The SIRIUS XM Radio Bailout: Why Some Listeners Are Threatening to Leave
Monday November 17, 2008
I’ve been writing and editing the Radio portion of About.com since 2002 and I can count on one hand the amount of news stories or controversies which have generated more reaction than the recent programming consolidation of the SIRIUS and XM services (See here). Subscribers are livid. Dismayed. Pissed. Ready to bail. Read more. (Opinion)
Comments
I’ve subscribed to XM Radio for 3 years. The new Sirius XM service is a disaster! An all Elvis channel? A Sinatra channel? The depth of programing is gone. I’ve sent numerous email to complain and receive canned responses. The sound quality is terrible too. DJs now talk over the music. The whole thing is just poor FM radio, but you now pay to listen. Goodbye XM.
I am canceling my account. I’ve had XM for 5 years and they got rid of my favorite channels The Rhyme and Lucy. Sirius users use to get howard stern and the nfl network for no additional cost. Now we have to pay for it. This blows.
It would be easy to say that the new service sucks and I’ll leave and listen to the old FM radio stations.. But there’s a problem with that. We live in an area where regular old F.M. radio is sparse, and the choices few.. I agree that now we have D.J.’s that talk over intros or outros of songs but it is after all radio.. I do miss my favorite channels of Fine Tuning and the original Watercolors (non Sirius approved).. But shutting the radio(s) off doesn’t seem like a logical step.. And by the way, the way the two companies spent money like drunken sailors on leave is what will likely force them into chapter 11..
I’ve had sirius for about 4 years.I like the merger .We moastly listen to musicand the consolidation of programs created a nice addition to what i listen to
The service has been lousy since the merger. The receiver goes into “loading” mode whenever it is turned on and often when changing channels. The 80s on 8 is nowhere near as good as it used to be. The Blend is about the same, Classic Rewind tore up its predecessor.
I am so disappointed in XM since they murged with Sirius. I use to love the 50’s channel, but I don’t like it at all any more. I will probably cancel my subscription after my year is up. I have had XM since 2002 and loved it up until now.
Why would anybody pay to listen to Howard Stern? Just find a rude, loud, teenage boy . Same/same.
It appears from the programming decisions that they are preparing themselves to go commercial in all channels. They probably do have research, research that shows that it’s easier to sell these plug and play formats than it is to study your audience and attempt to reproduce programing that is as complex as their actual tastes then sell the actual listener results. Another example of how a science that once saved radio is not killing it.
The merger sucks. My favorite channel, XM 12 X-Country was replaced by Sirius Outlaw Country which essentially is like listening to Hee Haw. Mojo Nixon is like listening to Hank Hill from. This station is geared at a 12 year old mentality.
One of the reason I liked satellite radio was very little DJ talk and what there was was informative. Now its like listening to FM radio with a bunch of DJ’s trying to be funny.
XM 12 had Rogue Calls, Cross Connects, LIve at XM, Jesse Scott, Marty Fitzpatrick, Top 50 Countdown on weekends, Dave Alvin, and I could go on and on.
I have written adn will continue to write until this gets corrected. No problem keeping Outlaw Country, but they have zero in common with X-Country.
I will listen for awhile then is cancellatino of my four recievers if its not fixed.
We have had XM for 4 years. We are not impressed with the merger. If we wanted to listen to DJs rattle on and try to be funny we will listen to free commercial radio ! We certainly don’t want to PAY for it !! The DJs HAVE to go !!!!!!!
The line-up is definitely not as good as before. We probably won’t renew when our year is up.
XM 12 was the reason I renewed my subscription. Very little talk, certainly not too much, from excellent DJ’s. Lots of new and old continually good music. Several of my friends got XM after listening to X Country on my stereo. They are pissed also.
Thanks, Sirius, for ruining the best channel on the radio.
Sirius took XM’s great X-Country XM-12 and turned it into crap. I thought at first maybe I just wasn’t giving it a chance. After listening a while, now I KNOW I hate it. Too much talk for one thing, and for another given the language, I can’t listen at work anymore. Just because you CAN say any dang fool thing you want on air doesn’t mean you SHOULD. (Yes Mojo Nixon I’m talking to YOU!)
