Sirius XM Radio: An Experiment

For the past week or so, I’ve been listening to Sirius XM Radio on my iPhone. I know it has been a week, actually, because my 7-day free trial is up today.

I’ve been intrigued with satellite radio for years and years now. Back when I was an technology-press reporter and editor, I covered XM Radio pretty extensively. I remember covering the launch of their two satellites, Rock and Roll, for gosh sakes.

I’ve also had satellite radio in several rental cars; mostly in Florida, which is pretty much a radio wasteland. So it mostly saved my sanity while driving there; dodging retirees on the road, of course, is a different story.

I recently had to upgrade my iPhone to the brand-new 3GS, due to hardware failure on my 1st-gen iPhone. After 2 years, it finally bit the big one. With my upgrade, I also decided to try the Sirius XM service.

Now that I’m just about done with the 7-day trial, I like what I’ve heard enough to try an experiment. I’m going cold turkey off of all forms of radio, except for what streams from Sirius XM onto my iPhone. I want to see if I’ll miss local radio, as well as the stations I pull in via a few other apps I have on my phone.

There’s only going to be two times when I go “off” the satellite reservation. One, when I need to find out about traffic conditions in my area. Which brings up one of my real pet peeves about the specific Sirius XM/iPhone app service: the limited channel selection, as compared to the full units you can buy for your car or home.

Want Howard Stern? Nope, not there. How about the NFL or Major League Baseball? Psyche! There’s talk radio-related programming for those sports (and others), but no way to actually tune in a pro football or baseball game. No NASCAR for Hollywood, either. And none of the local traffic channels.

Why is this? According to Sirius XM itself:

Sirius and XM offer all of the channels for which we have mobile-performance rights. For that reason, certain channels which may be available on your satellite radio or online radio service may not be available on a mobile device like the iPhone.

If I were Sirius XM, I’d be scraping my lawyers off the bottom of their sludge pond and having them work on rectifying this situation. Immediately.

The other time when I’ll switch off of satellite radio is if there happens to be some kind of local or national situation (you fill in the blank about what that means) when I’ll need to tune to local radio to find out what’s going on. Can’t really blame Sirius XM there.

But overall, the service — and just important, how it works with my iPhone — is good enough to warrant a closer look. Say, a 30-day closer look. Ergo, the experiment. Is it good enough to warrant the $13/month subscription fee? That’s how much you pay if you don’t already have a subscription with Sirius XM; if you already do have one, then it’s just $3/month. The iPhone app itself is free.

Here’s a peek at what the iPhone app looks like when it is running:

Is the limited programming worth the tariff? Is it good enough to replace free services like Pandora or Last.fm? Is it good enough it replace my iPhone apps that pull in regular radio stations and Internet-only stations … for just the one-time payment for the app? Will the iPhone itself work with it all the time? Will I get into an accident while scrolling through all of the stations, trying to find a good song? Will I ask any more questions here?

Actually, here’s the big one: Why am I even doing this? Well, I’m probably a bit different from the typical Sirius XM customer: I’m in my 40’s, and grew up on “normal” radio. Sure, I like the iPod function on my iPhone (I’ve got 8 gigs of music and other content). I take advantage of services like Pandora and Last.fm. And I do listen to other stations and Internet-only channels.

I’m a traditionalist, though, in that I like listening to radio programming from others who have a lot more talent for it than I. For better or worse, satellite radio is probably the last vestige of this kind of programming, as it sure ain’t happening in local radio anymore.

The bottom line is I’m doing this to see if satellite radio is like what I grew up with. Here’s the biggest question: Will I be willing to pay $13/month for it?

I’ll have updates throughout the month, so stay tuned. And apologies for the obvious radio joke there.

NOTE: This is the first part of a multi-part series on Sirius XM — both as a service in and of itself, and as an iPhone app. You can read part two of the series here.

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