Satellite Radio Service in Car- Keep or No?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My car came with a Satellite Radio Service. I’m not actually sure which company provides the service. Whomever it is, they called me to resubscribe the other day. I think it was Sirius.

Since I was driving, I pulled over to talk to the saleslady for a minute and we talked about what I listened to while driving, the packages available, and the pricing. The price seemed kinda high to me. Unfortunately, I can’t find my pricing notes now.

I think she said the service was $225 a year and the reduced package was $139. I recall she said the reduced priced package was less expensive because it had little or no music channels and therefore no royalty (?) fees.

I never listen to sports or the music channels. I mostly listen to news and podcasts or a little bit of music from my phone.

I must say it was nice to have more news options than the local radio stations offer. The local offerings seem to be mostly am, right wing, talk shows. I have used the satellite to listen to a couple-three of the more well-known news channels in the morning as I drive to work, but I’m not a loyal listener to any particular show.

I usually catch the first 30 minutes or so of the Rachel Maddow show as I have driven home over this last year. That’s really about all I have looked forward to regarding the radio service. But, I’m not really feeling like the one or two programs that I like is worth even the lower price the sales lady talked about (and that I hope I recall correctly).

The radio does pick up pretty well when I drive from Big City “A” to Big City “B”, a 6 hour drive which I do quite a bit. But that’s when I usually listen to podcasts or the rare music that I have pre-loaded on my phone.

The satellite service in-town seems to cut out a lot too, especially in my neighborhood, which is where I spend most of my driving time. That’s annoying.

So, are there any good price values in satellite radio?
Are there only two companies that provide this service?
Does anyone have a service they would like to recommend?
Since I have a smart phone, couldn’t I just find the one or two or three programs I listen to in podcast or streaming for less than the ten or twenty dollars a month the satellite service wants? Or would that use up all my phone data (5 GB).

After organizing my thoughts here, I can see I’m just not going to renew.
I don’t feel it’s that good a value for the dollar at this time, but if I go back to terrestrial radio and find that I don’t like it, I can always resubscribe. In that case, I would still be interested in other’s thoughts about the different services (just two, right?) and prices.

2

In the US there is only one option, Sirius XM. The two companies merged in 2007. The FCC decided it wasn’t a monopoly as they compete with internet audio streaming services.

3

I use it, but the area where I live doesn’t have a wide variety of choices, in terms of traditional radio stations. I also like having the additional news channels. Finally, we take longer road trips and it is really nice having radio service in the middle of nowhere. We even listen to Mystery Science Theater and some other fun stuff with the kids.

I think there is a lot of variability on the price. You just have to haggle a bit. We find it’s worth it. I can certainly see that others may not.

4

You don’t need to pay those prices. I never have in over 7 years. All you have to do is call them every 5 months and keep telling them that you will cancel if they don’t give you the $5 a month intro rate. They always do. That is $60 a year. I like Sirius/XM just fine but I am not paying $100 let alone over $200 a year for it. It costs them nothing for you to receive their signal and they have a strong interest in keeping their subscriber numbers up so they will almost give it to you if you insist. I have heard of people getting it even cheaper than I do but I figure $5 a month is fair so that is what I pay.

5

One cheapskate thing millennials do is they instead buy a good data plan for their phone (admittedly, that can easily cost you $300 a year, but you probably need one anyway) and then they stream podcasts and other content. Whatever it is you are interested in. Much wider selection, no commercials, and it’s all on demand. Variously music stream services are far cheaper, coming at just a few dollars a month, and most podcasts are free. Or book on tape, and I think there’s a similar service you can just subscribe to and listen to a large variety of books on tape.

All you need is an aux in audio jack on the car and a car charger for your phone.

6

Sirius sends me a “we miss you, resubscribe!” letter every six months or so. I ignore it. For one, I don’t drive long distances enough in my mind to make a subscribtion worthwhile. Second, I always listen to NPR and my local station is just as good, if not better than what Sirius offers. Third, if I wanted to stream anything I’d do what SamuelA suggested upthread. And no, I’m not a millelennial :wink:

7

In America’s Barnumian Economics theory, nothing seems harder than giving up something you have gotten used to.

I shut off my cable. I have never missed it for a minute, and I saved enough in 15 months to buy a round the world air ticket.

It’s not a question of should you pull the plug, it’s can you?

8

I have a new car and also am listening to the Free Six Months of Sirius XM.

My wife and I really love music and listen to all sorts of things. We found the Sirius experience not very enjoyable. The DJs talk FAR too much, and we hear the same songs every single day on any given channel. Boring.

We have 10k tracks on thumb drives. That’s what we listen to. Planning to cancel the Sirius before I have to pay for it.

9

We’ve had satellite radio for 5 years - I hate it but my husband loves it, so we’ve still got it. We’re in an area where reception is pretty bad, except for some awful local stations. But I’d rather listen to some static on the DC public radio station than the public radio offerings on XM. Frankly, if I had my way, I’d just cancel and be done with it.

Plus it pisses me off that many stations are full of ads - either for commercial products or other XM stations. I don’t appreciate having to pay for ads.

10

The fact they gave you that pricing is insane.

I just bought a new car a few months ago that had the free trial and I got my promotional offer in the mail that ends up being 40 bucks for 6 months of the service.

Personally, I like it because they have the 90s/2000s stations that Ms. Cups and I can reto-jam to when we’re riding together, but they also have options for my screaming metal death music for when I’m alone. Plus, because I can listen to it online, I can catch Brewers games during the day.

