salsa, Latin pop and Latin jazz, all will be online-only broadcasts with no availability in vehicles.
Several groups are asking for SiriusXM to restore the Latin channels to satellite broadcast and make them available in car radios.
The Wall Street Journal asked Sirius for a response:
Latino subscribers, meanwhile, aren’t necessarily clamoring for more Spanish-language channels, the company spokesman said. “Our Latin base predominantly has interest in our broad array of English-speaking programming complemented by our variety of Spanish-language programming,” he said.
The Latin Label Coalition begged to differ:
SiriusXM Claims That Latino Customers Did Not Complain When the Latino Music Channels’ Satellite Broadcast Was Terminated; Here Is Evidence To The Contrary
SiriusXM’s management has claimed that Latino customers were not upset about the recent termination of the satellite broadcast of 80% of the Latin music channels and their move to online-only broadcast. The evidence below from Twitter and Facebook directly contradicts SiriusXM’s assertions. Perhaps, SiriusXM’s management never even looked on social media to see the subscribers’ angry reactions. SiriusXM has few if any Latinos on their upper level executive management team and board, and likely no Spanish speakers regularly monitoring the SiriusXM social media accounts. Latinos over-index with use of social media, and SiriusXM failed to monitor its own social media to see the overwhelmingly negative responses from subscribers in reaction to the cancellation of satellite broadcasts of the 8 Latin music channels.
The evidence below clearly demonstrates that SiriusXM has exhibited poor judgment in cancelling channels such as ‘Aguila’ (Regional Mexican), ‘La Kueva’ (Latin Rock), ‘Rumbon’ (Tropical) and ‘Luna’ (Latin Jazz) and never having made those channels available in most cars with basic SiriusXM radios. Furthermore, on the only two remaining satellite-broadcast Latin music channels (‘En Vivo’ and ‘Caliente’), SiriusXM wastes valuable airtime by featuring mainstream English-language, non-Latin pop artists like Adele and Flo Rida even though SiriusXM subscribers can hear those same English language artists on at least five other non-Latin channels.
Read the Latino Label Coalition’s complete response here….
So who are these Latin Label Coalition gente?
Labels:
- AMS Records (Regional Mexican)
- CDA Group (Tropical / Reggaeton)
- Cosmica Records (Latin Pop / Latin Rock)
- Del Records (Regional Mexican)
- Diva Music Group (Latin Rock / Regional Mexican)
- Grupo Nueva Generacion (Regional Mexican)
- Jazzheads (Latin Jazz)
- Nacional Records (Latin Rock / Latin Pop)
- Pop Art Discos (Latin Rock)
- Regalia Records (Regional Mexican / Latin Rock)
- Seitrack (Latin Pop / Latin Rock)
- Six Degrees (World / Latin)
Groups supporting the Coalition:
- A2IM (American Association of Independent Music)
- Future of Music Coalition
- NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers)
- National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)
- Voto Latino (leading Latino youth civil rights organization)
- National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC)