Next Generation Satellite Radio Receivers

One topic that gets constant chatter from customers of SiriusXM is when and whether the company is every going to manufacture a new generation of receivers. There has been no indication from SiriusXM that the company is going to release new receivers for this holiday season. That leave us consumer with time to ponder what features the company could add to receivers to make them more user-friendly.

The company simply cannot continue to flood the market with the Onyx or the Onyx EZ  models. Both of these models can be bought very cheaply and there is a good chance that if you call SiriusXM today you could get either one of these receivers for free or at a drastically reduced cost. The Onyx is feature barren and pales in-comparison to Delphi's Roady XT for features or build quality. I don't understand the business rational of making the Onyx receiver the "go-to" radio that the company wants to push on its customers. It posses none of the qualities of a receiver that make SiriusXM worth either the receiver purchase price or the monthly subscription rate. Instead, the company should be pointing out and equipping the customer with the information about what a receiver can do. My personal favorite feature on Sirius or XM radios I own both types, is XM's Tune Select or Sirius's Seek List. A cheap feature to add to any radio and an aspect of a receiver that would set it a part from FM and internet radio.

What I do like about the Edge, Lynx and Onyx plus is the displays of the receivers. The high-resolution color displays are very easy to read and they can hold more information than previous generation of receivers. Because these displays are easy to view and are bigger than a Starmate or Roady XT display they should be available to display more information than older generation of receivers.

If there is one weakness that almost every SiriusXM customer has had to deal with its the customer service department. Most of the time the Customer Service Representatives know less about the product than the customer making the phone call. And what they do know is being feed to them by a company-guided script. Yes, you can activate your receiver online at siriusxm.com but there are just times when you would rather call a person on the phone and explain to them what changes you want done to your account.

Account information should be available on the receiver itself. The start and end date of the particular billing cycle, what SiriusXM plan you are subscribed to, how many day there are left before your billed, account number and the ability to pay and cancel the service. Anything that a customer can do on the website should be available to be completed on a receiver.

Another feature I would like to see added is On-Demand over the satellites. Yes,On-Demand is a great feature that benefits those customers who subscribe to SiriusXM Internet Radio. As of now, On-Demand is one-dimensional and should be a basic feature on the next-generation of satellite radios.  On the next wave of receivers SiriusXM should make available a MicroSD card slot so that receivers can download satellite On-Demand programming when the receiver is turned off. The receiver itself can have a limited number of memory hours installed on it and should be available to download On-Demand programming at a slower-rate if the receiver is in use.

The public yearns for another portable satellite radio. We live, work and play in the age of portable devices and satellite radio isn't any different. While there are millions of people who love having everything they digitally need on their smartphone most of us don't have an unlimited data plan and would prefer to have a satellite flexable choice to listen to satellite radio. This radio also needs to have at least one built-in speaker  and a replaceable battery that lasts 8-10 hours per charge. It also needs to have wi-fi functionally,  as well as 4G nationwide coverage so that SiriusXM can partner with a cell network provider and sell data for this device. If the existing SiriusXM subscriber is already a customer of the cellular company they can share data on both devices. Adding AM/FM reception to this device would be great too.

Abandon touch screen car receivers. The Lynx was a solo act and it should be kept that way. While it was a good idea and could be improved upon with later models that were never to come it has been discontinued by the company and good reason. While the Lynx's website says that "its the one radio that can do it all", it lacks one major functionally, being a true portable radio. Also, the touchscreen of the Lynx is extremely hard to use when driving and forces you to take your eyes off the road far too many times to be safe. The Lynx's software is very buggy even when the latest firmware is installed causing the receiver run slowly. The icons on the displays are too close together to tap easily and fast-forwarding and rewinding when trying to drive is near impossible.

Make every single new receiver 2.0 compatible, built-in and plug and plug. Why SiriusXM continues to sell and install satellite radios that are not 2.0 compatible is beyond me. There are a limited number of customers who are going to upgrade to newer and more expensive satellite radios when they are released, although the great majority of consumers don't pay that close attention to know when the company released new models. And surely, most people are not going to upgrade in order to receiver 10 or 12 "extra channels" that they weren't receiving before. SiriusXM has to step out of the dark ages of 1.0 and today has to make every customer feel as if they are receiving the best product for their dollar and that is by making 2.0 the new programming standard. True, every customer is not going to need or want fast-forwarding or rewinding and for some people 10 pre-sets is going to be enough, instead of 30. Scrap the Stratus 7 and Starmate 8 models that will never receive 2.0 channels (because they run on the Sirius Network and 2.0 is run on the XM network) and add 2.0 compatibility to the Onyx EZ model in future generations.

