Sirius / XM -- how do you like it?

[Iowa Dave]

Yes that cover art was iconic to say the least. My oldest daughter likes vinyl too. Either one of us can be spotted flipping through garage sale collections at least a few times each summer.
The musicianship in some of the old stuff is very enjoyable to me. Sirius can get redundant
with some of their playlists but it's still enjoyable to me. The Drifters "Fools
Fall in Love" . "They're building castles with wishes with only rainbows for beams." Gives me hope every time I hear it.
Dave

[Loren & Cathy]

It's time for me to renegotiate my annual fee but I also have another problem. The signal keeps cutting in and out and the screen says, signal blocked. I read where sometimes you have to have the thing rebooted by them. Will have to give it a try. Loren

[Jim Bennett]

Originally Posted by Iowa Dave

Sirius can get redundant with some of their playlists but it's still enjoyable to me.

That and the fact that the stations seem to have too narrow of a music focus. I like diversity, and more the "70's Hits" (of which I might like 25%) gives me. Give me some blues, classic rock, folk, indie, etc, and I even like some of that "Kiss Yer Horse" music stuff too.

[freespirit]

Originally Posted by Loren & Cathy

It's time for me to renegotiate my annual fee but I also have another problem. The signal keeps cutting in and out and the screen says, signal blocked. I read where sometimes you have to have the thing rebooted by them. Will have to give it a try. Loren

on a Ram , pressing two specific non-touchscreen buttons at the same time Reboots the Sirus electronics..had to do it twice in the last year, once after a usb firmware upgrade.

[Mike Lewis]

Originally Posted by thoer

And of course there are the good old hard rock ones I use to get to get this rural boy into the aggressive mood needed in big city traffic so we don't get run over!

When I lived in the D.C. area I listened to the local classical music station when I drove. I swear they would play music from Russian composers during rush hour so drivers would be aggressive enough to tangle with the Beltway. That, and Wagner.

[cpaharley2008]

You talking about the Greaseman in WDC......Greaseman.org - The Bit Vault

[Iowa Dave]

Originally Posted by Mike Lewis

When I lived in the D.C. area I listened to the local classical music station when I drove. I swear they would play music from Russian composers during rush hour so drivers would be aggressive enough to tangle with the Beltway. That, and Wagner.

My son and I were hunting on our family farm one snowy afternoon. We weren't having much luck and as we walked back to the truck my son started singing Wagner's Flight (ride) of the Valkyries from the Bugs Bunny cartoon. Kill the wabbit, Kill the Wabbit. We had not noticed the game warden pulled in behind our truck until we came from around the big bales of hay. He looked pretty puzzled at the two Bohemie rabbit hunters singing in a snowstorm. His first question was "You fellows have permission to hunt here?" My answer "Mom says it's ok." We've been on good terms ever since. When I see him at a boat show or whatever we always have a good laugh. Wagner, he will get the pedal on the metal every time.
Dave

[Mike Lewis]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

You talking about the Greaseman in WDC......Greaseman.org - The Bit Vault

Oh yes-- Grease was really good back in the '80s. His predecessor at DC101, Howard Stern, became famous, but Greaseman never made it to the big time. I often wondered about that. Thanks for the link.

[captmath]

Like..

Originally Posted by Iowa Dave

The jobs I did where I abused my hearing for 50 years allow me to enjoy about any sound quality, anyway that's how I have to look at it.
Dave

[emers382]

Originally Posted by rvomaha

We've had Sirius XM for 3 1/2 years in our tow car, but recently cancelled it. Reason #1 - only two stations were remotely interesting to us, one a news channel that is unfortunately about 50% commercials, and the other a channel with old-time radio shows. Reason #2 - every year at renewal time they try to double the rate and charge you automatically, so you have to call them to avoid the price hike. As others wrote here, if you call they suddenly come up with a major discount to keep you subscribing. We don't like dealing with a company with such a shady pricing policy.

Reviving an old thread but thought for those perhaps getting new vehicles with a free subscription and wondering whether to continue, this thread might interest them.

I've reread some of the comments. Many say there''s too little variety. True on any individual channel but we enjoy listening to different types of music, and on music channels there are no commercials. We also enjoy getting CBC with our frequent traveling in the US.

