XM Versus Sirius: Which Satellite Radio Should You Subscribe To?
Are you tired of flipping through the radio trying to find tunes to jam to, but all you find are boring channels with a lot of chit-chat or ads? That was me a few months ago, until I subscribed to satellite radio. With hundreds of commercial-free music stations and specialty channels like live football coverage and talk shows, you will definitely want satellite radio in your car too!
You can even buy devices that will allow you to have satellite radio almost anywhere - in your boat, house, even on capable cell phones! So if you decide you want the satellite entertainment experience, you can choose between two services: either XM or Sirius.
I subscribed to XM awhile back for my car simply because I was more familiar with it. Then when we got Dish Network in our home, Sirius came along with it. I have to say, Sirius has won me over.
Out of its 170+ stations, I find myself only listening to 4 or 5 channels on XM. Sirius has many stations I switch between. XM has a bad habit of repeating songs. I may end up hearing one song five times in one day within a few hours period. With Sirius, that isn't the case. Furthermore, I do not like the way XM names its stations.
For example, some XM station names are "Fred" and "KISS" and "Watercolor." I have to guess what types of music they play. If I mention a radio station called "The Joint," how long would it take you to figure out that I'm talking about a reggae station? Sirius clearly names it's stations, such as "Reggae Nation" and "Rolling Stones Radio," for instance.
Sirius satellite radio broadcasts a lot clearer than XM, especially in relation to the talk channels. People's voices come across a lot smoother and can be easier understood than XM, which tends to be fuzzy. XM has another sound problem. It sometimes will fade out of my front left speakers and only play through on the passenger side speakers. You'd think something was wrong with my audio system, but when I switch off XM and local stations come in, the sound immediately comes back to my left speakers.
XM has a few more channels than Sirius, but don't forget to consider the quality and content of their channels. It's true that XM has 90+ music channels, 10+ sports channels, 20+ news and talk channels, along with a few traffic channels. However, what are those channels exactly? XM rebroadcasts radio stations, but Sirius does not. Sirius only broadcasts original content that is produced in-house by the stream jockeys themselves.
When it comes to sports, you should compare channel listings for both XM and Sirius to see which hosts the sports programs that best suits your interests. For Nascar and Major League Baseball fans, you will need XM. On the other hand, if you like NFL and NBA, then you will want Sirius so you can keep up with play-by-play action and scores.
Along the same lines, if you will be doing a lot of listening to talk shows, Sirius has more of the popular shows such as "Discovery," "Howard Stern," and "Martha Stewart." What celebrity talk show does XM have? The "Oprah Winfrey" show. Sirius also has "Playboy Radio." What does XM have that could compete with that? Nothing.
XM has over 7 million subscribers, 3 million more than Sirius. And with both priced at $12.95 per month, you won't be able to make your decision on cost. However, based on channel offerings, quality, and clarity, Sirius beats XM hands down.
Published by Mike C.
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14 Comments
Post a CommentI've had XM for about 2 weeks. I'll probably let my subscription die at the end of the month. I tried it because I wanted to pick up Pac-10 football games. With 3 Pac-10 channels, I figured I had a 60% chance of hearing a game I cared about on any given weekend. WRONG! XM advertises games all during the week, but at game time, you'll find that: (a) one or two channels have been commandeered by the ACC or Big-10, or (b) one or two games are broadcast, with the remaining channels broadcasting XM infomercials.
Piss-poor programming. A real waste of money in my opinion.
I think that the subscriber base speaks for itself. Can 3 million people be wrong? PS. Yikes32 needs to finish English 101 before commenting on XM or Sirius issues.
The author of the article may not have learned all the facts before writing, however I agree that Sirius is the superior service. XM seems to make dumb decisions, mainly when they didn't aggresively pursue Howard Stern a couple years back. This wouldn't even be a topic of conversation if XM signed Stern because Sirius would have been gobbled up by XM in no time. Also, Sirius just feels right to me with music channels like JamOn and The Vault. I enjoy the many different DJ's that sirius offers and they often have live performances in studio and streaming of live concerts across the country.
Howard doesn't do 30 hours a week, he does about 4.5 hours a day without commercials. Trim down the repeated bits (I heard the 5 minute ODB call twice inside of 18 minutes the other day) and he's doing about 3.5-4 hours a day. And then he takes most Fridays off, and gets 10 weeks of vaction per year. 365 - 104 weekends - 52 Fridays - (10 weeks * 4 days) of vaction = 169 days per year.
Soccer is the worlds largest sport, not the NFL. And they never talked about adding commercials to the content on music stations, just a possibility of text ads on the head units.
Xm sucks! you cant consided 30 min of ophra a weeks as really anything compared to the 30 hours week howard does, With xm its impossible to play a station and leave it there all day, cause they play way to much crap. O and A are clowns that only get there named mentioned because of Hoard stern and there 30,000 fans that paid a dollar to listen to them aint shit! Sirius cares about there customers and programing. XM sat on thre larals thinking that they will stay at the top cause they were first and that they dont have cmersals.
Methinks the author confused XM and Sirius.
Repetition on XM worse than Sirius? You obviously have no concept of either service. If anything Xm gets taken to task for being too eclectic and not concentrating on the "hits" as much.
Same song 5 times in a few hours? What, on 20on20? The station that plays the top 20 songs voted by the listeners and then repeats? THATS BY DESIGN. No other XM channel is anything like that.
XM also has O&A, Ron and Fez, Bob Edwards, Dylan, Tom Petty, Coast to Coast AM, and a host of other excellent talk programming.
nfl... come on... it's mainly on one day a week, and i know very little people who listen to football on the radio.. i'd much rather and normally watch it...
check orbitcast.com and see their comments on this article...
Am I an bizarro satellite radio world???? What did I just read? Did anybody actually do any research before writing this article? I cant say the commenters did much better.
XM's major investor is clearchannel? Try they own a minimal amount of the company (1-2%) if you listen to the top 20 stations you are going to hear top 20 songs over and over. otherwise the playlist is much much larger than sirius.
NFL is not the worlds largest sport, although sirius does have a soccer channel as well, so you were close.
I cant even begin to pick apart the problems in this article but it seems to me that somebody owned sirius then tried XM for 3 days, wrote about the 4 stations they listened to and tried to bash the service. Anybody with any experience with the satellite radio industry can see this article is rubbish.
I thought XM had 3 million more subscribers than Siruis? What kind of financial issues can they be facing that Sirius isn't?