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.

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.