SIRIUS sucks
March 3, 2008
Several years ago, Christmas 2003 to be exact, I received a SIRIUS satellite radio receiver as a gift. For a time, I used it in my truck, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed it enough that I fitted my brand new Mazda Tribute with a factory satellite radio in 2005. Since then, let’s just say that the gloss has faded on my love for SIRIUS.
When I drive the Tribute these days, my iPod is the primary source of music. And as for my old truck, yes, I still drive it daily to and from work, but the SIRIUS receiver now sits atop the fridge in the small office where I do the work of my day job. It’s connected to speakers, and our small troupe takes turns selecting the station du jour.
What prompted this posting was a promotional spot on one of SIRIUS’ radio stations promoting another channel, E Street Radio. Now, no offense to Bruce Springsteen or his fans, but does anyone in the world actually need a radio station that plays nothing but Bruce Springsteen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Or Elvis Radio, which does precisely the same thing for Elvis music? Or Radio Margaritaville with non-stop Jimmy Buffet?
You know, terrestrial radio in the United States sucks. We all know it sucks, and the only people who don’t are those who actually want to hear right wingers go on endlessly about how Democrats are the devil’s minions, or those among the percentage of the population who is just fine being spoon-fed pap that the five major record companies left tell Clear Channel to play.
When SIRIUS and XM launched services early in this decade, I was among the many who hoped that they would give terrestrial radio a run for their money. With all that bandwidth to use, surely they would narrowcast formats to suit anyone. And to some extent, they do. If you like classic country, you got it. You like modern country, you got it. You like bluegrass, you got it. You’ve got classic jazz, modern jazz, easy listening jazz, and the blues. You’ve got music from specific decades. Alternative rock, classic rock, modern rock, 80s hair band rock.
Unfortunately, dance and electronic gets shafted, much as it does with terrestrial radio. On SIRIUS, you pretty much have your pick of The Beat, which still has songs in regular rotation dating from 2003 as well as a number of seemingly odd choices that don’t really belong (and don’t get me started on their annoying jocks from hell like “Mr. Seth”), and Area 33 which appears to have little real focus beyond obscure trance (which is fine, if you’re into obscure trance). Boombox is classified as dance when it belongs with hip-hop, and The Strobe is basically 70s music, not “dance” as I would define it.
When SIRIUS launched, they had no less than two additional channels devoted to dance and electronic, including one for house specifically. Of course, those got dropped over time when SIRIUS decided that over-paying Howard Stern for his raunchy brand of crap (across two fully dedicated channels, no less), bringing on domestic doyenne Martha Stewart, and caving to the requirements of Canadian legislators so they could launch service there all were far more important than retaining the genre variety that took center stage at initial launch.
XM seems to do a much better job of music programming than SIRIUS, retaining greater variety of programming (largely because SIRIUS out-spent them with all their sports league wins and specialty programming, and XM has more channel space open to program as a result).
But truly, both XM and SIRIUS have proven once again that they, like Clear Channel, don’t really understand what it is people actually want (at least not fully). Sure, there are people who want hip-hop, and Rush Limbaugh, and country, and jazz, and this and that and dozen other things. And yes, I understand that channel space is limited (both satellite and terrestrial). And yeah, I even get that it costs a lot of money to program these things.
But trying to second-guess and study and evaluate and try and shoot for capturing the greatest possible number of ears and minds with as little effort as possible, and going after “brand” over substance (Stern, Stewart, Buffet, Presley, etc., etc.), is only serving to push more and more people to their iPods.
There might not be much that’s very sexy about delivering 125 or so channels of narrowcast music. It might not get you the news article hits that paying tens of millions to steal Howard Stern from terrestrial radio got SIRIUS.
But it does say something that people like me are willing to leave the SIRIUS receiver at the office, and fire-up their laptops in their cars on the way home, connect wireless EV-DO data cards to those laptops, and listen to online radio stations that actually do what satellite radio promised to do back in 2001 and let me choose from a wide palette of enthusiastically programmed, narrowcast musical genres, and return radio to what it seemingly used to be: A way to be exposed to new and interesting music, and not just the crap that five media conglomerates (namely the five major record labels) spoon-feed us.
What a disappointment.
Entry Filed under: Dance Music Industry. Tags: Area 33, Howard Stern, Mr. Seth, radio, satellite radio, SIRIUS, terrestrial radio, The Beat, XM.
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1.
mikey...aka...mikedacook dinzeo | March 21, 2008 at 5:15 am
hey Wes…I concur totally…i recieved SIRIUS with my new Jeep Rubicn… I find that the stations quickly became as boring as listening to as the old FM bands…lol. I find myseld listening to more and more burned cds. I really need to get a head unit that is Ipod friendly.
