Goodbye, Sirius, from this listener
Posted on June 26th, 2009 – 8:28 AMBy Randy A. Salas
After five years, I have canceled my subscription to Sirius XM Radio. You can now add me to the 1.7 million subscribers the satellite radio service lost in the first quarter this year. My decision had nothing to do with Sirius XM’s new iPhone app, which has been criticized for not including primo programming such as Howard Stern or Major League Baseball (neither of which I’ve ever listened to), but it does have everything to do with these reasons:
1) The audio quality has declined. I’m not talking about reception quality, which has always been fine. I’m talking about the sound of the music. It might be just my ears, but the music on Sirius over the past year or so has increasingly sounded like poor-quality MP3s — not all the time, but much of the time. The audio has always been compressed on Sirius and XM, before and after their merger, but it sounds noticeably worse to me lately – to cram more programming into limited bandwidth, I assume.
2) The price has gone up. When I first started with Sirius, the price was about $120 a year. My latest annual renewal would have been about $150, more if I wanted online access to programming. This isn’t as big a deal, but it was still a factor.
3) Sirius bailed on Cinemagic. One of the most exciting things about XM for me was its channel devoted to nothing but film music. So when Sirius merged with XM, it was the main channel I was looking forward to. But immediately upon “adding” Cinemagic, Sirius pre-empted it with Christmas music (one of three such channels during the holidays), but it ran regular alerts saying that Cinemagic would be back after the new year. It was — for about a week. Then Sirius replaced it with an all-disco station — even though it already had separate channels devoted to 1970s and dance music.
4) My listening habits have changed. After converting my vast CD collection to high-quality MP3s, I pretty much listen just to my iPod (via my car stereo) while I drive. That change, coupled with the previous factors, sealed my decision to cancel Sirius. (But I do have to say that if Cinemagic had been added, I probably would have kept Sirius as a way to keep up with new releases.)
When I called Sirius to cancel, I was offered two months’ worth of free programming to stay on. I declined. My subscription officially ended last week. Thursday, I received an email offer to renew and get two free months and then three months at $13 each. I didn’t reply.
Here’s something interesting, though. A few days after my subscription ended, I received a survey asking why I had left. I filled it out, citing much of what I’ve written here. One of the questions asked if I would be willing to pay $6.99 a month for 50 channels of programming that I would choose. I’d actually seriously consider that, especially if it included Cinemagic, because that would neatly address most of my concerns. (UPDATE: See comments for why this won’t happen.)
Until that happens, though, I will be a former Sirius subscriber.
TAKE THE TECHNOBABBLE MP3 CHALLENGE!
Can you tell the difference between MP3s and the original CD?
55 Responses to "Goodbye, Sirius, from this listener"
Who gives a shi- about why you left!!! No one cares dude!!! You are a moron!!!
Gee, isn’t that special! You must be really hard up for something to write about. Sheesh!
Um, well…you can already do the $6.99/month for 50 choose your own channels. It’s a package they offer (scroll to bottom): http://www.sirius.com/packages/more#alacarte
Yay, life is good again!
Randy, sorry to hear you no longer recieve Sirius-Xm. I made the same mistake last fall… but renewed my subscription after realizing it was a mistake to cancel after all. It’s a tremendous value for the small monthly fee. It’s really a mistake to compare it to downloaded ipod playlists,CD’s or other “internet” radio formats. It’s in a class by itself. I just subscribed through the new iphone application, and now use it everywhere.
Aaah!! we are so sad that your living go back to FM radio
Jodi, thanks for the clarification. But the current channel selection doesn’t include Cinemagic. Even if it did, I’m just remembering — thanks to your link — that I’d need to have the latest Sirius receiver to get a la carte programming anyway. So much for that one.
Hey now — Honestly, the only thing worth listening to on satellite radio is Howard Stern — don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying regular radio is something to listen to either. I use my ipod when I’m not listening to the great Howard stern. For every 10 people who thinks his show is strippers and porn stars, there are 10 people who have never listened to one show from start to finish. I agree that satellite has its shortcomings– the antennas that must point to the sky — the fact that you lose signal if you drive under a bridge or even heavy foliage. As long as I can listen to Howard, I’ll stick with it. If he retires, so do I!
