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Comment by ssharp | Hacker News Reader

It's certainly 99% dead for me personally but based on the ad dollars still flowing in, I'm assuming there is a still a big audience, even if it's on the decline.

What's more surprising to me at this point is Sirius. I just don't understand how this is still a $22 billion dollar company, doing $9 billion in revenue and is still growing revenue. I don't see where the value is. I haven't subscribed in almost a decade but when I left, the audio quality was really bad -- terrible digital compression artifacts -- and there wasn't really anything that interesting in terms of musical programming that couldn't be had with a streaming service like Spotify. Maybe it's all Stern and sports content that's driving revenue or is there still a big legion of people who actually subscribe for the music?

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As another reply said, there are plenty of places where you still can’t get a cell signal but you can get satellite. Sirius is huge for Truckers for this reason. But even where I live (Rural) If I drive East I don’t have cell signal pretty much until I hit I-5 once I leave the area around my town. It takes an hour ish to hit I-5 directly but the route I prefer to take if I’m headed to Longview or Portland which is the only reason I’d go that way is along the Columbia River and there is no cell signal for what is about an hour and a half of the drive.

I mean my music is downloaded for offline use and I don’t want a radio style of listening experience, but for my parents it is the only viable way for them to listen to music on that drive. And with regular radio you’re going to be trying to find stations you want to listen to as you live in and out of range.

Granted my parents also have a grandfathered lifetime membership.

I actually really like SiriusXM. I have 3-4 stations that I play nearly constantly whether in the car, on the house sonos system, or while on transit. My 3-year-old car has a decent (stock) sound-system, and I honestly don't hear any compression artifacts. Their IP streaming is high-quality.

Most of their music stations are basically well-curated, 4-hour playlists. Most channels have guest hosts/DJs that are legitimate to the genres (e.g. Diplo hosts his station at times) that update the playlists periodically. I still augment my music with Apple Music and podcasts, but I spend far more time with Sirius.

The unfortunate part is that they still play stupid and hostile pricing games. "Promotions" that you have to call to renew to get the stupid $25/month charge reduced to like $7/month. At that price it beats Pandora, terrestrial (am/fm) radio, and even Spotify/Apple Music if you primarily listen to curated playlists.

You sound pretty close to me to be honest. When my wife and I go on a long trip it makes it easy to put on in the car. I tend to have it on when I'm working around the house during the weekend. For me it fills in a void of wanting to listen to something more than background music, but not wanting to choose more than a genre that fits my mood. For whatever reasons all of the algorithmic "stations" that I've had on other services either deviate too much from what I originally wanted, or are too narrow and don't get enough variety.

If I drove more I'd probably fork over the money for Sirius. I had it for free in my car for a while and it was certainly much better than FM stations. I did one week-long road trip in the Western U.S. and it was pretty cool to just keep it on the same station and it works even when there's no cell signal. Even their pop/hits stations are way better than my local FM stations, both in music selection/variation and obviously no ads/terrible DJ chatter.

But with my current driving habits that's maybe one or two weeks a year where I would really care to have it.

But wouldn't Spotify music and podcasts be a better option? Download content for listening when you lack cell coverage?

In no way am i able to understand how radio would be a better alternative, but thats just my own bias.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for $5/month or whatever discount I'm paying, it's well worth it to have a wide variety of music available on demand. I learn things I didn't know, hear music I'd not otherwise hear, occasionally they'll have well-established musicians & producers do a set and talk about people they know and why they like their music so much.

I'm sure Spotify has its own advantages (I'm a long-time Pandora user, haven't tried it) but not having to plan anything in advance and having full access to all of the stations in the middle of nowhere is quite nice.

I’d pay $5 a month if it was going to be the permanent price! When I’ve looked into it it’s more like $20 a month.

Based on my limited time with the service (bought a new vehicle last January) if I let the trial period subscription lapse, they'll offer the lower price after a couple of weeks to lure me back in.

I just let myself be lured, and anticipate doing so next time.

I refuse to support that business model of quadrupling the price for customers who forget to beg for the intro price every year. It feels so scummy. So Sirius gets no money from me.

I agree, they also make it really hard to cancel, requiring waiting on hold and arguing with them a la AOL. They don’t seem to realize that the fact they behave this way is objectionable to whatever my demographic is… millennials I guess. I love the programming on Sirius XM but refuse to use it on principle.

I figure if I can swallow my objections and give Disney, Amazon, and Google money, Sirius is barely a scratch on my conscience.

I don’t like it on principle, but also I don’t like it because I know I’m likely to forget.

It is always possible to get the service for about $5-7/month by contacting customer support and mentioning the price and switching to a competitor. They’ll put you on a promo that lasts a year for $5-7/month. You, in turn, will put another “save $100” reminder into your calendar for next year before the billing date.. and the cycle will continue. The cycle is well documented on the subreddit, no need to take me at my word.