I recently got notice that the rate was going up a dollar and now with fees and taxes it would be $263 a year, $22 a month! Current year was to expire Jan. 20. I called this morning and told them I wanted to cancel. Of course they had many questions and finally offered to continue my same plan with an earlier expiry date of next year Dec. 12 for a total of $86 with fees and taxes to be paid now. So I accepted.

Next November I'll likely call again, and cancel for certain. Then after a few months will apply as a new customer and try to get the stand alone radio with home and vehicle kit for a good price, and be able to switch radio from vehicle to home to Escape as fellow Escapers we met from FL have done. Or perhaps by then there will be cheaper alternatives to getting music other than streaming which can get pricey while traveling.

[Jake930]

Originally Posted by emers382

Reviving an old thread but thought for those perhaps getting new vehicles with a free subscription and wondering whether to continue, this thread might interest them.

I've reread some of the comments. Many say there''s too little variety. True on any individual channel but we enjoy listening to different types of music, and on music channels there are no commercials. We also enjoy getting CBC with our frequent traveling in the US.

I recently got notice that the rate was going up a dollar and now with fees and taxes it would be $263 a year, $22 a month! Current year was to expire Jan. 20. I called this morning and told them I wanted to cancel. Of course they had many questions and finally offered to continue my same plan with an earlier expiry date of next year Dec. 12 for a total of $86 with fees and taxes to be paid now. So I accepted.

Next November I'll likely call again, and cancel for certain. Then after a few months will apply as a new customer and try to get the stand alone radio with home and vehicle kit for a good price, and be able to switch radio from vehicle to home to Escape as fellow Escapers we met from FL have done. Or perhaps by then there will be cheaper alternatives to getting music other than streaming which can get pricey while traveling.

It got to expensive for me. I can find plenty of other things to spend $260.00 on. It was a real PIA trying to cancel. Had to go through 3 people. They couldn’t give it to me for free now.
Anyways you can down load Pandora on you phone and link it by blue tooth through your vehicles radio.

[Vermilye]

I do wonder what the rules are for the retention people at XM Radio. Subscribers that threaten to leave pay a variety of rates. My previous renewal for 2 radios when I had the Tacoma (one in the trailer & the built in truck radio) was a total of $70.94 for 6 months. The new F 150 is still on a 6 month free trial, and the last trailer renewal was $29.62, again for 6 months.

While I wouldn't consider the service if I had to pay full price, at roughly $5.00 per month, it is worth it, particularly in the truck where I tend to use it the most. Renewing every 6 months is a pain, but when I asked for a full year, the price per month went up. I suspect they are hoping you will forget to call & quit, then get hit with the full price.

[CADreamin]

We've been offered "trial" subscriptions to Sirius/XM and took advantage of it ... once. What we found is that, living in a mountainous area, we don't get a decent signal. If we were always in a flat area it might be different, but in the mountains we found it to be pretty much useless.

[gbaglo]

I told Sirius/XM that I wanted to cancel because I wasn't using it, except when camping. They talked me into a subscription of about $36 for six months and sent me a new dock for the trailer ( I have boom box type dock for home ).

So, I pretty much wasted $36 since I don't need another dock and don't listen at home.

[davidmurphy02]

Our first experience with SiriusXM was the free trial in our new truck we purchased this summer. I thought we would like/use it more than we do, or in different ways - the huge number of channel choices, after listening a while, includes a lot we don't care about. But our truck makes it easy to just block out the channels we don't want and then only have the ones we like to scroll through.

After years of traveling in remote areas with radio choices often limited to the crop report, we really like having Sirius there all the time anywhere we go (we never took the plunge to digital music so don't have a big MP3 library, and those old CD's have all been listened to a million times). On a recent cross country trip, rather than surfing around a lot we found that we settled on a couple of channels that we liked the best, and rotated between listening to music and NPR.

Sirius had a pretty good Black Friday sale - even though our free trial runs through next July, I added on an additional year of subscription to the basic service at $6.00/month. Next year I'll be watching the Black Friday ads again to see about another cheap extension.