BTW…a 24/7 Jimmy Buffet channel??? I’d rather put needles in my ears:)
2.
dave c | June 25, 2009 at 1:24 pm
currently listening to Bob & the Wailers Roots Rock & Raggae probably something i would have never put on an ipod or burned cd. good stuff though. plenty of other great stations. im usually listening to lithium, octane, 70’s. ipod? download music? create playlists? where do you find the time?
i just change stations. sirius kicks a$$$$$$$.
3.
DJ Wesley | March 24, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Hey Mikey! Yeah, needles in the ears and bludgeoning myself to death with some blunt object. Blecch.
I’m not holding my breath, but maybe if they do merge with XM, and eventually come-out with receivers that tune all the channels of both the services, we might end-up with a satellite radio service that has some variety. But I’m not expecting that the merger will happen, or even if it does, that we’ll see variety anytime soon. There are millions of receivers in the field that can only do one or the other, and every one of those subs will scream if you start taking even more stuff away.
4.
Dan | July 23, 2008 at 9:26 am
Incident
I purchased a satellite radio for my girlfriend for Christmas. To activate i called Sirius and paid appox $125 for 1 year of radio service. This service has no contract or term limit and can be cancelled at anytime. Approx six months later i purchased another radio for a different car. I called sirius and they told me they would add the second radio for an additional $6.00 per month payable upfront semi-anually. Approx 3 months later my radios stop working, i called and they told me they were sorry and they made them work, this kept happening about every week and i would call and get the same response. Recently i called them for the last time and asked them why my radio did not work – The customer care rep told me…because i did not have a valid credit card on file with them. I explained that i always pay upfront and they did not need a card number. The customer care rep told me i had to have a valid card on file before he could turn my radio back on. both the rep and myself agree, i do not owe them any money but i have to have the card on file so it can automatically renew next year. I told him i was unhappy with the service, and once i heard the new inflated price, i told him to cancel my service, since their is no contract. Customer rep said ok and we ended the call.
Damage Resulting
Now a collection company NCO is harrising me to pay the $78.00 or they will damage my credit. I tried to contact Sirius and they agree with the above info, but say they can not do anything about it because it was sold to a collection angent. I refused to pay for something i did not get. I have not paid and my credit is being damaged. Is there somebody that can help protect consumers from bully gaint companies that have no regard for the law? I will never do business with SIRIUS again and i continue to tell everybody i know how shady they are.
5.
Jeff | August 28, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I am sick of Sirius. It was novel for the first 3 months until it was obvious that channels like Reggae, Pure Jazz, and others, play the same crap over and over. I can’t wait until there is a slot on my dashboard where I can pop in my Verizon Access card, and stream internet radio at 128kps. Then I can tune to a variety of stuff like SomaFM, Roots Reggae (Sky.FM) and others. The ironic thing is that the best music offered, is the Free stuff you can stream off the Net. Now with the merger, the programming for both XM and Sirius will go straight into the pooper.
6.
JIm | September 2, 2008 at 12:01 am
Sirius’ business practices and customer service are a joke. I have pledged the rest of my life to spread the word that if you subscribe to these money sucking bastards, you are throwing dollar bills in the toilet to line the pockets of people who don’t give a crap about their customers.
7.
Angela | October 13, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Hmmm…my experience.
One day I received a phone from a Collection Agency that I owed Sirius $280. That can’t be right! I never renewed my policy! I called Sirius and after being on hold for 20 minutes come to find out that my policy was never cancelled. It had still been active so I had to pay the $65 for the months the receiver was active, even though I NEVER used it because I couldn’t – IT WAS INACTIVE! But, because my policy was still active, I have to pay $65! So, I asked if I could talk to the manager. I expressed my feelings in a professional manner. I have 3 other active Sirius Radios, and if the $65 is not absorbed or waived, I will cancel my other three radios. The manager did not care – I still had to pay $65. So, ok, I’ll pay it, but please cancel my other 3 radios! He takes my $65 then sends me over to the cancellation area. The person I spoke to asked me why I was canceling, so I explained all the above. NOW, this is where they valued my business and wanted me to stay! The CSA states “well, we can take the $65 and apply it to the other three radios because we value your business.” WHAT? I don’t get my $65 back if I decide not to cancel, it just goes to my other 3 radios? Didn’t sound like a plan at all. I cancelled all my radios and will NOT ever take on SIRIUS again!
8. SIRIUS still sucks « Finding the Rhythm | November 12, 2008 at 8:41 pm
[...] 12, 2008 Back in March, I wrote a blog posting titled SIRIUS sucks where I laid bare my gripes about the SIRIUS satellite radio service, which are many, and still [...]
9.
Scott Tobias | November 15, 2008 at 1:12 am
I couldn’t agree more. what Sirius doesn’t get is that its not about the “Stars”. Its about the music. I bought Sirius for the wide variety of music it offered compared to conventional radio. It just lost “disorder”, which I loved, but now I’ve got Wolfman Jack to talk over the intros to the songs.
10.
