Comments on: SIRIUS still sucks

By: mike

mike — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:52:28 +0000

I hate bpm so much. I have been calling and emailing the folks at sirius to bring The Beat back! bpm just sucks. You can’t listen to it for more than 3 minutes. bpm is just playing over zealous dj music anyway. If it wasn’t for Stern, I would have cancelled my subscription on 11/13/08.

By: The Edge

The Edge — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:00:17 +0000

I was an XM sub about two or more years ago. Although I listened primarily for O&A I would listen to a lot of other stations during the day. What I couldn’t stand about XM was the poor quality of music selection. That was the deciding factor in moving over to Sirius; boy was that the best move (back then). What I have noticed since the merger and consolidation of “stations” is that I am starting to notice the same poor programming that drove me crazy when I was with XM. When you switch from one station to another and you see the same exact song being played or you see a Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC or Elvis songs being played on another station when those artists have their own dedicated station it makes you wonder why pay for this c**p. Although I’m not an industry insider my guess is that the least popular piece in an artist library cost considerably less in terms of royalties then the more well known tune; some of the songs that I’ve been hearing must not be costing Sirius/XM much at all. I know some people didn’t like the music from Sirius about a year ago, but I have to say it was really good for a while. Now it just bites. I can’t wait to be able to stream across my phone and get rid of these hacks. Let them disappear in to obscurity for not listing to their customers.

By: BostonSmitty

BostonSmitty — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:55:01 +0000

I also loved sirius when I first got it. I’m on the verge of cancelling my subscription since the elimination of 2 of the 3 channels I spent most of my day listening to. (Punk, and Moving Easy – yeah, I know, schizo. )

The only thing keeping me going right now is the probably vain hope that there’ll be more changes soon that will fill the gaps. (No, Sirius… Faction isn’t what I want.)

Anyway, just want to say thanks for the blog. It makes it a little easier knowing I’m not the only one who’s become disenchanted with something I used to love so much.

By: Sterney

Sterney — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:12:18 +0000

I hate BPM. Bring back The Beat!!!

By: JC Simon

JC Simon — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:52:56 +0000

Hi Wesley,

Thanks for letting me know about your blog and for being candid in your assessment. One thing that should be noted however, which you might not have been aware of. 36 The Beat and BPM were never a completely competing format. That is, The Beat went after a partially different style and genre of dance music that XM never did. Pretty much anything mainstream club making it’s rounds through the Greek, Euro, French and German dance music charts- made it’s way into 36 The Beat.

BPM is more club focused on it’s style of music and will sadly never touch completely into this format, although they have bene known to lend spins to Kim Leoni, Cascada, Basshunter and several others that fall into that category.

The sad and bottom line is this. No matter who had superior programming or structure behind their individually unique formats, this is a loss to the listeners across the board. Dance music in the USA is the hardest genre to break a new artist into the market. Loosing one of two more liberal outlets in satellite radio, has just resulted in less artists ever being known, a more broad spectrum of dance music getting it’s way into spins and overall, the loss of more variety and quality programming to us the listeners…and us the DJ’s who purvey the music.

Thanks again,

JC Simon

By: DJ Wesley

DJ Wesley — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:05:45 +0000

Erik, yeah… Me too, honestly.

I mean, I understand why this was done. I really do. And format changes, even in terrestrial radio, upset fans of what existed prior to the change. I get that too.

But the reality is, as I said in my post (re: Internet radio), as consumers, we have choices too, and they include moving-on to other technologies (like streaming radio) or just reverting back to our iPods.

While I love my iPods (all three of them) and use the music player capabilities of my BlackBerry too, I still enjoy radio because it introduces me to new music I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. So I’ll still listen. It’s just not on AM, FM, XM, or SIRIUS.

By: erik

erik — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:51:16 +0000

Sirius axed Boombox – the most serious of their recent crimes. Also, the Disorder station got nixed. All this without, presumably, and customer input. A customer of 8 years considering cancellation.