XM Satellite radio has had a rather tumultuous history. You can click that link to read up all about the rollercoaster of events, ending in 2009 where XM was planning to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. You will absolutely not believe all the cash that was thrown around concerning the service over the years. Everyone took a bath on it, so to speak.
Just for kicks, I looked up the current incarnation of XM satellite radio, SiriusXM, and checked it out.
The first link I clicked on was “How Much Does It Cost?”, and right off the bat the company is evasive and will not give you a direct answer:
Okay.. thanks for the poor excuse for not telling the price up front, Sirius.
Let’s try Subscription Options and see if we can get a price there.
Hm. Still no price. Let’s try “I have a Sirius radio” and see if that brings up anything that will tell me how much this service will cost me.
No wonder they won’t put the price on the home page. $199 a year just for radio is pretty steep.
On that same page, the cheapest monthly offering is $14.49 a month with a big fat asterisk next to it, which is explained in itty bitty light gray text as “Additional Fees & Charges: Early cancellation fee may apply. Prices do not reflect applicable taxes, fees and charges.”
Wait-wait-wait… there’s an EARLY TERMINATION FEE for this? Are you KIDDING ME? Unfortunately, I’m not kidding.
So the question at this point is: Is the service worth the price?
If you’re a sports fanatic, yes. Otherwise, no. You do get radio feeds from NFL, NASCAR, MLB, PGA, ESPN and others, and for a sports fan that would be worth the price because it would be very difficult to combine all those radio feeds using other methods.
I do not see anything SiriusXM offers other than the sports stuff that anyone would actually want, except maybe the Talk & Entertainment which includes Howard Stern, Opie & Anthony, and Playboy Radio. (Playboy has radio? Evidently they do.)
Do any of you out there still use XM? I know a few readers here are (or were) subscribed to the service. Is it (or did it) work out well?
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I find it worthwhile. I like the fact that the music channels are commercial free. I also get the audio from a number of cable channels, including CNN, FOX and NPR. My subscriptions are for two vehicles and a boat. I’m not much of a sports fan so I don’t find the sports channels of much use.
Also, FM radio stinks and I get tired of the repetition from my iPod.
I bet this guy still subscribes to cable TV too…
I use Sirius and I love it. Any kind of music you want – I like jazz – add free!! Try listening to regular radio – plenty of adds and lots of talk I’m not interested in.
I’ve been with XM Sirius ever since the Twin Towers and their Radio antennas went down on 9/11.
Yes, I know that you can browse the Internet Radio stations and browse websites and download tunes and all that– but that’s “WORK”. All that hunting and searching and searching and hunting and downloading and uploading….that’s WORK to me. Plus, uninterrupted Music over DSL is problematic. I just want to come home, turn on the stereo and hear music. And sometimes I want to hear something OTHER Than what’s in my collection.
The Main plus- NO COMMERCIALS. And depending on your channel, no Blabbermouth personalities who can’t shut the ‘F’ up and just let the music play. Having said that– I know that Commercials are part of the Music Broadcast system– but when I was hearing ONE song every 5 commercials, I couldn’t take it anymore.
The Negative– when XM was taken over by Sirius. Sirius was more about Yappety-yap Car-commute Talk shows versus the XM focus on Music. But I got over it.
I have the early contract. Some people freak when they hear that I pay it and snark at me that I could get all that music for Free over the Internet– I usually snark back at them: “And last week you were whining about that ‘&!$$%-ing’ Cable Bill.
We all pay for what we consider important.
You have to negotiate…Play the “I’m cancelling my service” card. Last time I did that, they offered me $25 for five months or $94.43 for a year. Five bucks a month, I can handle
Satellite radio has its vehicular and remote placement advantage over FM, WiFi, 3G and 4G that just plain suck in those situations. I like music and old time radio but not to the point where I spend time bootlegging, ripping or spending a freaking buck a song to have it on a variety of media players. Radio programming is vast and beats anyone’s personal media programming any day of the week and you can’t beat the sports coverage, comedy, talk and weather.
That said you are right SiriusXM currently has a very bad payment business model. I bought into the lifetime subscription special when XM and Sirius merged (2008), it’s paid for itself in mere 3 ½ years.
I have Sirius and have had it since around 2007 or so. I really like it and liked the price I paid a month back then for it (I think it was around 12 or 14 bucks). I just looked at my checking acct statement for July and the price is $18.31 for just the radio subscription (on an old Starmate Replay) and nothing else (no internet streaming add-ons or anything like that). I have been on the fence for awhile about cancelling due to the rising costs and if it gets much higher I will have to do so since it seems to be excessive. It’s apparent that the executives at Sirius know it too since they are being evasive about pricing on their site. Whenever they have announced a price increase it was from the angle of rising licensing costs from the studios, which I can believe to be true to a certain extent. the bad thing is terrestrial radio is playing more commercials that music nowadays so I will probably have to invest in an iPod, fill it up and switch it to random/ repeat all mode if I decide to pull the plug on Sirius.
We have SiriusXM in our 2008 Chevrolet and have absolutely loved every minute of the subscription. And at $11+ per month, it is worth every penny. On long trips, it is absolutely invaluable as you do not have to search for stations that might or might not (as is usually the case) come in. We learned this very painfully on a two week trip with our son in an RV that did not have satellite radio in it. It was excruciating to try and get a station to come in for any length of time; I think 15 minutes consecutive was the best we ever did on that trip (an average of 5 hours driving each day). Fortunately, I had quite a number of CD’s to fill in the gaps but with satellite radio, I would have never had to do that.