XM/Sirius Satellite Radio no longer worth it

[Glocksman]

I've been a loyal XM subscriber for almost three years now, but due to recent programming, fidelity issues, and pricing changes I quit.

Programming wise, my listening tended to be political talk and the 'decades' channels along with occasional listens of the themed rock and country channels.

With the merger of Sirius and XM, XM's lineup has been 'siriusized' in that on the music channels the playlists are narrower and some channels have annoying DJ's (Nina Blackwood, I'm looking at you!) who insist on talking about inane shit over the beginning of the song.

If I wanted to listen to some asshole bleat over the music and narrow playlists, I can get that for free on commercial FM.

On the political talk channels they dropped Gordon Liddy and Laura Ingraham from America Right and just repeat some asshole named Andrew Wilkow from Sirius's PATRIOT channel.
So far they've left XM's America Left pretty much alone, but I doubt that'll last.

Another problem is that the actual audio fidelity of the service has decreased since the merger.
Prior to the merger, I could easily tell the difference between the direct connection and FM modulator sound quality.
Now I can hardly tell them apart and everything sounds 'flat' and lacks dynamic range.

The straw that broke this camel's back was the fact that in March they're going to start charging $3/month for the online streaming that formerly was included with the subscription.
I wore out the docking connectors on my old radio by constantly moving back and forth between the car and home, so I use the streaming to listen inside my house.

Put everything together and it's just no longer worth it.

[Alferd Packer]

In addition, it's hard to say if they're going to even be around in a few months. They've got so much debt coming due, they're still hemorrhaging money, and the stock is nearly worthless, so who knows? You may be back by commercial radio before you know it.

[CaptHawkeye]

Woah, I was under the impression satellite radio was a buffet of profit because it seemed like such a good idea. Are Sirius and XM just retards about management? Or is satellite radio just blown out of proportion in general?

[Glocksman]

Woah, I was under the impression satellite radio was a buffet of profit because it seemed like such a good idea. Are Sirius and XM just retards about management? Or is satellite radio just blown out of proportion in general?

Retards about management is it.
They're swimming in debt thanks in large part to the outlandish contracts they signed to land NASCAR, MLB, NFL, Howard Stern, Oprah, Martha Stewart, etc.

If XM and Sirius had followed the FCC's wishes and used interoperable radios from the start, then they'd realize some very real cost savings by being able to shut down one network's satellites.

As it is, since the people in charge of both companies at the time decided to make proprietary radios that weren't interoperable, the newly merged company has to maintain two separate satellite systems in operation.

When you read about XM/Sirius having '19 million subscribers', keep in mind that the figure also includes those 3 or 6 month 'trials' that you get when your new car comes from the factory with XM or Sirius installed.

There are rumors floating around that the guy who founded EchoStar and DISH network is buying up all of the outstanding XM/Sirius debt he can in order to make it easier for him to buy up company assets after a bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy is probably the best option for the company anyway, as it'd let them nullify all of those expensive programming deals and start fresh.

[Dominus Atheos]

Woah, I was under the impression satellite radio was a buffet of profit because it seemed like such a good idea. Are Sirius and XM just retards about management? Or is satellite radio just blown out of proportion in general?

The biggest problem most people have with it is that it requires new hardware. Every car comes with an FM radio, and most people don't want to shell out $150-200 to get a new radio that supports XM/Sirius, which also costs more money per month for the subscription.

[Glocksman]

It never was 'CD quality' sound, but right now it makes a 64k wma file seem like DVD-Audio by comparison.
My guess is that they're compressing it even further in order to add channels into the same bandwidth.

AM radio without hiss isn't something I'm willing to fork over $13.86/month for.

Woah, I was under the impression satellite radio was a buffet of profit because it seemed like such a good idea. Are Sirius and XM just retards about management? Or is satellite radio just blown out of proportion in general?

The biggest problem most people have with it is that it requires new hardware. Every car comes with an FM radio, and most people don't want to shell out $150-200 to get a new radio that supports XM/Sirius, which also costs more money per month for the subscription.

Hardware costs have come down quite a bit.
I paid $100 for my Roady XT over 2 years ago, but the Audiovox Xpress I bought to replace it was only $48.87 at Wally World.
Interestingly enough, the same receiver is $66 at Best Buy.

[CaptHawkeye]

The biggest problem most people have with it is that it requires new hardware. Every car comes with an FM radio, and most people don't want to shell out $150-200 to get a new radio that supports XM/Sirius, which also costs more money per month for the subscription.

Yeah, but most new autos of the past 4 years seem to come with equipment for satellite radio in standard. They usually attach a trial for the fuck of it and at least at first, it was a good way to let people know the service was out there.

Hearing that XM and Sirius keep their networks separate even after merger is hilarious. You'd think after the fiasco the cellphone companies had over carving up their own private spaces in the telecom industry, they would have learned why lots of tiny networks are shit compared to one big one.

