I canceled my subscription to Sirius more than two years ago, and haven't had much chance to listen to satellite radio since Sirius and XM merged. So this weekend I was happy to I discover that my rental had a Sirius receiver and a package with about 80 stations. I know the company has been struggling lately, so I was curious to hear if the service had improved.
I was pleasantly surprised. The annoying DJs who talked between every song have been scaled way back, although they still talk more often than I'd like. The programming is more eclectic than I remember--Boneyard (classic hard rock and metal) and Little Steven's Underground Garage (well-curated rock and punk) turned me on to some killer music I'd never heard before, like BeBop Deluxe and the Purple Hearts, and the Grateful Dead are always welcome when cruising through redwood groves to the beach. I also forgot how much I missed those moments of serendipity that radio sometimes provides--listening to my own music collection on an MP3 player guarantees I'll always hear music I like, but it leaves very little room for hearing the first notes of Eric Burdon's "San Franciscan Nights" just as the city's skyline appears in the distance.
But I still didn't like it well enough to consider re-subscribing, even for only $7 a month. Here's why:
Quality of service. The service dropped out pretty frequently, and it wasn't like I was deep in the wilderness--just driving through the mountains south and west of Silicon Valley. There's also something strange about the sound quality itself, perhaps too much compression? No matter how loud I turned it up, it didn't sound full enough. Playing with the EQ didn't help either. The FM radio sounded better.
Repetition. I spent about three hours in the car each day on Friday and Saturday, and by Sunday I was already hearing repeats! It was fun hearing the Who's "The Good's Gone" and Art Brut's "Alcoholics Unanimous" on the radio, but do I really need to hear them twice in two days?
Safety. I know my musical tastes are a bit off-center, but with the exception of the Underground Garage and XMU, the selection of tunes was pretty safe major label stuff. Not much independent music, no local acts, and nothing too far out. One of the best radio experiences I've ever had was driving through a blighted part of San Jose last year and stumbling across a half hour of soft noise (if you can imagine that) and feedback on KFJC. Surely with so many stations, Sirius could devote one to way-out music like Sun Ra and early Zappa+Mothers and Fantomas.
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I've expressed my lackluster opinion of satellite radio before, but it has a lot of passionate fans, particularly people who spend a lot of time in the car and enjoy hearing music, as well as news and sports.
The combination of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio has more than 19 million paying customers and still expects subscriber growth, even in the worst economic climate in 80 years, though it's warned that the drop-off in car sales could hurt.
Sirius and XM combined operations in May, and according to Rolling Stone magazine, the two systems will begin merging their channels beginning Wednesday.
There's been no official word from the companies on what the new channel lineup will look like, but apparently, many music stations will be merged--there's no need for two stations featuring music from the 1950s, for example. Somebody on Saturday posted a purported lineup for existing XM subscribers on the Digital Radio Central forum. Take it with many grains of salt, though it apparently maps somewhat to an advertisement that appeared in USA Today.
There will also be new subscription offerings for each system--for example, XM subscribers can pay about $4 extra per month to get Sirius content like Howard Stern and the NFL.
Apparently, all existing XM radios will be able to get this Best of Sirius package, while only the recently released Sirius Starmate 5 will be able to get the comparable Best of XM package. The Starmate 5 will support a la carte options as well, letting users pick their favorite 50 or 100 stations for a lower monthly fee.
An aside: for XM fans who want a portable receiver, be sure to check out CNET's Friday review of the Pioneer Inno XMP3.
The FCC's approval Friday of the merger between satellite radio providers Sirius and XM won't solve the fundamental problems with satellite radio.
As I've written before, I was a Sirius subscriber for one year, before canceling my subscription in early 2007. It sounded bad--much worse than my current kludge of plugging my iPod Shuffle into an aux-input that connects to an unused frequency on my FM radio (don't ask...it's an '06 Subaru thing). It was a physical pain to set up. Most of all, it just wasn't worth paying $12.95 a month to hear what was essentially terrestrial radio without the advertisements. The DJs talked too much, their voices were annoying, and they stuck mostly with fairly safe major-label music fit into tightly conscribed genres. That's not how I listen to music.
As the FCC fuddled around trying to figure out whether to approve the merger, numerous alternatives for music fans have grown stronger. Terrestrial radio's still a dying joke, but the rise of mobile devices with anywhere connectivity is a real threat--I'm thinking about the imperfect but interesting Slacker, as well as the iPhone+Pandora combination that's going to take over the world. Instead of having a DJ broadcasting his selections to the world, these services narrowcast a specialized station based on your personal taste. There's still something nice about a great DJ, one who scours new releases looking for that nugget the fans will love. But even if Sirius/XM has that DJ on staff, is it worth $12.95 a month? Most music fans will say no.
There's one audience that could find the new landscape of satellite radio indispensable: hard-core sports fans. One drawback of XM and Sirius is that sports coverage was split between them, although I'm an NFL fan, so Sirius worked for me. The merger eliminates the split, meaning that fans will be able to hear just about every game they could possibly want.
Satellite radio providers Sirius and XM are looking to merge, which would create a satellite radio monopoly in the U.S. The feds, facing considerable pressure from the terrestrial radio industry, have been waffling about whether to let the merger take place.
So yesterday, in a bid to show that consumers won't be harmed by the merger, the two companies released a paper (PDF download) with proposed pricing and packaging for the merged services. Particularly appealing is a new a la carte option, which will let subscribers pick up to 50 stations from either Sirius or XM for only $6.99 per month; the cheapest subscription plan for either station today is $12.95 per month. There's also a 100 station plan for $14.99 per month. Of course, there's a catch: the new a la carte plans don't work with existing radios.
I'm in favor of the merger, as both companies claim it would help satellite radio become a sustainable business, and I'm in favor of any competition to commercial terrestrial radio, which has become completely focus-grouped and risk-averse.
That said, I tried Sirius and cancelled my subscription after the year was up. The stations offered far more variety and creativity than terrestrial radio, but the sound quality was sdo poor that every time a song I loved came on, it hurt my ears to turn up the radio--it just sounded thin, with very little midrange and flabby bass. (This was through my car stereo, through which normal FM stations and CDs sounded just fine.) In addition, Sirus was under the mistaken impression that somebody out there pined for the old days of radio, meaning that DJs would interrupt between most every song. The particular car radio I owned was a pain to set up--I had to magnetically stick an antenna to the roof, then run wires underneath the bodyside molding, through the trunk, and between the front seats--and when I traded my old car in, I wasn't excited to go through the installation process again.
Finally, Sirius didn't seem like a particularly upstanding business to me--they offered a "rebate" on the radio that was hard to redeem (you had to start service within a few days of purchase, and because this was a Christmas present for my wife, I missed the window), and made robot-voice telemarketing calls to my cellphone trying to upsell me to a second radio--not illegal, since I had a business relationship with them, but a definite customer service no-no.
I've read consistently that XM has better sound quality. But for people with large music collections, I think an MP3 player and a car adapter is probably a better choice: you get all (and only) the music you want, when you want it, with no interruptions. Even so, random shuffle can't quite deliver the "aha!" you get when a radio station plays an old favorite you haven't heard in years. And of course you'll never discover new music by sticking with your existing collection. Then again, there are plenty of online services that'll help you do that.
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