For 5 bucks a month, I still love it. My kids (and, admittedly, I) love Kids Place Live. That alone seems worth 5 bucks a month, especially when they’re in the car with me for long stretches. I also still enjoy Willie’s Roadhouse, the Beatles Channel, Lithium and the decade channels. It’s also nice to get college football. We do road trips in the fall, so I can listen to Michigan (and other) games as we drive no matter where we are and not worry about driving out of the signal.
I still have it but It’s not as good as before. I noticed the slide from when they went from XM to Sirius XM. The good hard punk station ‘Fungus’ went away and was replaced with a more generic new-wave/alternative-y station witha more mainstream sound. ‘The Boneyard’ over time ( and it’s various iterations ) playlist began to move from a hard and heavy sound more toward the sound to appeal to casual rock fans. Very “safe” music. Oh they’ll they’ll play stuff from the good bands, but only the most played-to-death stuff you can hear on commercial radio.
Same and I assumed it was standard for all major phone plans these days to have a data exemption for the major music streaming services. Now, my old phone didn’t understand this and would squawk warnings if I got over 1GB but it never affected my actual T-Mobile data. Anyway, my car listening is either Spotify or just off a USB stick with 400+ mp3s on it when service is poor or I just don’t want to use my phone.
As for XM, I had it when I bought the car, wasn’t impressed with it even back then (too much chatter and the stations failed to impress) and endured the six months of sales calls. What strikes me as weird now is that, if I press the XM button, the Demo channel is just awful. Instead of short bits from various stations or something to make you think “Hey, I’d like more of this” it’s just a repeating “Why are you listening to this when you could have Sirius XM?!” message.
I’ve had a continuous subscription going back nearly 17 years now to pre-merger XM. The issue is that Sirius was run by a bunch of FM hacks that got full control after the merger and the personality of XM’s programming was lost. The main reason I keep subscribing is that there’s not a good alternative.
And while I don’t mind people doing actual shows in a time block, I hate the DJs. I don’t care that you were on a cable channel 30+ years ago that hasn’t played music videos in 20+ years. You should be fired and replaced by a computer that only plays music.
True… and there’s Bullit’s and Happy_Lendervedder’s observation that you can stay on the same channel while driving across long distances.
But even back in the Age of Normal Life, I was not really driving that much out of range either, and most often I’d have an older iPod loaded up with like a month’s worth of different shows hooked to the AUX input. Like many others, these days I mostly keep it out of inertia and formed habit, and for when I do go way out of town.
We actually signed up for the promotional month of Sirius XM when we were going on a long road-trip (from Texas to South Dakota and back) a couple of years ago.
While it was fantastic for listening to the music we like to listen to regardless of where we were, or how far we went, we noticed that it started repeating pretty quickly. Generally speaking you can’t just park it on one station and listen for the whole trip - it still repeats songs frequently enough to be annoying. It wasn’t too much of a problem on the way north, but by the time we got to Wyoming, we were starting to get a little annoyed with it.
I had expected it to be less repetitive- when you’re talking about 80s rock, you have a LOT to draw from- there’s no reason to repeat in a month, never mind more frequently than that.
I’ve had SiriusXM for a decade or so, and I still really enjoy it. I’m not in my car much these days, but I stream it on my Echo now while I work. I agree with several above posters that any one station will get repetitive, and so, I try to rotate regularly between about a dozen stations.
One of the issues, I think, as far as the “talkiness” on some of the music stations, is that they aren’t just featuring a specific era or genre of music, but in some cases, are trying to replicate the experience of listening to radio station of that era, an experience which included the DJs/VJs.
I think that this is particularly true of the 70s and 80s stations. 70s on 7 is specifically trying to mimic a top-40 AM station from that era – the DJs have a low-fi filter on their mics, they speed up some songs a little bit (a common “sweetening” tactic used back then, to make songs feel more energetic), and they use “bumpers” that are reminiscent of those used by top-40 stations back then. Similarly, 80s on 8 is trying to evoke the feel of watching MTV back then, which includes having some of the original MTV VJs, and having those VJs doing talk segements every few songs. But, none of that is new, and, as far as I can tell (I listen to both stations regularly), the talk isn’t substantially more now than it was in years past.
The MTV VJs are the bane of the decade channels. Not only do they talk way too much between songs, they talk OVER the songs. One time, I heard Nena Blackwood growl over “Would I Lie To You” all the way until the lyrics started! The intro is the best part of that song!!
As I recall, no one ever liked it when DJs did that on AM top 40 radio, and it was one of the main causes people quit listening to top 40 stations and migrated to AOR stations. I don’t remember anyone saying “Well, WFBQ’s okay, but I really like the way the talent on WNAP talks over all the songs!”
Guess which station is still on the air.
Speak of the devil.
I just received this completely worthless piece of advertising via email.
Here’s the link if you wish to see what tripe you missed.
I had the free XM trial when I got a new car a couple of years ago. I only found two stations I kind of liked, although I hated the unnecessary chatter between songs. Then Sirius announced that they were canceling one of the stations (Jam On). After protests from users, they reversed their decision, but the possibility that one or both of the stations I listened to might be canceled in the future sealed the deal for me.
She didn’t want you taping it on your cassette recorder
Couldn’t agree more.
Nina Blackwood‘s voice sounds just like the scene in the old movie, Jaws, when the character Quint (Robert Shaw) was first introduced. If you’re not familiar with the scene, Quint interrupts the town leaders’ arguing by scratching his fingernails on a chalkboard. Here( it is, cut straight to the fingernails scene:
That’s Nina Blackwood‘s voice, to my ears anyway.
Couldn’t agree more. I hate Sirius. I hated it in 2004, so it isn’t a new thing. TOO. MUCH. TALKING.
On our cable system we have Music Choice. it’s what Sirius should be - all music, no talking. But you can’t take it on the road.
Yes you can. Download the app.
Speaking of the app – if you listen to SiriusXM streaming (on their app, in a web browser, or on a smart device), they have a lot more music channels, most of which don’t have DJs, and have little or no talking. But, most of those extra channels aren’t available on the in-car radios.
really? I’ll check it out.
Do tell? Where is it located (which channel number). I used to get it on 29 but that is now Phish channel.
I have the app. The only downside (could be my phone) is that it stops if you dont continuously ouch the screen.
I got XM way, way back in December 2001 (about 3 weeks after they debuted). There were some terrific stations back then, such as Special X, Beyond Jazz, and XM Music Lab. They went (further) downhill after the merger with Sirius. I still had them most of the time after that, as they still are way better than terrestrial radio, and added some things I enjoy (specifically several shows devoted to horse racing). I still have a subscription, but have not listened much is the past year thanks to the pandemic. I am not sure if I will renew next time, since I agree with pretty much all the criticisms mentioned by others here.