radio siriusly sucks
I’ve been a very happy XM radio subscriber for over 4 years now. Recently, the two sole providers of Satellite Radio in the US merged. So now its Sirius/XM. But really it’s Sirius with XM’s name attached to the end.
All my XM radio staples are gone, replaced with the watered-down Sirius equivalents. My “Lucy” is now “Lithium”, “Fred” is now “First Wave”, “Fungus” is history. The 80’s and 90’s channels remain but now they have DJ’s, which I cannot stand. I already have the time, artist and song title on my radio display. There is absolutely nothing else a DJ can say that I would be interested in hearing. At least they are still commercial-free.
Its been long known that XM’s playlists were much wider than Sirius’s. I loved that I could listen to a channel like Lucy (80s new wave through 90s alternative with the occasional early 2000’s song thrown in) and still hear stuff that I either haven’t heard in years or have never heard before! Now you got Sirius with their “Lithium” channel with just plays your 90s alt-rock staples, and “First Wave” which plays the 80’s new wave music. It replaced “Fred” which was a similar genre but would play a lot of more obscure stuff like Soft Cell, Modern English, Flock of Seagulls and Missing Persons songs OTHER than the one or two hits they’re each known for.
I think I should just invest in an ipod already. RIP XM.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Brian is freaking out about this, too! I personally find the new Fred-like channel pretty okay. I’d grown pretty tired of all the New Order B sides.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I heard they got rid of Fred, Ethel and Lucy and replaced them with those stupid Sirius channels. I hadn’t heard about Fungus. I canceled my XM subscription in October because I’m about to lose my job, I guess I picked a good time to get out. I was thinking about going back to XM at some point. 99% of the time I was listening to Air America, did they get rid of that too?
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:12 am
XM took Fungus off the air to make way for their all-AC/DC channel. I figured it would just be a couple weeks like when they did that for Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson, but its been over a month now and I’ve heard its going to last through January. How many times does one need to hear “Big Balls”??? And couldn’t they have gotten rid of some lame channel like Bone Yard?
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:14 am
Air America is still there but the programming is not 24/7. I tried to listen last night around 10pm and the display said programming would resume at 11pm.