XM or SiriusFollow

Ready go!

neither, go with HDradio....

both are good, Sirius if you want howard stern, XM if you want everything else.

I echo DF. I have Sirius and love it. Howard is hugely overrated.

Edited, Dec 25th 2006 9:25pm by Kastigir

XM FTW.

The "decades" channels are pretty much the same, and it just comes down to the "exclusives":

XM Sports exclusives:

* NASCAR
* MLB
* PGA TOUR Network

XM has these sports streams:

* ESPN Radio
* ESPN News
* Fox Sports Radio
* The Sporting News
* ACC Football
* PAC 10 Football
* Big Ten Football
* NHL


Sirius Sports exclusives:

* NFL
* NBA
* NHL

Sirius has these sports streams:

* ESPN Radio
* ESPN News
* Sports Byline USA
* Sirius Sports Action
* Sports 1
* Sports 2
* Sports 3
* Radio Deportivo (En Espanol)



I am an Opie & Anthony fan, so I am glad I went with XM before they signed. It was an added bonus to have them join the XM side.

People used to complain that XM's library was too "deep" and you would rarely hear songs you knew. They have added new stations in each genre section to cover the more memerable songs, while still keeping the older stations that expose you to new music in that genre.

Both sucked.

Oh and if you purchase XM and decide at a later point to discontinue the service be prepared for one of the most aggressive and annoying call back campaigns you have ever witnessed.

I sampled both XM and Sirius for 3 weeks before I made my decisions to buy a satellite raido over a year ago. (I used a bunch of yahoo and gmail addresses to get the a bunch of the 3 day trials). I could listen to either O & A or Howard so neither of them was a selling point for me. What mattered to me was the content of the rest of the channels.

What it came down to, at least for me, was this: The two are almost identical - both have an 80's station, a metal station, a Hair Band station, an Alt Rock station, etc. That being said, the difference between the two was which artists were signed with which service. For the older music, the core music was on both services but the new music was dependant on either the artist or the recording labels' decision to choose Sirius over XM or vice versa.

Sirius has made a huge surge since Howard Stern joined their roster and has almost caught up to one time industry leader XM. This has been largely attributed to the "Stern Factor" (a chunck of Howard's 13 million+ fan base coming over to Sirius Radio) however, Sirius has also been making large strides in capturing other talent as well in many of the other departments - i.e. talk radio, music, specialty and sports stations as well. XM has actually been losing subscribers but there is no real proof as to whether they are switching to Sirius or just getting out of the satellite radio deal altogether.

Personally, I can't stand listening to regular, terrestrial radio anymore. The 5 minutes of music or talk and 15 minutes of commercials format drives me insane now that I have a choice. The music channels on sattelite are commercial free and the ones that do have DJ's are mercifully scarece on talk breaks. I will say, however, that when they do talk, the DJ's are pleasantly knowledgable about the genre of music that they are chatting up and 99% of the time have some cool tid bit of knowledge or trivia to add or let you know about upcoming tours or album releases. Very rare is the typical "DJ chatting to fill up dead air space" heard on satellite.

My own slant on the future of the XM/ Sirius war is that one of them will eventually buy out the other and there will be one big satellite radio company (my prediction is that Sirius will take over XM in the next year or so - XM will be looking to get out while the getting is good due to the loss of mebers/ rise of Sirius - the board will want to get their money out before the losses get out of hand). The 2 services are so damn close in content and service and pricing, I can't see how the market will support 2 companies for much longer.

Like I said, both services offer tons of content and some will appeal to some and not so much to others. What you need to do is listen to both for several days and decide which of the services is a match for you.

Oh, and for the record, I went with Sirius.

umm... no?

Sirius is ~5M, and XM is ~7.5M. If you compare the growth charts, both companies are growing at about the same rate.

Also, if Howie had such a big impact, then why is Mel Karmason no longer mentioning Howie in every sound bite?

Ohh, and how are those lawsuits about using CBS's airtime to promote Sirius in order to obtain stock and other bonuses that were not disclosed to CBS in his initial contract going? How is he doing with the SEC after blatantly lying on Letterman about the financial status and subscriber base of Sirius?

If Sirius is planning on buying out XM, they may want to work on getting their stock to be valued above XM's first...