Yes it’s dumb but sxm also works better for my personal situation than Spotify etc.

I already pay for Apple Music and use that the vast majority of the time, especially when I’m by myself. But I still put the local FM hits station on regularly, either as background music when driving with friends or family or just when I can’t be bothered to choose something on my phone. I’d probably check out their genre stations and non-music content from time to time. It just doesn’t add up to enough to make it worth the cost, but it could if I found myself driving more.

Locally stored podcasts work, but Spotify over the air can accidentally rack up some nasty data roaming charges that you don't realize until later. And there are significant stretches of the highway where cellphone data is spotty (pun not intended).

Siris radio works everywhere you aren't driving next to something blocking the line of sight to the sky. It maintains the channel across significant distances so you're not hunting for "ok, what to listen to next?" (one time when driving to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving and changing the station as one faded I heard Alices Restaurant four times).

The main thing with Siris for driving is that its got DJs and news and such.

On my great road trip I had an iPod loaded up with songs and had that on shuffle for a few months... and while I had a few hundred hours of songs, they were all things I heard before.

Part of listening to the radio, Spotify, or Siris is that the next song might be something different.

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https://4m3ric4.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33217395

> Download content for listening when you lack cell coverage?

That's how I use Spotify, and I've gotten the impression that nobody at Spotify has actually eaten their own dogfood w.r.t. offline listening:

- Downloaded songs/albums/playlists will occasionally un-download themselves

- Even when they're already downloaded, the UI will occasionally insist on loading some online resource, preventing me from actually picking something out of my downloaded library until either I regain cell reception or the UI eventually gives up

Meanwhile, Spotify's radio feature seems to be getting progressively worse, and gaps are popping up in its library. Spotify was at one point the thing that got me to stop pirating music; I'm about ready to start doing so again (or buying from Bandcamp for the select few artists I listen to with music on there).

I feel the same confusion about why anyone would want to download content. I don't want to pick specific bands/albums/songs. I want to always be listening live to new stuff. I also think all podcasts are awful (boring and toxic).

My in laws are in their 70s and still drive. They have CarPlay and Apple Music but Sirius works like the radio. I think sometimes companies like Apple, for all their UI genius, miss the obvious option to just mimic the thing they are trying to kill. In this case, just have an option to just make a fake dial of station and skip around. If feel similarly about tv services like YouTube tv and Hulu, just mimic the think you’re trying to kill.

The new things that become popular aren't strictly better than the things they replace. In many cases, it seems like the newness factor that makes it popular to people at all

If you look through their releases, the growth appears to be coming from doing a better job of getting a free-trial included in almost every new car and like half of used cars (I assume this is done through dealer networks).

Given that, if free-trials convert at a steady rate, voila, you have growth.

In terms of why people like it:

1) There's something somewhat Tik-Tik-like about having hyper-specialized music served to you without putting in the work of building a playlist

2) Streaming services have the somewhat annoying tendency of 'recommending' new songs to you so they can pay the artists less, since they were a 'discovery' mechanism. This leads to bad outcomes if all you want is 80's on 8 (said differently, if you like 80's music, chances are you know the songs you like already)

3) The lowest their is $13/month, which is cheaper than a phone plan with more data for a lot of people

4) There's a certain 'Sunday Ticket/League Pass' element, since you can get the radio coverage of nearly any pro sports game (even in home markets I often struggle to find the radio coverage of certain games)

5) For the traditional satellite service, they're broadcast only so they have no idea what any subscriber is listening to at any point, and some people like that.

Had it for years on the road for work and it was a life saver, never having to search for stations and listening to ads all the time. When I started working local I dropped it for streaming and that was good enough.

A few years later I was taking a multi state trip and reactivated, when I got back I re-subbed both vehicles. It's any kind of radio with almost no interruptions and it's worth the price.

> For the traditional satellite service, they're broadcast only so they have no idea what any subscriber is listening to at any point, and some people like that.

Newer cars collect data on what you're listening to and report back. At least on mine it can be disabled, but it is something that's out there.

>Maybe it's all Stern and sports content that's driving revenue or is there still a big legion of people who actually subscribe for the music?

My dad subscribes for Bruce Springsteen's channel/show/whatever. Dude just can never get enough of Springsteen. I'd imagine there are other fans of other artists doing the same.

Pearl Jam Radio is fantastic - they play a couple full concerts per day.

Another thing that Sirius does that a lot of people aren't talking about is their data services. Having updated weather and fish maps live while you're offshore is pretty handy and satellite internet connections can be very pricey.