These are a hand full of my suggestions that would be great additions to the next generation of satellite radio receivers. Is there is a feature that you would like to see added to SiriusXM's next generation of receivers? Or maybe one that you are not so fond of and would like to see abandoned. Let me know what you think.

Who is SiriusXMs largest competitor?

There a lot more competitors to SiriusXM than when the two compaines launched, Sirius in 2002 and XM in 2001. There is a strong cause to be made that the entire audio business has changed since 2007 when the iPhone was introduced along with the iTunes app store the way that we know it today. Of course Apple is only one of the major technology companies that has outfitted the world with smartphones and our interconnected life and that has become a major way that the consumer receives audio today. 

How do you listen to the radio? Or do you even own a radio? There are millions of people in the US who the only radio they own and therefore listen to is the one in their car. But almost all of these same people own a smartphone and probably have downloaded Pandora and might even pay for the $4.99/ month subscription.

Out of the millions of those people who own the one radio in their car how many of  them care to pay to listen to the radio? And when you compare the sound quality of SiriusXM to FM it is like comparing apples and oranges, as FM is so much more clearer and has more depth than any satellite radio channel. 

My favorite go-to audio app that I listen to daily for sports, NPR programming and music is TuneIn Pro. At the time I paid .99 cents for the upfront cost of purchasing the app but all of the audio that is streamed through the app is free. The one real plus of paying for the Pro version of the app is being able to record and playback an unlimited amount of times any audio stream that you want to record through TuneIn. And of course the app is transferable between newer versions of the iPhone that I buy. Talk about a good 99 cent investment three years ago. Hate using a touch screen in the car? Yes, TuneIn even has a car mode that uses the most important buttons on a radio in a large format so that they are easier to tap while moving. 

When both Sirius and XM were younger companies one of the main appeals of both of them was their exclusive broadcasting rights that both companies had with NFL, MLB, NHL and the NBA. While I'm not a big fan of the NFL, NHL or the NBA, I am huge fan of Major League Baseball and during the regular season I pay to listen to games on my iPhone. The MLB app offers both home and away feeds of broadcast, something that only SiriusXM offers during the playoffs. While SiriusXM still does maintain broadcasting rights with all of the major sporting leagues, each one of these leagues also has their own app that they can market towards individuals who only want to listen and pay for games of a certain sport. 

Could there be a chance that you subscribed to SiriusXM because you love their music selection and channels? Depending on what Sirius, XM or SiriusXM model receiver that you own you could have any where from 65 to 76 channels music channels. In this variety of channels it appears that the company has a great depth of musical programming choices and only when you spend some serious time listening to many of the channels do you realize the repetition that is heard on many of them. CH 22 is Pearl Jam Radio (a band that I love), the channel plays PJ songs almost exclusively, including concerts, interviews and B-sides. There have been many times when I have turned it to CH 22 and heard one of their classic songs and I am thankful that Pearl Jam has their own station. Although if you listen to CH 34, Lithium for any period of time you are bound to hear the top 10 PJ songs of all time, because Lithium is 90's Grunge and Alternative. And if you tune in to CH 9, or the 90's on 9 for an hour or two on any given day you are bound to hear Pearl Jam there also, probably playing Nothing Man or Elderly Women Behind The Counter In A Small Town. SiriusXM just has too much duplication across it musical lineup to justify the $9.99 per month cost of its Mostly Music subscription package. With that being said, SiriusXM also doesn't have enough arms length to push it apart of from FM/AM or internet radio. 

In the pre-merger days Sirius and XM both had channels that set them apart from one another. Believe it or not each of them had an identity. One of the focal points of XM was the companies vast selection of music that couldn't be heard anywhere on the FM dial. One of the prime examples was a channel strictly dedicated towards playing movie scores and that are originally placed by XM on CH 27, the pop category. In June of 2011 SiriusXM announced that the channels would be taken off of the satellites and that it would be available online only. And recently SiriusXM announced that the number of classical stations that it would offer would drop from 3 to 2, when Pops are dropped from satellite receivers and also moved to an online only channel. It's niche channels like Cinemagic and Pops that made satellite radio unique when it was introduced in the early 2000's. These days the channel lineup features much of what you can find on the FM dial for free and with better sound quality. 