I don’t understand why everyone is so hard on you about your decision to cancel. I think the audio quality sucks, too. And to add insult to injury, satellite radio is offered in cars a lot now, and usually bundled with the upgraded sound system. So you’re expecting great sound, since it’s ‘premium’ content played on a premium system. It sounds awful in my Audi. like a 96kbps MP3 - there are no highs and no lows. Just muddy mediocrity. Which I can already get for free on FM if I chose to listen to 46 minutes of commercials every hour. I’m canceling mine too and will listen to my own music at a much higher bitrate.
Randy,
After reading you article I’ve come to conclusion that you sound like a real Homo! Good Luck to you twinkle toes!
As long as Howie is there, I am there. Otherwise, it will take some rethinking.
On a side note, I am pleased to see Dr. Laura is on channel 102 weekdays.
I have to agree with Randy. The haters suggest that FM radio is the only other option. If not for Howard Stern, I’d cancel Sirius TODAY. Instead, I’m canceling my 2nd unit in protest to the bs they pulled by showing the new iphone app with Howard 100 and then failing to provide it.
I think Howard is great, but the number of vacations is unbearable. We’re about to go on two weeks of repeats and I’d like half my money back.
Sirius XM will continue to exist for a long time, but the exponential growth is over. They just raised the rates again (2x this year) and if I didn’t want to listen to Howard live, it’s easy enough to download it for free.
Learn about USENET and NNTP. I’d mention my provider but I doubt they want the advertising.
The old HS saying was “F JACKIE” — I saw “F MEL and F SIRIUS XM” since rather than benefiting from the merger, they’ve now gone the way of the telephone companies and electric companies and cable companies — charging whatever they want while supporting increased regulation of their competition. Basic cable now only has a few channels so that the cable companies offer the legally required lower rate. Want MSNBC, USA, Fox News, etc? You’ll need expanded basic.
The newest fee from Sirius XM is for music royalties. I only listen to Howard 100 and Howard 101 - why should I subsidize the music industry?
I have to agree with Randy. The haters suggest that FM radio is the only other option. If not for Howard Stern, I’d cancel Sirius TODAY. Instead, I’m canceling my 2nd unit in protest to the bs they pulled by showing the new iphone app with Howard 100 and then failing to provide it.
I think Howard is great, but the number of vacations is unbearable. We’re about to go on two weeks of repeats and I’d like half my money back.
Sirius XM will continue to exist for a long time, but the exponential growth is over. They just raised the rates again (2x this year) and if I didn’t want to listen to Howard live, it’s easy enough to download it for free.
Learn about USENET and NNTP. I’d mention my provider but I doubt they want the advertising.
The old HS saying was “F JACKIE” — I saw “F MEL and F SIRIUS XM” since rather than benefiting from the merger, they’ve now gone the way of the telephone companies and electric companies and cable companies — charging whatever they want while supporting increased regulation of their competition. Basic cable now only has a few channels so that the cable companies offer the legally required lower rate. Want MSNBC, USA, Fox News, etc? You’ll need expanded basic.
The newest fee from Sirius XM is for music royalties. I only listen to Howard 100 and Howard 101 - why should I subsidize the music industry?
Let me see if I understand this…You gave up a virtually unlimited world of listening choices because you can’t listen to high quality show tunes?
Sounds like you need to go back to 8 track! If your not listening to Stern or the Riley Martin show, you don’t know what your missing.
Enjoy your knitting!
Sorry for the double-post. Damn Safari!!
Me thinks you are just crying about losing the “Cinemagic” channel. Good grief! This is the problem with web reporters and everyone and their brother being able run their trap. Everyone gives their useless opinion (including mine) with no concern about integrity or any attempt at fairness. Your rant is useless.
Do you really think the 1.7 million lost subscribers is due to the poor music quality, lack of stations such as cinemagic (It must have been a real hit) and listening habits? It seems more reasonable that the economy turned south and auto sales declined significantly (reducing the flow of new subscriptions). Sirius-XM offers entertaining radio for those that drive or even around the house. New music, sports and yes, even entertainment. You can’t get that through your old playlists on an ipod. I have never been exposed to so much new music as I have on sirius. The indie music selections are plenty and unless I want to scroll through the limited new music introductions on itunes or devote the time to seek through music blogs, sirius has much to offer. So don’t go away mad (cinemagic), just go away and maybe find something worthwhile to write about.
