The stations on which I hear commericals are, as you note, primarily the non-music ones. SiriusXM does simulcasts of a number of TV networks (e.g., CNN, Fox News, msnbc), as well as rebroadcasting the local or national radio feeds for sporting events; when those stations or feeds go into commercial break, the SiriusXM brodcast does, too.
However, what I note is that the ads on the rebroadcasts of TV networks are clearly placed their by SiriusXM (lots of ads for health insurance and income tax assistance: “Don’t mess with the IRS!”), timed to fill the space that the TV network is running its own ads. The ads on the SiriusXM-owned talk stations, like their NFL Talk station, tend to be the same sorts of ads (which are clearly focused on men age 50+ ).
OTOH, the simulcasts of, say, NFL games are often from the local radio networks for the teams, and include the local ads (which gives a fun slice of what things are like in that area).
I listen because of the DJs. The channels I listen to all have DJs who lived through the era and know many of the musicians on their channel personally (80s VJs, Downtown Julie Brown on the 90s, Nancy Sinatra on Siriusly Sinatra) or are experts in some way in the music the my play (Preston Trombly on Symphony Hall is a classically trained musician and composer). I find listening to them enhances the experience.
I’m not a fan of SiriusXM, but the wife is so we have it. I have two main complaints. First, the audio quality of the music is really atrocious due to high compression. I thought the tweeters in my car were defective, but playing CDs or streaming FLAC or even 320 Mbps mp3 files sounded great. It’s the satellite signal that sucks.The second is that I don’t like the actual programming, it seems as if rather than having a library of a few million tracks (like Spotify) they have a library of thousands of tracks. To me it sounds repetitive.
But if you like it, do yourself a favor and compare the sound quality of the streaming SiriusXM app (which can be set to a good sounding bitrate) vs the sound quality of the satellite signal. If you don’t mind the data use, it’s worth streaming SiriusXM.
Well you and I are in lockstep on this. My wife has had SiriusXM in her last couple cars, so I was well aware of the quality issues. Now that my new car has the same service, I find myself counting the number of repeats and thinking about dropping my plan.
I grew up with AM radio and cassette tapes in my car, on terrible speakers. To me, the satellite music in my car sounds amazing. Of course, I have old ears.
It varies a lot based on the station. Ozzy’s Boneyard hardly seems to have any talk. Outlaw Country has some pretty amusing DJs like Mojo Nixon, Steve Earle, and Johnny Knoxville that I don’t mind hearing. The nice thing is I have 27 channels programmed in, so if a DJ gets too chatty I just change to another channel.
I was beginning to think there was some kind of payola going on, what with constant repetitions ofVan Morrison’s Moondance and Steely Dan’s Deacon Blues. Both of them seemed to play every single time my husband and I went somewhere.
I used to listen to the comedy channels a lot, but even they play the same bits over and over and over again. I’m enjoying the classical a lot, and I’ll listen to the public radio channels as long as it’s not Fresh Air. But if I lost it tomorrow, I’d just listen to my local-est NPR station or I’d haul my CDs with me. Yes, I’m that far behind the times.
I had to stop listening to the comedy channels because I felt like they had only 3 different bits and just repeated them over and over again. What was even more annoying is playing the same bit from two different shows so it’s different, but juuuuuuuust barely
I like it so I can listen to MSNBC and Yankee baseball. I’m not a huge audiophile so the sound quality is lost on me, the 60s and 70s channels are my faves but sometimes I’ll go to Elvis or Beatles or Bluesville. It may be a little pricey but my wife and I both like it.
When I have access to satellite radio (i.e., when I’m in a rental car that comes with it), I listen almost exclusively to one of the comedy channels, so I guess I actually prefer talking to music.
I’ve found that the news/comedy/sports channels on SiriusXM do entirely too much self-promotion. Bloomberg is one of the worst for this, they spend about as much time bragging about being Bloomberg as they do on reading the news.
I noticed a big increase in Elton John songs about the time Rocketman came out. Both on the Bridge and 70s channel. (you could say it’s confirmation bias, but I actually noticed it before I was even aware the movie had just come out)
I used to be in the radio industry and worked as a DJ at a fairly powerful station in the mid 90s.
There was a strong sense at the time that it was a dying industry, at least for on-air talent if your name wasn’t Howard Stern or Don Imus. I felt my job was mostly to introduce and re-state the songs (I know I hate it when I hear something I like and then can’t find out what it was), take some requests and occasionally run a contest. I kept it very short, and my bosses liked that.
When satellite radio came to the fore I thought that would be it for DJs because the system identifies the songs right there on the screen. But no, we’re back to mindless DJ chatter and I find it just as useless as everyone else. The moment I hear them jump in I’m doing the quick draw to change the station.
I was perfectly accepting of that job going the way of the dinosaur, even when I was doing it. Kind of sucks when we get technological advances that come with a step backward to accommodate the human desire for… I don’t know… inoffensive background chatter? It annoys the hell out of me.
It’s not just SiriusXM. I recently had a 6 month free trial to Apple music and their Beats 1 radio was about 90% mindless DJ chatter, made worse by the fact that they had British DJs to up the irritation factor to 11. Not sure how Apple expected anyone to pay for that.
I’m a huge fan of Apple Music and think it’s an incredible value for me, and I never listen to any of the live radio stations. It’s the endless variety of playlists and the size of the library that works for me.
Ours seems to take many seconds to change channels. It is by no means instantaneous.
In the old days of push button manual mechanical car radios I think they changed faster than that. Why is technology regressing? I guess that’s fodder for another thread.
It certainly depends on the DJ. Earl Bailey, Michael Des Barres, and Meg Griffin are entertaining, and Steve Van Zandt is fascinating, telling obscure stories about the history of rock. For a while, Andrew Loog Oldham had a show that covered a lot about the UK music scene in the 60s.
Tom Petty use to have a pretty good show of his favorites.
On the other side of the coin, Drew Carey is awful. Good song choices, but he rambles as though he never thought of what he was going to say.
I just called them to cancel my subscription. Between YouTube Music, MLB At Bat and Apple Music (the last is free through Verizon) I have no need for satellite radio. They kept offering lower prices for the same channels and I kept saying no. They finally offered me five months free which I accepted.
With a business plan like that I’m surprised they haven’t gone under.
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