But I forgot, he was tellign the truth when he said he invented radio, MTV Unplugged, Bevis & Butthead, bands playing accousticly, and women flashing men, so he was telling you the truth about the 6.5 Million subscribers that joined just for him.

Edited, Dec 27th 2006 6:05pm by PsiChi

Yeah, actually they went from about 3.5 million to about 5 million. Still quite signifigant, but nowhere near what Howard likes to tell people. It should also be noted that Sirius counts unsold cars in dealers lots as active subscriptions.
No. Karmizen likes to toss that possibility up in the air at press conferences, but there are no merger talks between the two at the moment.
XM hasn't been losing subscribers. They have, however, had to cut their projections a bit. Also, it should be noted that XM is closer to becoming profitable than Sirius, due to the higher number of suscribers, the fact that they pimp 3 hours of the O & A show out to CBS and Citidel, and the fact that they aren't shelling out half of a billion dollars over 5 years for one on air personality.

neither.

get "replay" program. it recordes whatever you play on your computer and converts it to a mp3 file recording. buy the 3 dollar subscription to whatever music service you want, listen to all your favorite stuff, then load it from replay on to your mp3 device.

***** serus and xm. its one thing to offer commercial free music, its another to charge 15 bucks a month PER RECIEVER, and then AIR COMMERCIALS. yep, they air commercials. its not 50 percent of the programing like on radio, but its there.

you have satelite or cable tv? plug it into your computer and run the music channel for a couple days while replay is running. you have already paid for it, and as long as you dont sell it or share it, its perfectly legal.

can do the same with any number of online radio stations.

i orderd my wife,s car and expressly stated i did not want serus or onstar. they added it anyway, seems the sales people get a commission kick back for every one they sell. after waiting 6 weeks for it, i sent it back. all i need to do is let my wife see it and before you know it ill have another 30 to 60 dollars a month to pay for yet another commercial gimmick item. im still cursing cell phones. 70 bucks a month for something we already have sitting on the wall at the house for 30 bucks a month.

the bussiness mantra for the 90,s is "monthly subscriptions". cell phones, online games, music, tv, driving directions, video rentals, you name it. well, im not buying it unless my wife makes me and im gona do everything in my power to make sure she never sees it up close. if i had brought that car home, i would have been cancelling my online game accounts to pay for it. NEVER. oh, the irony.

Glad to see you did some research. Both services are roughly $13 per month for the first reciever. XM lowers the rate if you up for multiple months at a time, and Sirius give you a buy 11 months, get one for free option (there may be more than that now, but I deal with XM, so I don't know what Sirius is currently bundling). Both services also offer a much lower rate for recievers after the first one, XM is $6.99 per month for each additional unit. Both services are avialable online with your subscription, also.As far as I know, the music stations for both services are commercial free. Talk will have comercials, as it involves people behind microphones who need breaks. Wether it's talk or not, any programming that is being simulcast with commercial radio will need breaks/commercials also. You couldn't just fill the terrestrial break periods with dead air on the satalite side.Just tell the fat cunt to get a job if she wants it so bad.

Edited, Dec 28th 2006 4:06pm by Lubriderm

You mean the little spots where they tell you about a special event coming up on another channel?

XMSR, SIRI, I own them both. Looking for the Peter Lynch tree-bagger.

i dont turn mine off, i just switch it to aux input and plug in my Zen. hours of music i hand picked with absolutly no commercials of any type. that is the way music was ment to be.

pay for play radio will eventually fail. their only hope is to make it super convienent and shove it down our throat by sticking it into anything they can. cars, boats, motorcycles(yep, have seen it) and even portable ones now. cell phones will be next of they are not already there.

digital sound rocks. having the ability to load your own music from almost any source wil eventually destroy pay for play. eventually.

replay. look it up on the web. the best program you will buy if your really into music.

some info. it is not illegal to record music from your tv, radio, or home computer as long as it is for personel use and you dont distribute it. it is illegal to download music that is copyrighted without paying for it.

a subtle distinction.

you can play copyrigted music from a source on the net, as long as you dont download it. you can record music you play also. it is hair splitting. and the record industry is splitting that hair with lobbiest dollars hard and fast to stop people from downloading stuff their trying to sell.

legal. recording music playing from a tv, radio, or computer.
illegal. downloading copyrighted material.

bad to download it, ok to copy it while its playing.

replay.