11

I get mailers every 2 weeks on this, from a new car purchase 16 months ago. It is generally 10 a month, but sometimes teaser rates of 5 a month for a short time.

I like the oldy channels but it pisses me off that I would pay to hear DJ’s, overtalk the music. I thought that was the point of pay radio to not hear them. Anyway that is why I not sign up.

12

I didn’t realize there was only one company. I checked their website.

It’s $11 a month for music only channels, $16 for the mid-grade channel selection, and $20 a month for the full service package (which advertises full access to TWO channels that carry the Howard Stern show- not a desireable bonus in my opinion- LOL!).

It also appears that whatever it was the sales lady told me was BS.
I may not have remembered the exact prices, but they don’t offer a selection that has no music channels and will save me money by not having me pay royalty (or whatever she said) fees. That’s simply not an option.

The cheap plan is music only, the middle plan is music plus sports, news,etc, and the full plan is, well, everything. Music included.

I’m gonna let it go and just use the normal radio or my phone. Beside feeling expensive and not worth the value, I really hate being lied to.

So, hello NPR! We meet again!

13

I hate the DJs on the oldy stations too. They say it’s “commercial free,” but they have commercials for their own stuff, and they like to remind you all the time what station you’re listening to (which I already know). I’m spoiled by Pandora, I guess. I don’t want to hear anything but music on my music stations.

To the OP’s question, I have kept it on my cars after the intro offer. I like the better reception for baseball than I get on the AM station. I like POTUS and the other news stations, and I do like the music stations (despite what I said above). I haven’t been able to get a deal like some of the other posters, ($5 or $10 per month sounds great) but I do pay a bit less than full retail.

I spend a lot of time in my car, so it’s worth it for me. YMMV.

14

Part of their schtick, for a number of the “oldie” music channels, is that they’re trying to recreate what it was like to listen to a traditional radio station (or, in the case of 80s on 8, MTV) in that era. So, the 60s station has a chatty DJ, the 70s station has cheesy little promo jingles (and the DJs use a filter on their mics to make it sound like they’re on a low-fi AM station), the 80s station employs the four remaining original MTV VJs as their hosts, etc.

We have Sirius in both of our cars. There are probably 7 or 8 music stations on it that I listen to; a lot of it is music that I like, but don’t own much of personally, so it’s music that I won’t be able to hear by just playing my iPhone via Bluetooth on the car stereo. But, as others have noted, some of the stations do overplay certain artists and songs – my wife and I joke that Classic Rewind (classic rock from around 1975-1985) plays a Van Halen song every 60 minutes or so, and The Bridge (1970s singer/songwriters) consists solely of Cat Stevens, James Taylor, and early Eagles.

I like Sirius a lot (I also listen to the BBC news station, and CBC, quite a bit, and I like it for the longer road trips I take every few months), but my wife has decided that she doesn’t care for it (mostly that she doesn’t like the sound quality – it’s not as good as FM, and certainly not as good as a CD), and we’ll be dropping her half of the subscription.

15

My SiriusXM ran out and I have no plans to subscribe, just because I am not in the car that much (I work from home and drive maybe 5000 miles a year).

What sucks is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to take the 3 SiriusXM “sources” out of my list of sources (FM1, FM2, AM1, AM2, Sirius sirius sirius, Bluetooth). So if I want to go from AM to FM - which happens a lot now that it’s baseball season - it is quite inconvenient to have to scroll through the satellite choices.

Also it seems to get hung up on those choices while it connects and then displays the “your subscription ran out” screen, so last night I was fumbling with it a lot as I kept passing up the FM source I wanted.

Frustrating :frowning: I was reading today about how to get rid of it and there does seem to be a way by connecting to the OBD port but you need a special tool and there’s no guarantee it won’t completely futz your radio or be able to bring it back.

So that’s my story.

16

That’s exactly it. And I hate it (well, “hate” is a bit strong. I *tolerate *it). 80s is the worst, but the 70s bugs me too. I like The Bridge. (If only they wouldn’t pipe in now and then to tell me I’m listening to the Bridge.)

17

IHeartRadio, MLB AtBat, a midrange data plan for my phone, and an AUX cord. Satellite radio subscription seems redundant for an extra however much a month. The AUX cord was $5 one time and the charger came with the phone.

18

The old-time radio drama channel is worse in that regard – they have almost as much in the way of commercials as regular radio, and most of them are blatant “we’re back in business with the same old scam, re-branded with a new name one step ahead of the bunko squad” crap.

19

And not even that. Most recent models have bluetooth capability already built in, so not even an aux in is needed (I did have to install one on my 2004 Mazda 3, though. My newer one, a 2014, had bluetooth standard on the radio.)

And some mobile phone services are not counting streaming radio against your data usage. For example, T-Mobile allows streaming from Apple Music, SoundCloud, Pandora, Napster, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Nextradio, and Amazon Music without counting against your usage on many, if not all, of their plans.

The MINUS of this is, though, there still are areas of the country where data connections are spotty. A year and a half ago driving from Kansas City, MO, to Chicago, IL, there were a number of locations where I had difficulty accessing streaming radio without constant interruptions due to buffering. And some locations where there simply was no data available. So that’s one plus to satellite radio (I assume; I don’t have satellite radio, but my assumption is the coverage is pretty much universal.)

20

The comedy channels alone are enough to make SiriusXM worth it to me. the fact that it also gives me more options in hard rock/metal channels is a bonus; terrestrial FM here for rock music is sad. We have a classic rock station, one which was for more modern stuff but is trending to classic rock as it ages, and another classic rock station. you want repetitive playlists, they’ve got it.