...you don't need a (relatively) expensive single sideband set and radio-nerd tendencies to pick up weather data offshore where you live? That is pretty great if so. Would that there were more of it.

I'm a little confused about your comment.

This is stuff like fishing recommendations by species, sea surface heights, temperature contors, 30m deep temperature condors, plankton concentrations, weather radar, storm tracks, wave heights, and more and then integrated into common Garmin, Raymarine, Lowrance, Simrad, and other equipment that many boats would already have. All of that data constantly updated and refreshed live even when you're miles out to sea and can't pick up common line of sight style transmissions.

Its not just a METAR weather report from an airport kinda near the shore.

I know the stuff. I wasn't clear, and was asking, quite what the parent poster is mentioning people getting here as it didn't sound quite like the forms of this service I'm aware of - I'm not sure there is something like it everywhere. Setups I've seen with full "straight onto your plotter, live" stuff have only been satellite.

The reason I subscribe to Sirius/XM is for simulcasts of news and business channels, listening to live sports events (while driving or not in front of a TV), and some of the music genre channels that are hosted by DJs, in that order.

I am switching my subscription from satellite to streaming because I will save a pretty significant portion of the monthly fee, I stream everything else I listen to or watch at home, in the office, or in the car, and the CarPlay experience is much better when you are using 100% streaming audio.

Or all the folks who live where the cell reception is sh*t (eg off the freeway) but can see the sky...

Are there that many people or places though? Even from my small hometown with a population of 300 tucked away in the mountains, there's 5g cell service from the major providers.

I'm certain places like that exist, but I'm guessing it's far less than most would imagine.

My bet is a non-insignificant amount of sirus's money today comes from their model of making subscriptions really annoying to cancel. And, of course, preying on old people that may have forgot about their subscription or don't get streaming.

There is a very large number of areas in Colorado that don't have coverage.

I didn't realize how sparse coverage was in the West until I moved out here. Once you're 5 minutes off of an interstate outside of a metro area it's pretty common still to have no signal.

Verizon and AT&T do pretty well as long as you stick to highways, though there will still be a few dead zones even on the interstates. T-Mobile is hopeless once you are 5 miles outside the suburbs of any city. My wife has T-Mobile for her work phone and there are a few dead zones in our suburb of 100,000 people.

Oh wow, didn't know there was still such a difference, I've only ever had TMobile and Mint.

I wonder if it's worth waiting for T-Mobile's satellite features, or if I should move to Verizon?

Absolutely.

Driving up from the SF Bay to Tahoe, you'll lose cell service as you pass through the mountains - especially if you take the Highway 50 route. Drive up to Oregon, and you'll lose cell service for a long stretch roughly near Klamath Falls. (As an aside, that part of the country doesn't even have NEXRAD weather radar.)

And this is all while on the freeway or major highways. There's plenty of places out west without a reliable cell signal, or sometimes a signal that's so weak that it's not usable for data.

Where I live in New Mexico has consistently poor reception withing about 60 miles. My Spotify is almost always in offline mode since it chokes on poor signal. Radio and TV have repeaters on a nearby mountain that rebroadcast a few stations. Meanwhile Sirius works everywhere except in my garage.

For me it mostly replaces my CD changer, which doesn't exist in newer cars. When I can't decide what to listen to, have poor signal, or don't want to fiddle with the controls, it gives me a nice selection on fallbacks.

Your cell service is likely subsidized by some grant so it’s biasing your mental model or it’s a popular tourist destination.

Sirius XM is still sold as a subscription and addon package to a lot of new vehicles so the revenue probably comes in from recurring monthly subscription payments that people just get used to paying for so they can have satellite based music wherever they are.

I think a large part of their market is that the radios come pre-installed in new cars. I dislike how it is impossible to subscribe to the middle 2 tiers of programming without actually placing a telephone call. I have zero interest in Stern or sports.

I subscribe mostly for the music (maybe 15+ years now?), Spotify's algorithms are pretty crappy IMO. TIDAL's are better, but they're really expensive. Sirius has very good curation. And I like some of the DJs. News, stern and sports also factor in as nice to haves. It also doesn't hit my mobile data plan in the car.

I thought Spotify and Tidal are the same price, $10/mo

TIDAL's Hifi Plus was the main reason to get it, for $20. Though I guess it's fair that doesn't restrict access to their (overall better) recommendation algos.

SiriusXM plays a huge role in aviation and maritime data (e.g. onboard weather). I bet things like this are a large portion of the revenue.

Their sports offerings are what gets me. I watch a lot of hockey and use it to listen to random games while doing other things.

huh never thought about radio games. all of the streaming packages seem overpriced but radio might be a much crappier but tolerable option, with the bonus of having other radio channels.

still gonna donate to Soma.FM tho

Monopsony strikes again.

