Both companies marketed themselves to prospective affiliates by offering carefully selected music presented by major market talent of high quality that a local station could never afford, as well as the capability of using existing studio equipment like reel-to-reel tape decks and cartridge playback machines to help make an affordable transition.
A station signing up for the service would likely need a satellite antenna and receiver, a 25 Hz tone generator to place at the end of commercial clusters at the end of a break recorded on the reel, and 25/35 Hz tone sensors to trigger local liners and station identification.
While Satellite Music Network had more affiliates, Transtar offered one major advantage over SMN...a digital cue system.
SMN, on the other hand, cued stations using a subaudible tone on the program feed as it was aired live, but eliminated them from being heard by listeners through filtering out the lower end of the audio signal.
While the difference in audio would be negligible at worst on an AM affiliate, it was particularly obvious on an FM station subscribing to the service when a bass line heard on a particular favorite song was now found to be missing.