SIRIUSXM: Still Lazy After All These Years

I’ve liistened a bit more and there has been more Joel and less influenced by.

Also many songs have been live so that’s good I guess if you like live Billy.

 

Dumb question: if you can get an external antenna to pick up XM, can you get the same for FM?

How about cell reception for Spotify or Apple Music or Dash or etc? Someone’s paying for the XM sub: cancel that and put the savings towards the data plan.

How about use your music app of choice to make a 10-hr mix, copy the songs to USB, and play. Change it up every few days. Or have everyone bring their own to rotate through over the week.

I don’t know your situation. But it seems like there’s options besides paying $15/mo or whatever for music you hate.

 

Ron, has anyone approached your IT department about offering some sort of guest access on your corporate wireless network? We did that for visitors, patients and staff at the healthcare system I worked at for many years before retiring. That would allow you to do some sort of streaming Internet radio without burning through anyone's cell data plan.

As for Dash Radio, I ran into another issue playing this through our Amazon Echo devices. For some reason it cannot find the Dash Radio station "Church of Rock & Roll". It finds every other station I've tried, though. I opened a support request for the issue through the Amazon Echo app on my phone, so hopefully the issue will get addressed.

 

Yes, it would be difficult to convince a corporation to setup guest access for a warehouse setting. In our case, it was justified as a patient and physician satisfier, and everything was firewalled off from the corporate network traffic, along with a separate ISP connection and content filters -- we didn't want anyone surfing pornography sites in public waiting rooms.

Another option would be a separate broadband Internet connection into the building, which can be easier if you already have some sort of cable TV coming into the building. We had such a setup in our IT building -- in our case justified as a method to test VPN access into our network from the outside world. Once again, it may be difficult to get even that approved due to corporate policies.

 

Just installed the DASH app - thanks for the suggestion. It looks interesting but the website is a bit of mess. I can't find much in details about quality and it took me 5 minutes to find settings on the app...

I subscribe to SiriusXM mainly for Octain. It is about the only place I can hear new rock. There is only 1 FM station left in my area that plays new rock and a handful that play classic rock (and some new 'not so hard' rock). I can't stand listening to the one FM station since there's 10 minutes of commercials in every 30 minutes of music. Add that to the non stop traffic and news updates and I get only a couple songs on my commute.

For everything else I stream my own collection with Subsonic. I am much better at curating my playlists anyway.

 

I generally agree with your assessment of SiriusXM in the original post but can any music service satisfy the personal tastes of 100 + people at the same time?

Not understanding this but I could be missing something. I get the fact no one could blame the other for a "bad playlist" but many could still be unhappy with the selection at any given time. I doubt 100 random people will ever agree in this scenario regardless of the content provider, so I don't see how satellite radio is the problem here. It seems headphones would be optimal but I'm guessing they are not safe or allowed in your environment.

This is the core issue and I couldn't agree more but , like practically every other business these days, they are playing the numbers [and ignorance] game. For every discerning customer such as yourself they know there are 100's of others who will blindly pay their fees and think they are getting great value in return.

 

I searched for 30 minutes trying to find out if the DASH app was compatible with Android Auto. I finally gave up and just tried it. It is compatible and sorta works (it takes a couple tries to get it to play anything then it works fine). The sound quality is awful in the car. I looked again for a way to increase it and, surprise, can't find it (or any documentation). Not a big fan so far....

 

Just a thought... My Pioneer car stereo has a 'mix' option for SiriusXM that mixes the 6 presets on my main list. This allows me to hear a variety of old and new music and mostly eliminates all the yapping from the DJ's. Not sure if all receivers have this but it may be worth looking at.

 

Yes it does. There are a few streaming channels, Cinemagic being one of them.

 

"Listen offline - Spotify" https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/listen-offline/

"Amazon.com Help: Download Amazon Music Unlimited Titles for Offline Playback" https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202059540

 

My renewal came up: 300 Canadian. I phone them and tell them to cancel because I think 300 bucks a year to listen to the radio (mostly in the car) is too high. The sales rep says, "we can do an adjustment. 120 for a year". I took it, but I'm like WTF? If they can adjust the price to 120 from 299 then just charge 120 and stop making me have to call and cancel in order to get a reasonable price. It's ridiculous.

 

Edwin, I have to play that same game with Comcast whenever our contract is up. Our bill recently went up by $20 per month when the "special price" we had locked in for two years expired. I called and was told by the first person I spoke with that there were no better deals available. After mentioning that I would be calling Wide Open West and AT&T, both of whom also have fiber optic cable running through our back yard, she transferred me to someone else who miraculously was able to give us our old deal for another two years.

Companies do this because not enough people call threatening to cancel when their bill goes up. I hate playing the game, but for $240 a year I will make the phone call.

 

Holy mackerel,

So my work for the next few months requires me to drive daily for about 2 hours each day. I thought, yeah maybe I'll give Sirius another chance if for nothing else the talk radio channels.

Well, the emails I have been ignoring for months and months from them in which I thought were attempts to get me to re-subscribe were actually an outstanding bill for $21.

Makes no sense because my credit card was active and The money was deducted every month like all good vampire bills are paid from me with this being no exception.

No problem here, but damn they are going in reverse to get my business again. They are not getting the $21 from me because it isn't even clear what it is for(I did see a charge for music royalty fees, but I'm not sure if that is what it's for). I'm not re-subscribing either.

I'm actually a little upset about this. Are they sore losers, or now trying to gouge customers that cancel with ridiculous add on charges....after they cancel?

 

Over the last year they have emailed me a handful of offers that are six months for $30 but they also send a $50 amazon gift card.
After regulartory type fees the total is. About $38.

I just got my second $50 amazon card so I’ll have a year for about $78 and a hundred dollars in amazon gcs in my pocket.


Anyone else get that offer?

 

I just bought a new vehicle a couple of weeks ago, and it comes with the standard 3 month trial. I will have to at least try it once to see if it sounds better with premium audio system in this vehicle (2018 GMC Acadia) than my old one (2011 GMC Terrain). I still have no intention to pay for radio, though.

The Acadia has Android Auto, so I may play with Dash Radio again. It was a disappointment on the Amazon Echo, as the Alexa skill cannot find most of the stations. Hopefully it works better on Android. I have unlimited data on Sprint, so streaming won't be a cost issue.