SIRIUSXM: Still Lazy After All These Years (1 Viewer)

[JQuintana]

I used to try the retention department route when not making progress with basic CSR's but it got to the point that I believe my account was flagged for doing so one too many times over the year because around the time we were thinking of cutting cord I tried a couple of times that year to get better rates and each time they said they had nothing to offer at the time and also they would point out "Oh I see you called on X date asking about promotions..." so yeah, I think there is a limit to how often you can play the retention card.

It was nice to make final call to them (DTV) to say goodbye for good.

 

[mattCR]

SIRIUSXM rolls out 100 new channels.

https://www.siriusxm.com/xtrachanne...03-06&utm_medium=EM&utm_campaign=CRM-XTRA-SVC

 

[BobO'Link]

However, nobody should be paying full price for the garbage this supposed music service makes you listen to day in and day out.

My new car came with a free 3 month subscription I had no intention of activating. Without asking, the dealership activated it before I picked up the car. So... since I hadn't ripped my CD collection then I tried a few "music" channels. It was horrible. Poor selection with horrible announcers that sounded like trainees at the local radio station. Why do they even use an announcer? The artist/song title is displayed! I gave it 3 days before switching to FM. I've not used it since. That was 2 years ago and they still send offers in the mail every couple of months. I just want that crap off my system - fully disabled with no way to accidentally select it.

My sister-in-law loves it and won't give it up. I just don't understand the appeal.

 

[mattCR]

I think it depends on what you are after. Being able to listen to the home radio call of my sports team no matter where I am in the country? Huge advantage.
News programming live all day that travels with? Fantastic.

I just don't listen to much for music.. I'm sure others do.. but if you are a sports fan or a news junky, there is nothing better.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Good for SiriusXM for adding all these new channels. However, be aware it's streaming ONLY and you need the very expensive ALL ACCESS subscription to listen to it. Really, you are better off finding a free Internet station that will have the same music.

Meanwhile, SiriusXM seems to have expanded their music selection on a few channels including 60s on 6 and Classic Rewind. However, most of the other popular channels such as Pop Rocks, 90s on 9 and 70's on 7 continue playing the same few songs every day.

Personally, I would love to see SiriusXM scale back on some of the bad talk channels (Faction) and unnecessary music stations. In turn, get some of the bandwidth back and increase the bitrate so that the audio that comes out of our car stereo systems don't sound like something coming out of a transistor radio.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Personally, I would love to see SiriusXM scale back on some of the bad talk channels (Faction) and unnecessary music stations. In turn, get some of the bandwidth back and increase the bitrate so that the audio that comes out of our car stereo systems don't sound like something coming out of a transistor radio.

This, as much as the same music being repeated over and over, is why I never subscribed. The music is compressed so much in order to fit all those channels into their allotted bandwidth that it sounds like AM radio. My own personal MP3's played via a flash drive sound infinitely better. If I want highly compressed music, I can play DASH radio via the Android Auto link in my car for free and get a better variety of music. I did this with our rental car recently when driving across the Florida Keys. It's cool that rental cars are starting to come with this feature, and I already had it installed on my phone, as I use it in my new car for navigation purposes.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I keep saying this...

For the yearly price, you are better off buying an MP3 player and loading it up with your favorite music ripped at 250-360kbps (or higher). All SiriusXM is doing is playing the same short playlists day in and day out.

The only reason I still have the service is for Howard Stern to listen during my commute.

However, I am retiring in about three months. I have been stockpiling more music on my iPhone (about 8,000 songs) and even putting them in categories like 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. to mimic satellite radio. The upside is I have most ALL the songs from the various decades (instead of the same 200 satellite plays repeatedly) and at a much higher bitrate.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

This, as much as the same music being repeated over and over, is why I never subscribed. The music is compressed so much in order to fit all those channels into their allotted bandwidth that it sounds like AM radio. My own personal MP3's played via a flash drive sound infinitely better. If I want highly compressed music, I can play DASH radio via the Android Auto link in my car for free and get a better variety of music. I did this with our rental car recently when driving across the Florida Keys. It's cool that rental cars are starting to come with this feature, and I already had it installed on my phone, as I use it in my new car for navigation purposes.

Scott,

I was quite amazed when I rented a car from Avis the other day, a Nissan Rogue. I plugged my iPhone into the USB port and I was shocked to see Apple Play pop up. It played all my music and I had Apple Maps navigation.

So I understand you perfectly on this.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Scott,

I was quite amazed when I rented a car from Avis the other day, a Nissan Rogue. I plugged my iPhone into the USB port and I was shocked to see Apple Play pop up. It played all my music and I had Apple Maps navigation.

So I understand you perfectly on this.

Ron,

We had a Nissan Rogue in the Keys, as well. I had brought along my 12volt to USB charger and phone mount that attaches to a vent, anticipating needing them to use my phone for navigation. I was pleased to see the USB ports, but like you was surprised when I plugged in the phone and Android Auto popped up!

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I keep saying this...

For the yearly price, you are better off buying an MP3 player and loading it up with your favorite music ripped at 250-360kbps (or higher). All SiriusXM is doing is playing the same short playlists day in and day out.

The only reason I still have the service is for Howard Stern to listen during my commute.