Sirius still exists because FM radio is absolute dogshit in the US thanks to the Clear Channel/iHeartMedia conglomerate effectively owning everything.

Your FM dial is absolutely terrible unless you happen to live near a good college radio station or an unusual city (San Diego can pick up some interesting Mexican stations, for example).

> the audio quality was really bad -- terrible digital compression artifacts

I've been subscribing for about a decade and I haven't experienced this. Possibly something in the tech stack here has improved.

> there wasn't really anything that interesting in terms of musical programming that couldn't be had with a streaming service like Spotify

It's easier and cheaper to get satellite radio in a moving car than reliable Internet. You can save music offline (although I find a USB stick a much easier way of doing that than a smartphone with an app with offline storage, but then again most of the music I listen to is at least a couple of decades old), but you can't get live broadcasts of things like sports events or concerts.

> I've been subscribing for about a decade and I haven't experienced this. Possibly something in the tech stack here has improved.

I've listened to Sirius in several environments across many years, spanning most of its existence. In just about every case, I found the audio quality to be intolerably terrible. This is in multiple cars in different years. Curiously, I've noticed a strain of people that claim that it sounds good. Sometimes, I've been in the same car with them at the same time, listening to the same thing. I can't account for it. I'm generally not an audio snob, but satellite radio sounds so bad, I can't stand it at all. I'd rather have silence.

I'm not sure the underlying reason for this, but I guess some people just hear differently.

> I've noticed a strain of people that claim that it sounds good.

I would say it sounds good, exactly; I can notice a difference between it and, say, listening to a high quality recording from a USB stick. But I wouldn't say it's intolerably terrible, either. Is it that you literally can't hear music, just noise? Or is it that you can hear music, but with other noise overlaid on top of it?

I can hear the music. There's some noise on top, but also the high frequency components seem to be pretty scrambled and mostly missing. Depending on the channel.

Hm, weird. That's not something I've experienced.

I think it depends on the channel too. I've read the low number channels get more bandwidth and the channels above 300 are a newer more efficient codec that not all radios support.

I've also read the Sirius version is worse than the XM version. Yes, they merged many years ago but they still run two incompatible systems. Ford was still installing Sirius until 2021.

> I've also read the Sirius version is worse than the XM version.

I wasn't aware of this. This would explain why I am not seeing the sound quality issues that other people in this discussion are describing; my latest vehicle has XM.

I subscribe and enjoy it. It's great to catch Formula 1 when I'm out and about doing errands, and for 99% of my use case the music side of it is just fine. Commuting to and from work I don't need much more than "random playlist of genre x"

It works out to be $120/year, and that's with Howard Stern, and all the sports etc.

Could I do all this streaming with my phone? Most likely, however with this I don't worry when I drive down into the States that I'm now "Roaming" or really worry about data usage at all. Also I don't have to think about it.

My folks had Sirius in their cars when they were still driving, in a mountainous pretty rural area (town of <15k in mountainous terrain within national forest). I'm not sure what if any radio stations even exist for them, when I tried tuning a clock radio in their house I found nothing. Sure there's streaming or podcasts via phone or other Internet connection, but you're paying for those as well - and there are significant chunks of the drive to that town that still don't have cell service even on a state highway.

> I left, the audio quality was really bad -- terrible digital compression artifacts -- and there wasn't really anything that interesting in terms of musical programming

I'm about to leave. Every time I go to cancel, they hook me in with a pretty good deal. Last time it was "How about $9 for the next six months?" I thought they meant $9/month. Nope, a one-off charge.

But if I listen to any channel over the course of a day, I am guaranteed to hear the same song three-four times and their diversity/catalog seems very limited.

I subscribe to the Sirius XM app. I like the music stations. I have Apple Music too so I could get along without it, but I actually like the DJs, and although I could probably find similar channels on Apple, some of the Sirius mixes are a bit unique so it’s worth $10 a month to me.

The app. Not the satellite. The satellite sound quality is horrible. I can see how satellite was worth it before 4G, but now I just use my phone in the car.

I like road trips. And then I really find Sirius XM well worth the money. FM coverage is too local and choppy when going through hills / mountains. 5G? Yea, right. The closest you get is 4G from another provider, which throttles you (e.g. using T-Mobile, which will jump to AT&T where there is no T-Mobile. It'll show 4G but the speeds are slower than 56K).

So Sirius XM there it is.

Tmobile jumps to AT&T? What did you do for that to happen? We have good AT&T service in our house but when I tried the Tmobile test drive (or whatever it is that gets you a free hotspot for a while) it struggled to stay connected at all.

If you try to tune to AM stations though it is literally 90% noise.

It may as well be dead because if you removed the regulation it would still be 90% noise.

I never liked Stern. I use it because it came with the car and is only 5$ a month

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