Hard to be Sirius
Perhaps satellite radio just isn’t targeted at me.
I had the chance to spend three hours driving a car, solo, with the dulcet tones of Sirius to help me along. It was my first opportunity to see what all the fuss was once about.
Spun around the dial plenty. If you like the Christinan theme, there were five stations to choose from. A few sports channels, once of which carried a PGA golf post-tournament press conference live. I could see that niche being worthy.
The one Alternative station suffered in “unknown” territory beyond the new Pearl Jam song. Could be me, though. The requisite “Best of” 60s, 70s, 80s… would fill the bill for my Dad. My Mother-in-law loves something called “The Bridge”, so there’s a fee-paying fan there.
Howard Stern was all Howard. Listening to him isn’t quite as “neat” as it was in the early 1990s when people like Sam Kinison would go on the show. Now that Howard is the biggest star in the USA, he probably has difficultly sharing the booth with anyone interesting. Other than Carmen Electra. But if you like him, I can certainly imagine why you’d get a subscription.
The Playboy channel was certainly not Playboy. Hustler, maybe. If you’re driving a truck non-stop across six states I can perhaps see why you’d want to listen to female porn actresses riding symbians. But it isn’t living up to Hef’s “Playboy” class of a station.
To my surprise, I still came across several commercials. Craig tells me it’s just commercial free “music”, and since Astral has put commercials into my Pay TV stations, this really shouldn’t have come as a shock.
And, for the same reason as we see on cable, 100 stations isn’t all that many when you toss out the ones that are directed at people with different interests than you. If you live out in the bush, there’s plenty there to choose from and a great business model. And, inter-city driving has a similar feel to living in the styx. I get the idea of “taking your music with you”.
But, as with traditional radio, you’re still beholden to the playlist of someone else.
That’s why Sonos, or something like it, is worth getting excited about. If our technologists can get the network to the point where Sonos can stream two million songs to your car (or portable satellite radio) — that’s worth paying for!
MRM
Mark, I don’t know if you made up your mind before you tried it or if your taste just doesn’t fit the Sirius package but there are material features you’ve left out.
First, a great feature is the ability to ‘save songs’. You hear a song you like, you ‘save’ it with the push of just a couple of buttons. Then, whenever that song is played on any Sirius station, it beeps and you push a button to jump to the song. That somewhat addresses the issue of having to listen to another’s playlist.
Sirius needs Howard to survive but I wouldn’t write him off. This year he’s had huge candid interviews with Dustin Hoffman, Paul McCartney and Francis Ford Coppola. In each instance, they reveal something you never hear elsewhere. But Howard’s magic is that he doesn’t need a big star to entertain for hours.
I live in an area with lots of great radio stations but once I had a solid six month exposure to Sirius, I suddenly didn’t like regular radio so much anymore. The commercials now seem never-ending on regular radio. And for $15 per month, the price point is low.
Not a Sirius share or debt holder, just a fan.
I had the trial subscription to Sirius and gave it up for precisely the reason Mark mentions, someone else’s play list.
With many vehicles now offering an auxiliary input jack, why not just plug your IPOD into your car?