I’d of thought Sirius/XM would have asked their SUBSCRIBERS (remember them, the folks who PAY for your service?) for an opinion before they did this – that would have made sense, wouldn’t it?
Give us back Marty and the gang – and the GOOD music we paid our hard-earned money to listen to. I can always go back to internet radio or CD’s, this isn’t the only alternative. But I and many others really enjoyed X-Country and if Sirius/XM has any sense at all, they’ll listen and give it back to us.
FINE TUNING in my opinion, is the definition of what satellite radio is about, truly eclectic, beyond borders and compartmentalized ’styles’. Do we really need 21 Rock channels plus another 15 Pop channels. Yes Pop & Rock by definition are ‘Popular’, have large audiences, readily available and deserve some channels. However, for a unique radio service, as XM truly was, not to allocate 1 or 2 channels to something not available anywhere else, is just plain dumb. Channels like FINE TUNING and BEYOND JAZZ are worth the price of admission, 36 variations of what is readily available anywhere, isn’t.
I must agree with those who are so utterly disappointed with the loss of XM Cross- Country. It was a channel like no other (including Outlaw Country) in that it played artists that one could not hear anywhere else. Unfortunately, one can no longer hear many of them anywhere except Internet radio stations. I don’t need XM/Sirius to listen to stuff I can hear everywhere else for free. Bring back X-Country!!
I miss Fine Tuning and Beyond Jazz in a huge way. I listen to the XM radio at work and can not stand to hear DJs ramble on. If I want to hear talk – I can bring in an FM radio.
I had signed up for a 3 year contract – sorry I did so.
I cancelled my XM subscription. They tempted me with some very nice offers but I refuse to pay for this new service… spa channel, elvis channel, led zeppelin channel. this is insane. i don’t care for am/fm either. i will listen to my tires sing before i put up with this crap. i hope there is a class action suit against them for creating this monopoly promising to give customers more. We get less. The only ‘more’ we get is more crap. goodbye forever xm radio and sirius. i hope your dog runs out from under the porch and bites you.
Agree with everyone who laments the loss of X-country. Marty Fitzpatrick was wonderful with great musical range. Outlaw country plays more Dwight Yoakum in one afternoon than I would hear in 3 days of Xcross. A great loss.
I’ve been a Sirius subscriber for a couple of years, and sadly I’ll be dropping it when my time is up. Too much DJ chatter and poor attempts at comedy. I can get that for free on FM. It’s back to CDs in the car for me.
It’s a good thing they re-signed Bubba The Love Sponge or I would have canceled!!! Bubba Army!!
I agree with all the others, bring back XM. There are more commercials now on the comedy channels and the channel defaults to the Preview every time the car is restarted. This is very annoying to say the least. It is over for me when my subscription expires
Seems to me from the listener feedback and my own opinion about the merger, we XM subscribers as well as the XM company itself were the real losers, it is Sirius XM now you know. All XM subscribers should cancel their subscription until we get some positive reaction from the talkin’ heads.
I’m missing the old X-Country horribly. If I want to listen to babbling DJs and the same old Nashville crap over and over again, I don’t have to pay money to hear it. It’s all over the terrestrial dial. I won’t be re-newing, and expect to see Sirius/XM go the way of the dinosaurs soon.
I’m ready to throw in the towel. It’s bad enough getting rid of Fungus, and playing that crappy station ID between almost every act on rawdog, they have crappy DJ’s babbling on most of the rock music channels. Hello people! I pay for this to NOT hear asswipes talk about themselves!
I am considering canceling my account with XM Radio. Since the merger with Sirius there is small talk and frequent talking over music some of my favorite channels are gone.
If I wanted to hear DJ’s yapping about things I don’t really care about I would simply tune to FM radio which is free.
The eclectic style of the Fine Tuning station, from Beethoven to the Beatles WAS wonderful. It was one of the few stations that you could keep on all day due to the diverse music.
I sent a request to XM to bring the station back and promptly got an auto-reply stating that I should listen to the AC/DC channel, Led Zeppelin, etc.
