Satellite Radio Subscriptions Rising

aSiTiC writes "Apparently, satellite radio is finally catching on. I'm an avid internet radio listener on stations such as KEXP, BBC 6Music and SomaFM. I am looking for a more portable alternative and I wonder if eventually my favorite MP3/RM/WMA internet stations will be ever be carried on satellite."

Comments

Links

[Via_Patrino]

For those wanting to know this is their website. And these are the channels they carry.

Sirius - The Good and the Bad

[shoemakc]

I've had Sirius since this past march and I have to say that I'm a big fan of the content, but not as big a fan of the sound quality. The Sound quality on the music stations shows quite a bit of obvious compression artifacting. Also, the techo stations seem to have an obscene amount of bass boast present.

All in all though, I've been rather happy with it and I'll gladly continue to fork over the 12.95 /month :-)

-Chris

CNET Radio, R.I.P.

[LostCluster]

The 24-hour CNET Radio died quite a while ago. CNET no longer controls 910 KNEW Oakland or 890 WBPS, and the web stream has been kicked back to the semi-regular 5-minute bursts that they had back when they first started.

The "CNET Radio channel" on XM is now David Lawrence's 3-hour synidcated show (that CNET never owned, they just rented) called Online Tonight and that's it. The same 3 hour show repeated 8 times a day. :)... It's a ghost of its former self and is just screaming for XM to consolidate Online Tonight into one of its other talk formats to free up the channel slot. They'll likely do it the next time they realign the channels, but since that's only happened once so far it's hard to tell when they'll do that again.

Re:CNET Radio, R.I.P.

[xeno_gearz]

The 24-hour CNET Radio died quite a while ago. CNET no longer controls 910 KNEW Oakland or 890 WBPS, and the web stream has been kicked back to the semi-regular 5-minute bursts that they had back when they first started.

The "CNET Radio channel" on XM is now David Lawrence's 3-hour synidcated show (that CNET never owned, they just rented) called Online Tonight and that's it. The same 3 hour show repeated 8 times a day. :)... It's a ghost of its former self and is just screaming for XM to consolidate Online Tonight into one of its other talk formats to free up the channel slot. They'll likely do it the next time they realign the channels, but since that's only happened once so far it's hard to tell when they'll do that again.

Terrible! I had not used the radio enough yet to see that was the same show. I had mainly been listening to the music stations.

Things seem to get a little bit less cool with each post I read about XM here at Slashdot. :)

I have enjoyed it for what it is so far. "The System" is great. And at least Headline News is current.

More detailed listing here

[Via_Patrino]

More detailed listing here(include samples)

Re:No, TivoRadio is what we need!

[jvagner]

Why is google so hard for /. readers to use?

http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/index.php

Re:Does it have my music?

[molafson]

What about 1977 style punk and hardcore punk?

You can browse XM's stations and listen to them on their web page (if you have Windows Media Player). After having glanced at their offerings, I think you may be out of luck as far as old school punk is concerned.

Re:Never

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. I travel 48 states constantly,and I very seldom lose a signal.

XM Radio - First Hand Account

[Shockmaster]

Recently I purchased an 04 Accord with XM installed by default. I have to travel a lot in my car both for business and for pleasure (I have a girlfriend at the University I graduated from last year -- 500 miles away). I get a 2 month trial before I have to commit $9.95/month to get access, and I'm about three weeks in. What I had figured would be easy to decline may not be as simple as I had anticipated. While the music channels are ok, they're nothing mind-blowing. A good portion are commercial-free, which is nice. There is quite a bit more than you can get from the standard FM dial fare, and even nice you don't loose stations as your GPS location changes. This alone probably wouldn't get me to cough up the dough. The talk stations on the other hand, might.

Anyone who does a fair bit of travelling in a car can tell you that talk radio is a much better companion than music after about 3 hours. Previously I had a head unit that could play mp3-cds and I would routinely fill a disc withb audiobooks or clips from my favorite radio program (Howard Stern) which proved to be an invaluable trip companion. I thought the lack of mp3-cd capability would be awful for me, but XM is filling the gap nicely. There's lots to chose from -- ESPN for Sports, CNN and Fox News for headlines, and E! and Discovery radio for other special interest programming. The other night I had to drive around the block a few times as the Jesse Ventura E! True Hollywood Story finished. So, if you are looking for XM for music, you will be pleasently surprised but not blown away. For talk radio, it really is tough to beat, especially when you don't have to worry about losing signals as you move around.