In summary, SiriusXM is their own largest competitor. The price point that their advertise for the companies All-Access package, which includes all of the premium channels such as Howard Stern, all the sports coverage that you can listen to and internet listening is $18.99. Out of these three only Stern is exclusive to SiriusXM and while he might have his millions of fans and decades worth of old shows that run 24/7 on his two channels, Howard 100 and Howard 101 I highly doubt that he is the main reason that people are wanting to subscribe to SiriusXM today. 

The reason that many people subscribe is because its ease of use. Odds are that the one radio that you do own in your car has a satellite radio receiver built-in to it and that you probably got a free three-month to a year free long subscription to the service when you purchased the car. You thought, "This is pretty cool. And if I drive long distances I never have to find another channel because satellite coverage is everywhere in the United States." And yes, you would be right in thinking that. Maybe you love the "60's on 6" like my Dad does cause it takes him back to when he was going through high school, and the local oldies station doesn't play oldies from the 60's anymore because its 2014 and now oldies are in the 1980's. My Dad also doesn't care about the sound quality of the stations, would never listen to a station like Cinemagic or Pops and doesn't know who Bob Edwards is, or that he spent he last 35 years in public broadcasting up until last week. As long the customers have their 5 to 10 channels, they don't change very often and they play the hits SiriusXM will continue to stay in business. Although they will also be their largest competitor to a certain group of people who was a subscriber pre-merger, when CH 2 was XMX, country music stations divided up the decades and pop music categories and that POTUS was supposed to cover the Presidential Election of 2008. 

Sound Quality

One of the burning issues that I constantly see in satellite radio forums are those aimed at the sound quality of SiriusXM. Many people remember what it was like to have two companies competing for their satellite radio business and thus both companies put 100's of millions of dollars worth of resources competing for the same customer. Although it could be equally debated that all of that one-upping by both Sirius and XM is what lead to the merger of 2008.

No matter how you slice it if you ask anybody who had Sirius or XM, but mostly XM customers, the pre-merger days were much better for a variety of reasons. Normally though the same grievances are written about time and again by devotees of the services. 1) Tight playlists, 2) Reduction in the number of music channels and 3) Sound quality. Now this list could go in any order of what people think is wrong with SiriusXM although I've chosen to write about sound quality today.

A great majority of the millions of SiriusXM subscribers just listen to the service without caring what it sounds like for the most part, except when they compared it a C.D. or FM radio. At best SiriusXM to me sounds like AM radio that has too much bass when I would prefer for it to have more treble so that I could hear the lyrics of songs much clearer.

XM advertised that they had near C.D. quality sound in the early years although that is hard to believe. Having been a XM or Sirius subscriber since 2006  I don't know how people can remember what XM used to sound like before the merger of both Sirius and XM channel lineup happened almost 6 years ago, on November 12, 2008. Of course people have recordings of XM programming although I think everything sounds different once its uploaded to the internet and then I listen to on my computer.

Sure, I believe that XM did sound clearer than SiriusXM sounds today, but comparing the two service in 2008 is a lot different than in 2014.

In my own tests, completely non-scientific  I've found SiriusXM to sound better through a Sirius receiver than through an XM receiver that is built-in to my 2009 Chevy Cobalt. I have two lifetime subscriptions, 1 on a Starmate 4 and the other on a Starmate 5. I've hooked them up through the car dock and run the audio through the aux port on my factory stereo.

The built-in XM receiver sounds much smaller at the same volume as either of the Starmates. Sounds quality to me isn't a make-it or break-it feature on satellite radio for me, so I chose to take the car dock out of my Cobalt and instead use the built-in radio because I don't like wires running all over my dashboard when I can just use the receiver that I purchased with the car. In this test I used the Jazz equalization pre-set on the stereo.

In comparison on the very same pre-set did FM radio sound clear and much brighter than either of the pay services.

Recently I owned a Pioneer Inno and turned it on doing the free two week promo the company ran over Labor Day. In addition to the receiver I used the Inno's antenna headphones so that the signal would be as good as it gets.  Even with the best signal and using an XM receiver the service still sounded like it was underwater. Or a very bassy AM radio station.

Overall, I think XM people are romantic for another time in satellite radio history. When the services were pure. A time when none of their money had to go to Howard Stern, the channel line-up made more sense and it had personality. As a regular guy who listens there is no way of knowing just how bad the audio quality has gotten over the past six years. I know a lot of other things have changed and will continue to change because that is just the nature of the media business.