A friend of mine was on the phone with xmradio and was ask if he wanted a life time subscription and he said No. They went ahead and sign him up for it anyway and took it out of his bank acct., he call them and said a manager would call him back in a couple hour, No call. So he called them back. They told him that they would refund his money in 72 hrs. No money, He called them back again and they said they where not going to refund his money. This is on a tape line everytime. Watch your bank card. XM radio are liars and thieves. Im sure glad I dont have one. Im done with them…. T.V. problems next
Why pay for normal FM Radio?
Bring back the old XM
I gave Outlaw Country a try, and kept hoping it would change to be something close to X Country. But it lost patience and before losing more money I dropped my subscription this week. I have a friend who might do the same, especially if changes for the worse come to Deep Tracks.
Does anyone know of an internet radio station that plays a similar mix to X Country? I’m looking for something with “twang” and without too much country (I really don’t like country music). I’m not looking for a station with just the same artists, as Outlaw Country has proven that you can play the same artists but end up with a mix that is in a different genre.
I agree that the merger has ruined XM. The rock channels have become diluted by mindless/machine selected playlists, and the diversity of channels has become more shallow. Now, these bastards want to increase the monthly “discount” rate for extra receivers from $6.95 to $8.95 a month each! You’ve got to be kidding me!?! If this whole thing fails It wouldn’t surprise me. Who is running this thing?
The merger of XM & Sirius sucks. XM 150 now has 3 times as many annoying commercials (how many times can we stand “spcing things up in the sack”). XM 46 is now a yak-fest like the old AM top 40’s stations. My receiver stops working if I change channels too quickly. Now I’ve learned that they won’t support listening on the web after March. XM, FU.
The merger between Sirius and XM was bad enough, but have you heard the latest way for them to charge us more? My husband and I renewed our XM Radio subscription for 2 years in August 2008. With that fully pre-paid subscription came the words that we could “Listen Online for Free” meaning that we could enjoy our subscription “anywhere you have an Internet connection at no extra charge.” Well, guess what kids, we just received an email message telling us that we have until March 2009 to renew our subscription and that online radio listening will no longer be offered under the old contract.
Bottom line is this is just another way for corporate greed to play itself out and boost revenues. We listened to our subscriptions more online than we do in our vehicle, so we are cancelling our subscription effective immediately. They can just refund the balance of our subscription if they want to change the terms mid-stream!!!
I’ve already canceled my xm account. The new xm/sirius sucks. I liked it so much better before. Who wants 24 Dead and Bruce Springsteen. Lame!
XM was great before the merger. I chose XM over Sirius in 2002 because of the XM programing. As users stated earlier, if I wanted DJs, I could just listen to the regular FM radio in my vehicle.
I have XM, my Brother has Sirius. We used to jibe each other about which was best. Now they both suck. Every concern we had about monopolies and rate hikes are now coming to fruition. Price hikes are fine. I knew that would happen. If I have to pay more to keep them on the air then I will. Just make it worth the expense. they are slowly reverting into the clear channel zombie which satellite was to be a haven from. How can you justify 6+ 24 hours same artist channels and kill all but 1 of the Spanish stations. I am not a fan of Spanish music but I felt bad for them. I heard nothing about the channel merger. Now I hear nothing about the rate hike on air. It is just the way they are going about it. They have a captive audience with us and yet explain nothing on air. I get an email that I might see. If I miss the deadline I am screwed.
And ever since the merger everything that has already been said is true. They are maybe 1 step ahead of FM DJ’s but not much. I personally listen to talk radio more but I am on the fence about canceling. It is convenient and that is why I might stay. It is the taking for granted your Subs that bothers me.
The Blend could be a great channel if you had more variety. You brag about 40 years of music, so why do you play the same songs every day?
I am woried that after they get my renewal, they take the money and run. My wife and I like to listen on long trips on the motorcycle. Very convenient on a bike!! What should I do??
As an XM subscriber since 2004, I have spent the past three months struggling to adjust to the siriusly degraded XM programming. I tried really hard to adjust but since the merger, listening to the satellite radio music has become more of a annoyance than an enjoyment. Stupid concepts, weak genres, lazy execution, excessive DJ chatter, grossly inefficient and wasteful use of 20 rock channels compared to what XM did with just 15.