Wow! That was the most moronic, factless, boring piece of drivel I have ever read. That is a news piece?
Salas, you really have nothing better to write about? I guess you just noticed that Sirius has been in the news over the last few days and you figured you’d jump on the band wagon. Get a real job.
I agree with Sean. I could not get through the workday without Stern. It’s so much more than strippers and lesbians. As far as detecting poor sound quality, you are nuts.
Nothing like Sirius on a road trip. You will be back as the Ipod will get very boring.
There’s a reason they don’t offer Cinemagic anymore, no one would listen to it.
I’m a new XM subscriber and loving it! After sampling the service in a rental car, I was sold. I bought an aftermarket radio with song saving ability and DVR-like pause and replay capability and within a month bought a second radio for my wife. We each have one in our car as well as a docking station hooked up to our living room stereo. For the relatively cheap price - we have fallen in love with music again. I like “the Village” for it’s folk music focus (Channel 15 on XM, not on Sirius) and she loves the Broadway station - show tunes all day long. Sound quality sounds great to me - certainly a lot better than FM radio. Speaking of radio, I’ve pretty much given up on local radio for the lack of variety, now I’ve got 120 stations with just about any type of music I happen to be in the mood for. I find that now I’m hearing artists and music that I’ve not been exposed to and am actually buying more CD’s than in the past. Thank you XM!
Good riddance. They, we, us..won’t miss you. Good that you got an article out of it. You’ll come crawling back when terrestrial radio’s in the throes of its death rattle.
By the way, there is Cinamagic on Sirius channel. I believe it is 81 or something like that
http://www.sirius.com/cinemagic
I am listening it every day and it is really a great channel.
I made the same mistake and cancelled it last Feb but when I realize what I was missing, I had to subscribe again. I am hooked to it. I didnt want to pay $80/per month for basic I-phone plan with Data. So no I-phone for me in car. Dont care about ipod. Too lazy to download songs and dont have time. Good luck! You will be back when you realize what you are missing.
Isn’t this typical of people from the upper Midwest? As I discovered during my extended traveling throughout the USA, if they can’t stretch their minds to research and find something positive to say, they DON’T have ANYTING (syntax intentional) to say!
Oh, and since we’re on such an important topic, we’ve just given subscriptions, as gifts, to my Sister-in-law’s family (as well as having increased our subscriptions to three for this household). So THERE! Nanny-nanny, nah-nah.
Now, HOW do we get this person’s post removed?
I just added a new sub.
so my addition zero sums your cancellation.
SIRI is great.
The other stuff is good too (except free radio)
you really should try ala carte to make your music experience complete.
BTW, how in the heck did your little rant make the google blog list. Most be a paid short. don’t worry the SEC will soon find your pimp.
“Sirius bailed on Cinemagic”… fruit
I have 3 Sirius subscriptions, and not sure I would be able to function without them. And I would have gladly paid the 7 or 10 bucks more a month for the best of XM package if they would have included all the Sports (especially baseball). I think the lack of the major talent (Howard Stern…though I do not listen, and the sports) on the best of packages, and the ipod app, hurts sirius.
Cinemagic is available. Just listened to Star Wars theme on my iphone. You might look at Pocket Tunes. Not a sexy interface, but it gets the job done and audio sounds less compressed than Sirius app.
Mr. Salas
You really don’t have other things to write about. The The audio quality has declined on Sirius you are just so cheap you don’t want to buy a new receiver. News flash, yours was not working correctly anymore. Now really is $12.50 per month a bank breaker? I’m not even going to address the Cinemagic because you really need to get over it already. AND BY THE WAY WAY IT’S CHANNEL 76. if you can’t find it here is a link
http://www.xmradio.com/onxm/channelguide.xmc?ch=76
Sir, when you tire of lisning to your personal recording on your ipod i really hope that you will take the time to write a story about how you came back to Sirius XM. Please buy a new receiver.
Mr. Brennan if the only thing worth listening to on Sirius XM is Howard Stern i will pray for you. I got over Mr. Stern when i was 18, I’m 37 now. Maybe you can grow up and be a big boy.