However, I am retiring in about three months. I have been stockpiling more music on my iPhone (about 8,000 songs) and even putting them in categories like 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. to mimic satellite radio. The upside is I have most ALL the songs from the various decades (instead of the same 200 satellite plays repeatedly) and at a much higher bitrate.

You don't even need an MP3 player. I just have a 32GB USB thumb drive with about 4,000 high bit rate songs loaded on it that I just leave plugged into my car at all times, with the console set to random play. If I get some new music, I just take out the thumb drive and copy the new music. I think my current head unit will support either 5,000 or 10,000 songs and I still have several GB of space left on the drive, so I should be set for quite awhile (I don't buy much music anymore).

My GMC Acadia's front console has two USB ports, so one is for the thumb drive and the 2nd has a USB-C cable attached so I can plug in my Samsung Galaxy phone for navigation via Android Auto when I get in the car.

 

[CraigF]

^ Same. My car has a hidden/undocumented USB port inside the glove box, that with a bit of blind groping and a short USB extension cord, is home for a "permanent" stick with many thousands of my own rips on it. I did this after I realized my upgraded car audio system was still crap, no need for anything too high-bitrate, it's wasted with this system.

But it still smokes the audio quality I get from SiriusXM, I check if it's improved every time I get a free trial offer. Yeah, it's good for sports and talk, but it still has that weird sound that lower-bitrate audio does, to my ears. Just not pleasant. I don't listen long enough to their music channels to have noticed how short their playlists are, but it sounds like it's as short as FM stations have these days.

 

[Jeffrey D]

I’ve been a Sirius subscriber since 2005 (started driving a semi then). My main music channel I listen to is Ozzy’s Boneyard. I’ve discovered that they have stopped playing certain artists (Led Zeppelin and Rush are 2 noticeable exclusions on this channel now). I assume it’s due to music royalty fees. The Boneyard isn’t as good as it used to be due to a more limited library. I do have the All-Access subscription in my newest car, so I’ll have to fart around with downloading the app, and see what I can stream.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Last month I bought a "used" 2018 Miata (with only 681 miles). The Sirius people have been bugging me ever since.

I don't listen to pop music, normally only classical music. XM features 200 pop channels and only 1 classical channel. And I'm sure their one classical channel plays "top 40" classical format.

Begone foul salesmen!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Last month I bought a "used" 2018 Miata (with only 681 miles). The Sirius people have been bugging me ever since.

I don't listen to pop music, normally only classical music. XM features 200 pop channels and only 1 classical channel. And I'm sure their one classical channel plays "top 40" classical format.

Begone foul salesmen!

Dennis,

There used to be more than one classical channel. I listen to SiriusXM POPS from time to time. It's basically okay, but you are right, everything has been delegated to just one channel.

I can't wait to retire in 9 weeks. I will no longer have to listen to the same music being played over and over again on all the channels. That's what gets piped into our workplace, and really, it's awful. This is the worst music service you could ever pay for.

 

[Jeffrey D]

The Deep Tracks channel seems to be a good one in that they’re not as likely to play the same songs over and over. I’ve been enjoying that one.

 

[TonyD]

I just got free three months and it seems to include everything except Stern channels.

Looks like there’s about 100 “extra” channels with many choices for type of music.
This is for the app not in car systems.

 

[TonyD]

Btw seems like this should be in streaming not mobile phones.

 

[David Norman]

Neat little thing I found for at least home units -- after you cancel a subscription, you last channel will stay active I think until you change channels or restart the unit. After the last 'trial' I did and cancelled the renewal I left it on the channel I listened to 90% of the time at home and it's still working. If they send me a $50 for a year offer to Come Back I may bite since I do feel a little guilty listening for free.

This is a Pioneer Portable unit I think I bought in 2005 when XM was still new and we were going on a 3 week Auto trip. It was nice not to be forced to search for a new channel every hour or so and esp in those places in the mountains where even getting a Radio signal was iffy. I;ve probably subscribed in some level for 70 of those 180 months

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Btw seems like this should be in streaming not mobile phones.

I can move this to streaming. No problem.

Neat little thing I found for at least home units -- after you cancel a subscription, you last channel will stay active I think until you change channels or restart the unit. After the last 'trial' I did and cancelled the renewal I left it on the channel I listened to 90% of the time at home and it's still working. If they send me a $50 for a year offer to Come Back I may bite since I do feel a little guilty listening for free.

This is a Pioneer Portable unit I think I bought in 2005 when XM was still new and we were going on a 3 week Auto trip. It was nice not to be forced to search for a new channel every hour or so and esp in those places in the mountains where even getting a Radio signal was iffy. I;ve probably subscribed in some level for 70 of those 180 months

I have heard those kinds of stories often.

Seem to be with the older XM units. People would turn them off for months. Eventually, Sirius/XM would stop sending signals to disable the devices and they would keep operating on their own forever.

Been meaning to try that with my car radio but I have a feeling that the newer radios in vehicles have some kind of stopgap from customers trying that kind of trick.

 

[benbess]

I've been a subscriber to XM for about 18 years, and it was better before the merger. One of my favorite channels was Cinemagic, which had a wonderful DJ who interviewed composers of movie scores, directors and how they used music in their movies, etc. But ten years ago they fired all the DJs on cinemagic, and brought it back as a "zombie" channel on streaming with no DJs. I still listen to it streaming, but it's sad that they had something special and killed it.