Channel Takeover Mania

Much of the talk in the music business these days seems to be about streaming music companies such as Pandora, Spotify and iTunes Radio although this hasn't diminished the intensity by which SiriusXM continues to tinker with the company's lineup. Over the last month SiriusXM has had or plans to have at least four channel takeovers varying in times of length, from a weekend to an entire month.  

There was the unannounced weekend takeover of channel 17, “Love” by online-only channel “Elevations” a couple of weeks ago. And “Kenny Chensey's Big Revival Radio” is set to take over channel 57, Y2Kountry September 22 through October 21 which will coincide with the artists new album aptly named The Big Revival, which will be released Tuesday, September 23.

Last week SiriusXM announced that they would preempt “Escape” on Sirius receivers, channel 69 for a month so that they could broadcast the “Barbra Streisand channel”.  And they added a channel to the XM side, channel 73 for all your Barbra Streisand listening needs. If you have a SiriusXM branded radio, those radios run on the XM network and receive the channel on 73 also. Streisand Radio runs from September 12 through October 10 and plays tracks from her catalog of 50 years or performances, both live and studio recorded.  This channel addition(XM) or takeover(Sirius) is also a big promotion for Ms. Streisand’s latest album Partners, which was released earlier this month.

And over Labor Day weekend channel 57, which is normally “Y2Kountry” was transformed into “Brad Paisley Radio” playing the country stars hits and BP’s favorite songs. Of course BP Radio paralleled with the release of Moonshine in the Truck, Paisley's latest album.

It seems that every weekend since “Y2Kountry” was introduced a couple of months ago that SiriusXM is selling out the channel to whatever country artist has an album released that weekend. Or they preempt channel 57 for “Red, White and Booze” which is one of SiriusXM’s 2.0 channels. Although they do a horrible job at the selling the channel when they preempt it for one of their existing channels.

Is preempting normal lineup channels for limited run, single artist/ band channels a good thing for the subscriber?

9 out of 10 times it isn’t. As a subscriber to either Sirius or XM since 2006, or both at one time before the merger, single artist channels or channel takeovers that play a majority of music from one artist or band are not a good thing for the paying customer. The last single artist/band channel that I enjoyed listening to on a consistant basis was two-years ago when the Dave Mathews Band was on their summer tour and had a dedciated channel for two months. In the forums that I read on a daily basis did many people lament why they didn’t believe that DMB was worthy of their own channel for two months. While I enjoyed listening to my favorite band have their own channel on SiriusXM I could understand why many more people did not like it and over time the channel did become very repetitive as the company didn’t update it very often.

In the past Michael Jackson has had his own channel on SiriusXM and while I am a big fan of MJ I couldn’t stand listening to the station that SXM produced. The playlists are very thin, the same popular songs are played over and over and once the station is in on the air you hear the same voice tracked DJs or special guests saying the same thing over and over and over.  In this day and age of Pandora and Slacker, where you can customize any single artist channel to your liking, SiriusXM’s very tight playlists of many of their single artist/band channels aren’t enough when they have the opportunity to play all tracks that encompass the career of the artist or band for the listener who is going to tune in and want to hear for B-side of the “Bad” album.

As for in-house channel takeovers that SiriusXM does from time to time. I think its a smarter idea that SiriusXM takeover existing channels, 1.0 channels with 2.0 channels on a regular basis and perhaps move a lot of their single artist channels such as Barbra Streisand and Kenny Chesney to the 2.0 lineup. SXM could advertise single artist/band channels on 1.0 channels that are available on the 2.0 spectrum. In addition, this would assist in customer migration to XM, 2.0 network where the future of the company is headed.

After following this topic for many years now through XMfan.com and other forums I see that a near majority of the time channel takeovers, regardless of the artist/band is, are usually panned by subscribers. The latest and greatest channel PR nightmare occurred earlier this year when SiriusXM decided that “40’s on 4” was going to be taken over by “Billy Joel Radio”. SiriusXM sees the bottom line first ahead of what their customers think of the company and that was apparent with the “40’s on 4” takeover. “40’s on a 4” in a way is an exclusive type of channel for much of the country, has music from 74 years ago is not normally going to be found on the FM or AM dial in most cities. SiriusXM doesn’t advertise like it is used to when there were two satellite radio companies, advertising the decades channels as playing music only from specific decades, like the 40’s could be a major selling point to those people who like that sound but don’t know there’s a service that offers a channel like “40’s on 4”.

The message is clear out of all of these channel single artist takeovers. SiriusXM will sell-out any channel in order to make money and has no regard for the paying customer or their listening habits. Advertisers and music recording companies are the true program directors at SiriusXM.