One more thing, this guy talks about subscriber attrition . . . that is expected by management from new vehicle buyers who chose not to renew their subscriptions after the initial “free” trial. Many times these same people eventually re-subscribe after a brief respite.
Blah, Blah, Blah…so how many share short are ya?
Did you pickup you HD radio receiver yet?
WHA! Somebody call the Wha-mbulance. Randy can’t listen to Celion Dion sing the titanic song wha! How pathetic. I bet you cant wait to listen to Ryan Seabiscuit each week either… God love ya..
Cinemagic is on channel XM 76.
http://www.xmradio.com/onxm/channelpage.xmc?ch=76
One lost, another one gained. Everyone is not looking at the big picture, I mean come on, its like cable tv, there are still people I know that don’t have cable tv, is cable tv hurting, no. Sirius XM, nothing else out in the market place that can beat it, that is if you are a music fan, if your not you wont get it. I guess that is why Randy is giving it up. If you like music, you will find all sort of music. He must not be a sports fan also. Tell me Randy where can you get the kind of content in fm or am, you can’t, that brings me back to my main point, we might loss you, but we will gain 10 more of you. The key is time, just like cable tv.
Think about it.
I didn’t realize there were so many Sirius listeners who took my listening habits so personally. As I noted, the reason I dropped Sirius — after probably having it longer than many of the posters here — is due to a combination of the reasons I listed, not any specific one. Why does it bother you so much about what *I* did? If I am as insignificant as many of you insist, what does it matter to you?
To the people insisting that Sirius carries Cinemagic, you are wrong. The web links are to the Internet-only version of the station, which requires a premium subscription and, again, is Web-only. Channel 76 is for XM only, not the Sirius side — the one that I had, remember? Channel 81 on Sirius *used* to be Cinemagic, but as I noted, it was around for only one week before being replaced by disco.
To the poster who insists that my receiver is the reason for degrading sound quality, you are simply wrong. The sound quality originates with the source, not the receiver. A new receiver offers features such as being able to order a la carte programming; it doesn’t affect the transmitted quality of Sirius’ audio files.
You used to pay 120 a year to listen to Cinemagic. Wow, satilite radio is great, where else would you have had that opportunity.
If you love Cinemagic, try Sirius 109, you might like it.
Rene, you might want to try reading my post again. Sirius never had Cinemagic for more than a week.
It’s funny how a channel devoted to orchestral film music brings out so many homophobes. Orchestras must really threaten you guys since you seem to be focusing on just that aspect of my write-up.
Sound quality will vary slightly from channel to channel. Depending on the genre and projected audience, bandwidth is allocated accordingly. Channels with lower listener ratings receive less bandwidth/more compression. This enables SiriusXM to provide the best service for the most listeners. Unfortunately channels with lower listener counts will have a bit of sound quality degradation. As audio compression technology improves, this problem will fade.
Purple, that sounds good, but it doesn’t reflect reality. Sirius has poor audio quality (compression) on channels like Sirius Hits 1 (Ch. 1) and The Pulse (Ch. 12) — again, akin to low-bitrate MP3s. Those channels have huge audiences. And there shouldn’t be a difference at all among channels! What’s the point of paying for radio if the sound quality varies among channels? DirecTV wrestles with bandwidth issues just like Sirius, but it does a much better job of providing a consistent viewing experience among all channels. Finally, audio compression technology has improved tremendously over the past few years, yet Sirius has been getting worse, not better.
Well, just for giggles, I scanned through all of the channels. The only ones that I found the audio to be sub-par were 4, 5 and 6 (40’s, 50’s and 60’s respectively)and talk only channels. I can’t blame SiriusXM for that though since recording technology was a bit green in the 40s-60s and talk requires very limited freq-range
Maybe you need to revisit your EQ settings and drop your mid and high frequencies a click or two… I’ll agree that most of the channels are not comparable to 256 or 320 kb/s mps3 that I encode my personal MP3s, but jeez, most folks do not even push those rates on their Ipods as they would quickly use up all of the memory and tax the processor. Maybe you are expecting too much…? Would you rather have 50 channels at 256 kb/sec? Maybe so, but most of 19 million other folks probably don’t. They enjoy the variety.