[Stark]

As an anthropological note, isn't the whole 'DJ talks over start of song with bizarre personal reflections' thing lampooned in 80s movies and games like Vice City? Do DJs really still do that? Since they're competing with my 20,000 song MP3 player, why the fuck would the do that?

[Glocksman]

The biggest problem most people have with it is that it requires new hardware. Every car comes with an FM radio, and most people don't want to shell out $150-200 to get a new radio that supports XM/Sirius, which also costs more money per month for the subscription.

Yeah, but most new autos of the past 4 years seem to come with equipment for satellite radio in standard. They usually attach a trial for the fuck of it and at least at first, it was a good way to let people know the service was out there.

Hearing that XM and Sirius keep their networks separate even after merger is hilarious. You'd think after the fiasco the cellphone companies had over carving up their own private spaces in the telecom industry, they would have learned why lots of tiny networks are shit compared to one big one.

The company has to maintain separate networks since the XM radios cannot receive the Sirius network and vice versa.
The only way they could run a single network would be to replace every radio of the network they'd shut down with new ones.

If they tried to make their customers pay for the switchover, they'd lose about 40% of their subscriber base in one fell swoop, and the cost of replacing 8-10 million receivers (some of them are $200-$300 each) would be prohibitive for the company.

Of course if the executives at each company hadn't been greedheads enamored of the 'lock in' concept, they would have at the time followed the FCC's strongly expressed preference that they only market radios that'd receive both networks and they'd be able to save $$$ today by shutting down the redundant network after the merger.

[Admiral Valdemar]

As an anthropological note, isn't the whole 'DJ talks over start of song with bizarre personal reflections' thing lampooned in 80s movies and games like Vice City? Do DJs really still do that? Since they're competing with my 20,000 song MP3 player, why the fuck would the do that?

Yes, yes they do do that. No, I don't listen to commercial radio. Only radio I listen to now is Internet (which I see as the future more than satellite now, given this news).

Even the Beeb has DJs do that shit, or edit songs shorter, or cut off halfway if the news is coming or some such crap. Given the abundance of mobile masts and Wi-Fi, along with ever more advanced mobiles and data connections, it'd just be simpler to use the net that way, rather than start anew with satellites.

The company has to maintain separate networks since the XM radios cannot receive the Sirius network and vice versa.
The only way they could run a single network would be to replace every radio of the network they'd shut down with new ones.

If they tried to make their customers pay for the switchover, they'd lose about 40% of their subscriber base in one fell swoop, and the cost of replacing 8-10 million receivers (some of them are $200-$300 each) would be prohibitive for the company.

Of course if the executives at each company hadn't been greedheads enamored of the 'lock in' concept, they would have at the time followed the FCC's strongly expressed preference that they only market radios that'd receive both networks and they'd be able to save $$$ today by shutting down the redundant network after the merger.

I guess unlike Beta vs. VHS or HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, this is more like audio DVD vs. Super Audio CD in that both formats lose thanks to short sightedness.

[Losonti Tokash]

Even the Beeb has DJs do that shit, or edit songs shorter, or cut off halfway if the news is coming or some such crap. Given the abundance of mobile masts and Wi-Fi, along with ever more advanced mobiles and data connections, it'd just be simpler to use the net that way, rather than start anew with satellites.

Annoying as this is, it's usually done by the label and not the station itself unless the station is part of some massive conglomerate like Clear Channel.

[Glocksman]

I guess unlike Beta vs. VHS or HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, this is more like audio DVD vs. Super Audio CD in that both formats lose thanks to short sightedness.

Indeed.
The concept is solid, but short sighted execution in the past and myopia on Mel Karmazin's part (the former head of CBS radio who now runs the merged company and apparently believes his customers want commercial FM style DJ's and 'top 40' style narrow playlists) have probably doomed US satellite radio in the near term.

As it is, I'm seriously considering ordering a Slacker G2.
So far I love what I'm hearing over the internet and listening to a couple of ads an hour is not a bad tradeoff for free programming.
I just wish someone made a car dock for the unit.

[Alferd Packer]

Similar to Glocksman, I feel that the merger has caused the quality of my Sirius-side music to take a hit. The 90's alternative station (my classic rock station) started playing more unremarkable shit, instead of well-known stuff from the 90's. The Sirius metal station, Hard Attack, was replaced with Liquid Metal, which I guess is a push. It's hard to fuck up a metal station. The regular hard rock station has gone down the shitter too, getting way too "poppy".

If the company was to go under at this point, I would hate it because I love listening to Howard Stern, but other than that, I'd be fine. I refuse to listen to normal radio in the car because 1) I'm rarely in a car and 2) from talk to music, regular radio sucks donkey cocks. As much as I don't appreciate the direction some of the stations have gone, I still love the fact that they have no commercials and aren't censored.