They said that the merger was supposed to eliminate redundancies however, the opposite has happened. For example, channel 45 rectum… I mean spectrum was the replacement for XM Cafe/Starbucks. But spectrum is nothing more than a weak conglomeration of some of the other rock channels. There’s not too many songs spectrum plays that cannot be heard on other rock channels. There are NO channels that properly replace Cafe/Starbucks.
Since the merger, I have all but lost my orientation of what rock channels plays what. In fact, it doesn’t seem to matter. Everybody plays everything. Nothing makes any sense.
XM radio was once a great source of entertainment. But with this merger with sirius, XM sold out.
like everyone else posting the old 46 was great and the new sirius/xm 46 is just ok with a DJ yakking. goodbye satellite. maybe they will listen so i will keep my radio or wait for someone to buy them out and return to being satellite radio.
Its March 2009 and I am at my desk listening to a mp3 of Xcountry made just before it was pulled. What a breath of fresh air to listen to it after all this time. I, like everyone else, gave Outlaw country a chance. Boy is it awful. No depth, anoying DJ’s, what a mistake. Outlaw sucks!
I was listening to XM for so long because it was a “no talk” radio. Now you cannot shut them up, almost between each song, just to talk about nothing.
I have had XM for a few years, and have always been pretty pleased with it- especially in baseball season. The only problem I had with them was the lack of football on the radio. NOW however, they’ve changed names, taken away some stations (mostly ones that I don’t listen to) but what REALLY gets me is they took away half of their baseball games! I used to be able to listen to a game and hear one team’s home announcer on one station, and then if I switch to the one next to it I would hear the other’s. NOW I CAN’T EVEN LISTEN TO WHO I WANT! I have to listen to them through my iPhone app. And they want me to pay extra for football games, but in that price I have to pay for Nascar (boring) and playboy! I don’t want either playboy or nascar- all I want is baseball,football and college basketball and football! They are going to receive an email asking them to explain themselves.
BTW, PUT COREY AND JAY ON XM! They’re worth every cent! Love the show and a loyal listener in LR. Keep up the great work!
Caveat Emptor –
I am furious with XM. The agency I worked for closed its doors right after Christmass this past year. Needless to say we had to cut down on luxuries. When our bill came from XM we decided not to renew and did not pay. We got dozens of calls from XM asking about renewing. After explaining to the first couple that we were no longer interested, I just hung up on “an important message from XM.” Well, today I got a call from their collections agency. They continued to bill for the January – March quarter.
After spending an hour on the phone with some call center in India with a annoyingly hard to understand but cloyingly polite representative and her (so called) supervisor, I paid the $38.42 to avoid a bad credit issues.
Buyer beware.
do we or don’t we PAY to listen to music? Tell them to STOP talking and just play music.
XM dropped Fox Business – what a tragedy. The costs are increasing and quality and selection going down…
XM sucks. I paid the bill and they dont where they applied it. I have sent them bank statements. I have called their customer service a number of times. They always say a mgr is NOT avail. they will not call me back. If I say i will wait. they transfer back into a customer service queue pretending to be transfering me. I paid by debit card, so bank says it is not traceable like a check. XM disco my service today and wont help me!! Since they are they only Satelite radio, I’m screwed. Any Ideas?? I finally found the phone number for the corp office in NYC. I will try them tomorrow.
I GOT SLAMMED BY XM RADIO!!!. I bought a new car in May 2008 and xmradio was already installed. the salesman said that it was a 90 day trial and I could then sign up for it if I wanted. I didn’t.
After five months, xm started calling with recorded messages on my “cell phone”. How did they get my number, I don’t know. On June 5 I received a letter from a “collection” agency for $30.90 for services not paid. I called the collection agency and then customer service and the jerk says that I had paid for 3 months, oct/nov/dec and then cancelled the credit card. When I told hime that I did not have a credit Visa card with the last 4 numbers he gave and I did not authorize any charge nor did I sign up for the service. He “laughs” and says why would somebody pay for 3 months with your card. I asked for a supervisor and got another “jerk” who said that they were all busy and if I gave them my number a supervisor would call me back. DREAM ON!! NOBODY CALLED BACK YET.
I have filed a complaint with the FTC and State Attorney Generals Office about these clowns and requesting compensation for calling on my no telemarketing call cell phone.