It’s too bad you’ll be limited to listening to the repeating loop of tunes on your iPod. I’ll stick with my SatRad, with new music exposure, news, finance, politics, comedy and Howard Stern! I never have to download, sync rip or encode anything, it’s always there to listen without any effort on my part.
I love good music and I love my Sirius radio - as do most of my family, friends and colleagues.
disclosure - I have an iphone with the SiriusXM app to use at work and yes, it is well worth the 3 dollars a month - and the channels are streamed 128kb/sec 
Have you seen the movie about Sirius XM subscribers/investor? Good FlicK called Stock Shock. It’s at amazon.
you’re going to get bored of that tired library of yours. and then you’ll find yourself listening to the radio, which will remind you how annoying commercials are… and maybe you’ll go download some songs illigally, and have to worry about the RIAA. or just buy a few off of itunes, or buy new cds. either way, in terms of value it’s going to be hard to beat listening to commercial free music for $6.99 a month.
cheap bastard
Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man? Dude? Man?
Cereally, you tard flake, are you like an 80+ year old man. Why don’t you go buy some saddle shoes and a pork pie hat you fuddy duddy. Cinema music? And I’m sure you couldn’t tell the difference if the music was bieng played from an .AIF file or a from a wax cylinder!
Korgoth: “Cereally”? I was going to order a wax-cylinder player from Crutchfield, because I figured it would have the right adapter to install the player in my car. Then I realized I could just download free wax-cylinder MP3s (cylinders.library.ucsb.edu) and play them on my iPod. Thanks for the idea!
M4: You’re right that I might eventually re-up with Sirius. It’s not a life-or-death decision, and it won’t be a big deal if I do. And all of the equipment is still there, so it’s easy to do. But with more than 35,000 tracks to explore in my digital music library, it will be a while before I tire of my iPod in the car. That was *one* of the reasons why I canceled.
Randy, please do some research and back up your writing. Most news people don’t make stuff up.
Ok nice come back:) but unless your are flat broke any music fan should own such a cool device. By the way I couldn’t listen to all of my mp3’s if I lived to be infinity. They are nice to have if I’m making a little driving ala specialty sound track but to be up to speed you need a steady flow of new tunes!
Right on! I’ll be dropping one of my three subscriptions when the new price hike kicks in on 7/29. And I’ll drop the other two when Howard retires in 12/10.
Why don’t you drop your pants at the local gas station bathroom if you need some extra loot. Howard Stern is for sophmoric twits. Thats like cutting off your cable because they quit airing the telle tubbies.
I cant believe so many people get riled up over why someone cancels their subscription. Who cares why? Former XM customers are defecting at the highest rate. Why. Because sirius programming does not appeal to them. I was one of the first adopters of xm radio and loved it for a while. Had it for a while after the merger but i have cancelled all four radios. Why same sh**t over and over. I have thousands of hurs of cds ripped to mp3 It would take me weeks of constant listening to hear the same song.
I am a stock holder in this crappy company and a former customer. I am unhappy with management, programming and this attitude that it does not matter what customers think.. If they dont like the service they are just wrong. It is not just the economy the sirius model is broken and sirius must fix it. Or they will continue to bleed customers.
I canceled this past weekend as well. Honestly, with the Blackberry I can use Pandora/Slacker/live365, etc for music and stream all the talk radio I like for free. FM is definitely not the only alternative. These days there’s more competition than Sirius (obviously) can keep up with.
My receiver went out a couple weeks ago and the thought of having to buy another seemed like a waste of money. The fact that Sirius says there are no plans for a BB app is ridiculous. It’d take their developers a matter of a few days to come up with something decent.
And I join in your frustration with the constantly changing channel lineups. It seems every time I’d get my presets setup just right, an update would come out and the channels I liked would be gone. It’s too bad. It had a lot of things going for it, but with the way mobile phones have gone these days, it just doesn’t make much sense anymore.
Wow! I’ve posted here before, and never seen so many replies. What’s with all the homophobia and hatred over Randy’s decision? Baffling.
Please, everyone grow up! People are dying all over the world and you are getting heated up over radio programming. I have read some crap in my time and this tirade of abuse is at the top.