Steve | February 5, 2009 at 1:20 am
II just canceled my Sirius service. I had to sit on hold for 30 minutes in order to complete the cancellation. The customer service person said that people are waiting in line to cancel their service, which is why I had to wait so long. To add salt to the wounds, the customer service people were rude and impatient.
I tried to cancel two months ago, but I hung up after waiting 20 minutes. I sent them an service requiest through their website asking them to cancel my account. They ignored the first phone call and the service request, and they refused to refund me for the two months of service that I didn’t use after I asked them to cancel my account.
11.
Howie Adao | April 16, 2009 at 1:03 am
A couple of years ago I bought a lifetime subscription to Serius for my new car. For months afterwards I got mail warning me that I might have a break in my service unless I paid to continue it. I finally called Serius and they said it was a mistake and it would stop. It did. Now Serius and XM are one company. So when I traded in my car for one that had XM I asked the dealership if I could switch services. They didn’t know or so they said. When I called Serius they said I couldn’t switch yet and probably would be able to in the future. (Read maybe) I called a second time and was told I could buy a converter from another company and I could have a car stereo shop install it. About half the cost of a new lifetime subscription by the way. So I agree Sirius sucks.
12.
Gary Thison | May 8, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Please read my article about Sirius. They made awful and expensive changes to the Sirius Satellite Radio channel line-up and there are some great, free alternatives for online and mobile music, news and talk.
13.
Craig | May 15, 2009 at 4:09 am
Want to quit Sirius but can’t get a human being? Here’s the magic number that gets you straight to the cancellation people:
>>>> 1-866-325-2846 <<<<<<
I tried for 8 months to cancel this service and couldn’t even get the voice system to recognize my voice to get that deep into the system. After a 15 minute tirade on this number – made available only because I had to cancel the credit card it was being billed to! – she had the gall to tell me I still owed $14. I told her I sure as anything wasn’t giving her a new card number. She said she could send an invoice! When pigs fly over frozen hell! She finally issued a cancellation number and waived the charge. Then some dolt called a few hours later to “verify” my information on a “recorded call.” I told him I wasn’t a customer, I wasn’t verifying anything, and launched into a tirade that included some definite table pounding to get my point across – no “magic discount” was going to work on me. Get lost.
This service is terrible. It is worse than AOL was, and they are going to get their tails sued off by the state attornies general before they get through with it and pull the plug on the satellite. Get out while you still can. Call the number above, it will save you a LOT of pain. Don’t verify anything with them if they call back. This boob finally agreed to put me on their do not call list because I threatened to turn in a complaint with the Arizona attorney general’s office and the FTC if I got one scrap of paper, one bill, or one more phone call from them. Stand up for your rights. Don’t be intimidated by this has-been company.
14.
Skip E | June 17, 2009 at 10:12 pm
June 17 2009 I have Sirius external tuner in my old car. I just got a new car 2007 model that has XM tuner in it. I want to use the new car’s in dash unit. Sirius says I have add XM to use the in dash unit . They say we need to cancel Sirius and get XM to use tuner in the new car. They want to charge me A $75 CANCELLATION FEE TO CANCEL THE SERVICE EVEN THOUGH I MOVING TO THE SAME FREAKING COMPANY!!!!!!!!! They haave merged almost a year are a month away. I bitched and got them to waive the fee. Don’t take it lying down.
15.
Lori McLain | July 1, 2009 at 9:11 pm
After receiving a Sirius for Christmas 2007 and going online to subscribe, I purchased a “LIFE TIME” package for $400.00.
After three years I receive a notice that if I do not call within three days, I would not have service. I called and they do not claim to have had a Life Time package nor would they even try to make some kind of future plan. Simply, pay another 399.00 for the next three years or they will shut off the service. Too bad, I Quit.
16.
tom poon | August 30, 2009 at 4:43 am
I absolutley hated sirius. I got a year free in my Jeep wrangler, which actually for whatever reason turned into a year and a half free. First off, all the channels get repetitive, period. the hip hop channels constantly have foul language and lewd discussions, jsut tasteless, not to mention the fact that I dont need my 9 and 12 year old learing that its ok to use the word fuck and shit, and pussy and nigger. Its just tasteless. the trance stations are boring, the 80s station hardly plays 80s really good music just generic pop from that decade like a ha and mr mister. quite frankly, the only station id ever really listen to and even that got tiresome and boring was the reggae channel. i could care less about stern, and everything else was just stale.
That takes care of the content part, the hardware part, my signal would cut out constantly, under a bridge, under a tree, if a moth flew over the car, it even cut out on the open highway with nothign around for miles. ive pulled cds off sanding belts that play better than the sirius reception. I hated it and couldnt imagine hy anyone would pay for the priveledge to have such crap. you want to charge people fine, but at least nail the technology down pat, and get some reasonable content. My free subscription ran out today and actually im relieved, you couldnt pay me to have it.