We had XM at work and it was awesome. Great stations, many with no commercials and crap like that. Always awesome music 24/7. Good talk radio too. Although I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't driving a lot or unless you have a little money (if you know what I mean). It's sweet, but paying $12.95 a month for it doesn't seem worth it unless you get a lot of use out of it.
We had XM at work and it was awesome. Great stations, many with no commercials and crap like that. Always awesome music 24/7. Good talk radio too. Although I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't driving a lot or unless you have a little money (if you know what I mean). It's sweet, but paying $12.95 a month for it doesn't seem worth it unless you get a lot of use out of it.
XM is 9.99 a month, not 12.95--you're thinking of sirius.
i have sirius, which has no commercials, and slightly different station listings. i love it. my dad has XM, which has some good stations as well--my favorite is ethel, with limited opportunities to listen. but i prefer the variety of sirius, personally. FM is now painful to listen to...
I'm looking at XMRADIO. From Feb 1st and on they will have no commericials on the music channels which is fine for me because that's mainly what I will listen too. I love a channel called Cinemagic. It plays soundtracks with soundbites mixed in. Sounds cheesy but it's really nice for movie buffs.
Sirius is cool as well. In many ways I wish the two companies would merge and provide users the services of both. That would rock.
XM is also going to get traffic radio for a lot of the larger cities in the country...pretty handy I suppose. I wonder what they'll have on at 4am? Maybe the "best of" traffic-jams?
What I'm really excited about is the fact that I can listen to anything that has a headphone jack on it....my self-installed audio solution is like what comes with the VWs and Mini Coops. I just got finished listening to a book-on-tape that a friend of mine created. Just plug the Walkman in and go!
But now it's back to XM. My next task is to program in my favorite channels. Next up will be to get one of those home units. Too cool.
for any of you folks talking about how cool these are that don't play commercials, i GUARANTEE that it will not stay that way...
every company on earth, when they find out they can garner even MORE revenue by tacking on ads, will start adding commercials. i feel old for saying this, but remember when one of the selling points of getting cable tv was no commercials?
just you watch, you little whipper-snappers. i know whereof i speak.
for any of you folks talking about how cool these are that don't play commercials, i GUARANTEE that it will not stay that way...
every company on earth, when they find out they can garner even MORE revenue by tacking on ads, will start adding commercials. i feel old for saying this, but remember when one of the selling points of getting cable tv was no commercials?
just you watch, you little whipper-snappers. i know whereof i speak.
i feel that the difference lies in competition. XM had commercials, but Sirius didnt. so...XM took out their commercials. what does Sirius do in response? add additional programming--up to 105 stations now. as long as there is competition between the two, dont expect added negative anytime soon. the only way that commercials will be put in is if both companies do it at the same time. otherwise, it would be too negative for that company that does, which is the reason that it wont happen.
Are there commercials on HBO now? When did that happen? (I don't mean self-promotion "Coming this February" stuff -- I mean real commercials.)
no, i think hbo is still commercial free... which is why you pay an additional surcharge on top of regular cable to get that. i remember dave thomas on sctv doing a skit way-back-when they were going to start bringing commercials on cable tv.
any service that becomes too popular reaches a state of critical mass where it MUST rely on advertisers to stay afloat (unless they are a monopoly, like microsoft, or aol-time warner or such)
Both XM Radio and Sirius still have commercials on their non-music channels (ie. news, talk, variety), so neither system is 100% commercial free. I think that XM says that they have no more than 4 minutes an hour of commercials - it sure beats the approx 15-20 mins of commercials most FM stations have nowadays.
Both systems, by Feb 1, will have 100% commercial-free MUSIC.
The break even point for both companies is roughly 2 million subscribers. So far XM has slightly over 1 millions subscribers and Sirius has slightly over 200,000 subscribers.
Comments
Originally posted by DMBand0026
We had XM at work and it was awesome. Great stations, many with no commercials and crap like that. Always awesome music 24/7. Good talk radio too. Although I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't driving a lot or unless you have a little money (if you know what I mean). It's sweet, but paying $12.95 a month for it doesn't seem worth it unless you get a lot of use out of it.
XM is 9.99 a month, not 12.95--you're thinking of sirius.
i have sirius, which has no commercials, and slightly different station listings. i love it. my dad has XM, which has some good stations as well--my favorite is ethel, with limited opportunities to listen. but i prefer the variety of sirius, personally. FM is now painful to listen to...
Sirius is cool as well. In many ways I wish the two companies would merge and provide users the services of both. That would rock.
What I'm really excited about is the fact that I can listen to anything that has a headphone jack on it....my self-installed audio solution is like what comes with the VWs and Mini Coops. I just got finished listening to a book-on-tape that a friend of mine created. Just plug the Walkman in and go!
But now it's back to XM. My next task is to program in my favorite channels. Next up will be to get one of those home units. Too cool.
every company on earth, when they find out they can garner even MORE revenue by tacking on ads, will start adding commercials. i feel old for saying this, but remember when one of the selling points of getting cable tv was no commercials?
just you watch, you little whipper-snappers. i know whereof i speak.
Originally posted by rok
for any of you folks talking about how cool these are that don't play commercials, i GUARANTEE that it will not stay that way...
every company on earth, when they find out they can garner even MORE revenue by tacking on ads, will start adding commercials. i feel old for saying this, but remember when one of the selling points of getting cable tv was no commercials?
just you watch, you little whipper-snappers. i know whereof i speak.
i feel that the difference lies in competition. XM had commercials, but Sirius didnt. so...XM took out their commercials. what does Sirius do in response? add additional programming--up to 105 stations now. as long as there is competition between the two, dont expect added negative anytime soon. the only way that commercials will be put in is if both companies do it at the same time. otherwise, it would be too negative for that company that does, which is the reason that it wont happen.
Originally posted by tonton
Are there commercials on HBO now? When did that happen? (I don't mean self-promotion "Coming this February" stuff -- I mean real commercials.)
no, i think hbo is still commercial free... which is why you pay an additional surcharge on top of regular cable to get that. i remember dave thomas on sctv doing a skit way-back-when they were going to start bringing commercials on cable tv.
any service that becomes too popular reaches a state of critical mass where it MUST rely on advertisers to stay afloat (unless they are a monopoly, like microsoft, or aol-time warner or such)
Both systems, by Feb 1, will have 100% commercial-free MUSIC.
The break even point for both companies is roughly 2 million subscribers. So far XM has slightly over 1 millions subscribers and Sirius has slightly over 200,000 subscribers.