[Uraniun235]

As an anthropological note, isn't the whole 'DJ talks over start of song with bizarre personal reflections' thing lampooned in 80s movies and games like Vice City? Do DJs really still do that? Since they're competing with my 20,000 song MP3 player, why the fuck would the do that?

Some of them probably see it as the only means of differentiating themselves from just being some ethereal MP3 player beamed out on the radiowaves.

[Glocksman]

Well, I just went and bought a Slacker G2 today, and so far I love it.
That said, it does have a few annoyances.

1. It takes several hours to initially load up your stations, and if you add a new station it increases the 'refresh' time quite a bit.
It's annoying (but understandable since you are downloading 100 songs over the internet), but you don't have to deal with it that much once the unit is set up.

2. It comes with earbuds.
I despise earbuds.

3. No car accessories other than a charger.
This is my one serious gripe. I wound up using a generic cellphone holder from Auto Zone for car use.
The good thing is that it charges via a USB miniplug connector, so my Blackberry Curve's* charger works fine.

If slacker would make a dedicated car dock, preferably one with a duplicate thumbwheel (or a knob like my Audiovox Xpress uses) control at the bottom of it, it'd rule for car use.


*Yes I know there is a Slacker for Blackberry, but I don't have a data plan.
The phone was a 'hand me down' from my sister when she bought an iPhone and I'm too cheap to spring for the $30 extra a month.

[Stargate Nerd]

My local stations advertise the hell out of "HD Radio". Anyone have any experiences with it? Does it have audio quality comparable to Satellite?

Maybe it could even be an alternative for Glocksman although it's just commercial radio.

[Sea Skimmer]

Retards about management is it.
They're swimming in debt thanks in large part to the outlandish contracts they signed to land NASCAR, MLB, NFL, Howard Stern, Oprah, Martha Stewart, etc.

Well, they also had to spend billions up front for the satellites, and they’ve had to orbit a number of replacement satellites at this point too, some of them because of defects on the orginials. Frankly the idea was really just too expensive to make much real economic sense without making it a monopoly in the first place and avoiding half that debt out of hand. If the US didn’t have suchstrict radio censorship, then it would have been a complete non starter. I’ve always found it ironic too that both systems have to rely on large numbers of ground repeaters to get decent coverage too, even after all the billions spent on satellites.

I agree on the bankruptcy, and I can’t see anyone failing to buy up the satellites and keep using them for as long as they last. Maybe by the time they need the next round of replacements the economics of everything will be better and the new owner will be able to afford them.

[Darth Wong]

Wow. They're paying Howard Stern $100 million a year. Does he really bring in so much business that he's worth that much?

[Glocksman]

Wow. They're paying Howard Stern $100 million a year. Does he really bring in so much business that he's worth that much?

His fans say 'yes' because he's the only reason they signed up to begin with.
As far as I'm concerned it's the opposite in that I went with XM 3 years ago because the consensus at the time was that they had slightly better audio quality, a better political talk lineup, and they didn't have Stern's contract to pay for.

Howard Stern is vaguely entertaining, but I wasn't willing to shell out hard earned cash to support his $500 million contract.
Since the merger, Mel Karmazin has managed to merge the worst of Sirius and XM programming while throwing out what made each network worth listening to in the first place.

As it is, if Slacker lasts at least a year, I'll have my $199 hardware investment back without spending a dime more for programming.

[Glocksman]

Well, they also had to spend billions up front for the satellites, and they’ve had to orbit a number of replacement satellites at this point too, some of them because of defects on the orginials. Frankly the idea was really just too expensive to make much real economic sense without making it a monopoly in the first place and avoiding half that debt out of hand.

True.
However if both companies had made a good faith effort to comply with the FCC desire that consumer satellite radio hardware should support both networks, then the merged company could have simply shut down one network as redundant and let those sats become meteorites.

More to the point, I was willing to pay good money for about an hour of decent fidelity and wide playlist commercial free programming per day while in my car.
I'm not willing to pay for FM narrow playlists, shitty fidelity, and DJ's who yammer over the music.

IMHO, Mel Karmazin shot the satradio concept in the neck with his 'FM all the time' programming and his gouge the subscriber pricing.

[Alferd Packer]

Wow. They're paying Howard Stern $100 million a year. Does he really bring in so much business that he's worth that much?

Hard to say definitively. When his move to Sirius was first announced in late 2004, Sirius had 600 thousand subscribers. By the time he actually left terrestrial radio at the end of 2005, they were up to around 3 million. By the end of Q1 2006, the first full quarter he was on satellite, it was 4 million. But there's really no way to say why those people got their subscriptions: to listen to Stern, because it came with the car, for the NFL/NASCAR, etc. The only real evidence I'm aware of that he's worth his exorbitant salary is a report (warning: PDF) from early 2007 that shows the listenership for his channels to be the highest on either XM or Sirius by a large amount. But, it's hard to say if Arbitron's methodology is applicable to satellite radio, and without other reports, you can't really say if this is an outlier or not.