Monday, October 31, 2005

Sirius

Sirius blows XM away. This weekend I had my first experience with Sirius, and the quality and depth of musical choices was outstanding. As a friend put it, "Sirius is the David Letterman, compared to the XM Jay Leno, of XM choices", and it makes complete sense. Sirius is a little more edgy in its station selection, which was most likely a play for market share, and it succeeds as it puts greater emphasis on the music, to augment a smaller selection of talk stations than XM. Sirius was intelligent to focus on music, as those who have a talk preference, normally opt for the local AM dial, over a syndicated show.

I let my complimentary XM station expire, I am considering a Sirius purchase.

3 comments:

dzahn07 said...

While I agree with you on the music,to me its all about the baseball coverage and XM provides it. Dibble and Kennedy almost alone make it worth the $10 per month. Add in a decent comedy station, timely traffic reports, and live news TV stations and its OK. But you are right in that their music is pretty piss poor.

RRD said...

I rember being an XM subscriber and pledging to not renew when I heard "Rock You Like a Hurricane" on three channels in a five station span.

Eric Z said...

Congratulations, RRD! You are an intelligent consumer. There is no question about it after this post.

I, too, am a Sirius subscriber, and I agree wholeheartedly on the music.

The only things that XM has over Sirius are:
- Baseball, but who is listening to radio at 8:30 pm on a weeknight?
- Sporting News radio - I really miss Peter Brown.

The wide variety of music - at least 80 channels or so - more than makes up for it.

And, since I'm in the midwest, I can pick up my baseball games on over-the-air radio most of the time. Thank God for open skies.