[Tam2004]

On the listening to podcasts - now that you mention it - we love to auto download from our favorite podcast stations to our iPad or phone and then play those. Since we don't think about it, they just stack up before a trip. We really like "This American Life" There are so many different podcast apps to organize this also. Xerius radio kind of irritates me, though many love it. Here is a useful link on podcasts. They give us many wonderful hours of different kinds of entertainment. Often touching and thoughtful. We run the sound through our car system or little speakers
in the trailer. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile...load-podcasts/

[Jim Bennett]

I find satellite content pales in comparison to services like Spotify, Google Music, or even Apple Music. Not only are there vastly more ready to play playlists, you can make your own. I get bored of listening to satellite radio. I use Spotify, and recently listened to one that was compiled based on my recent listening and it was fantastic, a few songs I knew but many more similar from artists I did not even know, and it sounded fantastic.

I can get lost in music on Spotify and have found some truly great stuff new to me. There is so much good music in the world that one would never be able to begin to scratch the surface of listening to it all. If you select a radio station based on a song, or an artist, you will get more of a similar style, and from their do it again, and on and on......

Lots of great podcasts on Spotify too.

Everyone has differing tastes for music, and that is great. I enjoy what others play when at our house and browsing Spotify. If anyone has this and is interested, on of my favourite playlists to start with is Acoustic Grit.

And all this for $10/month. We get our monies worth.

[Vermilye]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

I find satellite content pales in comparison to services like Spotify, Google Music, or even Apple Music. Not only are there vastly more ready to play playlists, you can make your own. I get bored of listening to satellite radio. I use Spotify, and recently listened to one that was compiled based on my recent listening and it was fantastic, a few songs I knew but many more similar from artists I did not even know, and it sounded fantastic.

I can get lost in music on Spotify and have found some truly great stuff new to me. There is so much good music in the world that one would never be able to begin to scratch the surface of listening to it all. If you select a radio station based on a song, or an artist, you will get more of a similar style, and from their do it again, and on and on......

Lots of great podcasts on Spotify too.

Everyone has differing tastes for music, and that is great. I enjoy what others play when at our house and browsing Spotify. If anyone has this and is interested, on of my favourite playlists to start with is Acoustic Grit.

And all this for $10/month. We get our monies worth.

While I agree with you for music, no matter what format you listen to, if there is no internet, there is no Spotify, Google Music, Apple Music or Pandora. While I have over 700 songs on my iPhone, I am more of a fan of talk radio while traveling than music. When driving solo, even a short drop of internet connectivity can dump the connection to the point where you have to mess with the phone to get it back.

When I expect to have a fairly solid internet connection (driving on major highways or in cities) I'll listen to one of my favorite stations using their app, but again, even a short drop can be a PIA.

I'm an NPR junky; and while the content for the limited public radio offerings on XM Radio is often repeated, particularly on the weekends, for me it is better than nothing.

[Randy in Maine]

I have an old 160 GB ipod that holds about 300 of my favorite albums so I always have tunes anywhere, even where the reception is "iffy".

[escape artist]

Originally Posted by emers382

Reviving an old thread but thought for those perhaps getting new vehicles with a free subscription and wondering whether to continue, this thread might interest them.

I've reread some of the comments. Many say there''s too little variety. True on any individual channel but we enjoy listening to different types of music, and on music channels there are no commercials. We also enjoy getting CBC with our frequent traveling in the US.

I recently got notice that the rate was going up a dollar and now with fees and taxes it would be $263 a year, $22 a month! Current year was to expire Jan. 20. I called this morning and told them I wanted to cancel. Of course they had many questions and finally offered to continue my same plan with an earlier expiry date of next year Dec. 12 for a total of $86 with fees and taxes to be paid now. So I accepted.

Next November I'll likely call again, and cancel for certain. Then after a few months will apply as a new customer and try to get the stand alone radio with home and vehicle kit for a good price, and be able to switch radio from vehicle to home to Escape as fellow Escapers we met from FL have done. Or perhaps by then there will be cheaper alternatives to getting music other than streaming which can get pricey while traveling.

Hi: emers382... Our problem with Sirus/XM was it was on the car that stayed at home in the garage. Definately something wrong with that picture. Our 2016 Ram EcoDiesel has no CD player but does have Sirius/XM. It's better!!! Alf
escape artist N.S. of Lake Erie