Re:It's worth it..

[DragonMagic]

For those who aren't aware, Twilight Singers are Greg Dulli's new band, who used to head up The Afghan Whigs. His voice is one of the greater voices of the modern rock era without being annoying.

It's hard to hear either of those bands on the air, so I'm glad there's a station playing TS on the net and the air.

Re:No, TivoRadio is what we need!

[FullyIonized]

The RadioTiVo idea got its own slashdot article awhile ago (too lazy to look up the article) so no, you aren't that original. From that discussion, I found out that you can use mplayer and your computer to do an easy radio Tivo. This is how I listen to NPR.

The key command is:
mplayer -cache 256 -ao pcm -aofile $wav_file http://someinternetradiostation/
This records a wav file (anyone know how to get mplayer to record directly to mp3? Couldn't find out how to do it from the docs). Note the cache option which wasn't mentioned in the earlier slashdot thread: I found that I get skips all the time without it.

I then set up a shell script and a cron job to record my shows after checking the listings on the web page. The nice thing about this option is that it is easy to understand and infinitely flexible - I have my script label my song by date and show so that I can access it easily. Here is my complete shell script for the geek-wannabee's out there (having problems with the lameness filter so it's not commented here):

suffix=`date +"%Y-%m-%d"`
wav_file=$1"_"$suffix.wav
mp3_file=$1"_"$suffix.mp3
seconds=$2
cd directory_where_I_store_my_files
mplayer -cache 256 -ao pcm -aofile $wav_file http://someinternetradiostation.net/ &
sleep $seconds
killall mplayer
lame -V -h $wav_file $mp3_file
/bin/rm -f $wav_file
artist=""
if [[ ${mp3_file:0:3} == TAL ]]; then
artist="This American Life"
song=${mp3_file:4:10}
elif
yadayadayada
fi
if [ ! "$artist" == "" ]; then
album=$artist
mp3info -a "$artist" -l "$album" -t "$song" "$mp3_file"
fi

Enjoy.

Blew The Gift Market

[Effugas]

Oops.

I was going to get XM or Sirius setups for one or two relatives (as in, was at the store, had liked XM, but Sirius had a nicer receiver).

Too bad you couldn't obviously give people the actual subscriptions as gifts. Problem was, providing gifts as subscriptions exposed the fact that there was a subscription fee -- and if you look around the packaging and brochures, you'll find said fee is nowhere to be found (at least at the three stores I looked -- Fry's, Good Guys, and Best Buy).

Since there's no fee to be found, there's no "six month subscription" to be found either.

I wasn't about to give a gift that came with a recurring fee w/ no demo. So I bought something more interesting.

--Dan

Re:It's worth it..

[ShadowBlasko]

Find THAT on your local alterna-pop, cock-rock rotating channel owned by the Borg (read: Clear Channel).

*Tunes dial to 97.7* Yep There it is. 97X in all its glory.

It is the only thing that makes living in Cincinnati worthwhile.

Hi Barb! (I will be forwarding this thread to my friends over at 97X, they love the advertising.)

Corporate Radio Sucks! (I still have the button)

I would have modded you up, but everyone else beat me to it.

Re:Corporate radio

[ShadowBlasko]

WOXY 97X is, at its roots, a college station. Run by a family.

Now, at a basic level, I'm sure a university is a corporation. And even a family operated business is still a business. But you would actually have to listen to 97x to understand the difference I suppose.

As quoted from their webpage "In a world where large--and larger--corporate radio groups dominate the radio landscape, 97X continues to be a family business owned by Doug & Linda Balogh. Family-business values are reflected in the culture that exists at 97X and are embodied in the people who create 97X, a group of dedicated and hard-working folks who truly care about THE music."

And Corporate radio still sucks. 97X WOXY does not.