It's Been A While...

[Tristan]

Since I have had Satellite Radio. I started this Satellite Radio appreciation thing back in 2001 when I saw this commercial in a movie theater before watching American Pie 2.

I moved to Indiana and started college and got obsessed with a now defunct site known as clubxm.com. I was one of the moderators on that page. I would probably go read some posts from that site now and think I was a dumb kid back then. Crazy to go look at the wayback machine. XM Satellite Forums - Forum Index

My first Satellite Radio was a Pioneer GEX-P900 GEX-P900XM - | Pioneer Electronics USA

It was pretty epic to my 18 year old self having radio coming from space to my crappy 1993 Plymouth Acclaim. But it was in the days before podcasts or mp3 players. Smart phones really and it got me away from the country music stations that seemed to take over the very odd area of the country for this West Coast Seattle kid. Not having much money I would try and take advantage of the Friends and Family programs from XM Satellite Radio. Had a Delphi SkyFi then a SkyFi 2. Got an audiovox unit for Sirius as well.

ClubXM had kinda gone the wayside with sites like SiriusBackstage.com and XMFan.com. I got asked to join the team with SiriusBackstage.com and had a great time donating time to them. We actually got to go to New York City and have some meetings with Sirius. Eventually I kinda just fell out of the loop and not really looking at Satellite Radio again for a long time.

Fast forward to today I bought a new car and I get a year of Satellite Radio again. Still baffles my mind that Sirius and XM are now one company. The DJ's I used to love on XM Radio spending a lot of time listening to 90's on 9 and BPM XM 81 are now gone. BPM is now channel 52 which seems bizarre to my mind. I think my biggest loss was XM 27 Cinemagic. I used to listen to that all the time.

I remember XM Channel 150 was the Comedy Channel on XM and they had this great programming director. But then he got caught up in a mess of doing bad things with children. I remember I would e-mail XM and I would get a phone call back to discuss things. It was a crazy time in the early 2000's.

So I'm giving this Satellite Radio thing another try this time to see how it goes. Will it replace the Bluetooth connection between my car and my phone for music choice. It's hard to tell being a week in. But I'm looking forward to seeing what Satellite Radio does for me. I'm considering picking up the traffic package with my Satellite Radio since that could be handy on the navigation.

Hope everyone that I used to chat with back in the day is doing well and staying awesome.

 

[HecticArt]

Tristan!
Good to see you. It's funny how things look over the years. The things we expect to stay the same, the things we expect to be different, and then what they really turn out to be. We're still plugging along on the legacy of the Backstage. It's quieter these days with less new radios and major programming development on the satellite side. While we're still satellite, we're open to pretty much anything entertainment too. I hope you hang out some more and offer some observations from your perspective checking back into the scene.

 

[Jon]

Since I have had Satellite Radio. I started this Satellite Radio appreciation thing back in 2001 when I saw this commercial in a movie theater before watching American Pie 2.

I moved to Indiana and started college and got obsessed with a now defunct site known as clubxm.com. I was one of the moderators on that page. I would probably go read some posts from that site now and think I was a dumb kid back then. Crazy to go look at the wayback machine. XM Satellite Forums - Forum Index

My first Satellite Radio was a Pioneer GEX-P900 GEX-P900XM - | Pioneer Electronics USA

It was pretty epic to my 18 year old self having radio coming from space to my crappy 1993 Plymouth Acclaim. But it was in the days before podcasts or mp3 players. Smart phones really and it got me away from the country music stations that seemed to take over the very odd area of the country for this West Coast Seattle kid. Not having much money I would try and take advantage of the Friends and Family programs from XM Satellite Radio. Had a Delphi SkyFi then a SkyFi 2. Got an audiovox unit for Sirius as well.

ClubXM had kinda gone the wayside with sites like SiriusBackstage.com and XMFan.com. I got asked to join the team with SiriusBackstage.com and had a great time donating time to them. We actually got to go to New York City and have some meetings with Sirius. Eventually I kinda just fell out of the loop and not really looking at Satellite Radio again for a long time.

Fast forward to today I bought a new car and I get a year of Satellite Radio again. Still baffles my mind that Sirius and XM are now one company. The DJ's I used to love on XM Radio spending a lot of time listening to 90's on 9 and BPM XM 81 are now gone. BPM is now channel 52 which seems bizarre to my mind. I think my biggest loss was XM 27 Cinemagic. I used to listen to that all the time.

I remember XM Channel 150 was the Comedy Channel on XM and they had this great programming director. But then he got caught up in a mess of doing bad things with children. I remember I would e-mail XM and I would get a phone call back to discuss things. It was a crazy time in the early 2000's.

So I'm giving this Satellite Radio thing another try this time to see how it goes. Will it replace the Bluetooth connection between my car and my phone for music choice. It's hard to tell being a week in. But I'm looking forward to seeing what Satellite Radio does for me. I'm considering picking up the traffic package with my Satellite Radio since that could be handy on the navigation.

Hope everyone that I used to chat with back in the day is doing well and staying awesome.

I think in my case it'll just be something else to listen to on top of FM and my music streaming services. My next car stereo will be the best of all possible worlds with Sirius, CarPlay, Bluetooth and HD Radio for the locals I still do listen to. Those do exist but they're $700. That can wait until I trade this Fiat in for an AWD sometime before NEXT winter. Great car for summer, sucks in winter.

 

[SISO]

Things aren't as exciting as they once were for sure. Programming is relatively set (though the One Hit Wonder channel is a fresh idea and I think GREAT), new radios are a thing of the past (remember the hype about the S50 and Stilett0?), and the shock of Howard has subsided. The exciting thing was that we were a part of something new and innovative, that's gone. I still prefer Satellite Radio, I could live without it sure, but I would rather not. For nearly 10 years I've been a happy subscriber.

Hope all is well with everyone.

 

[HecticArt]

Good to see you SISO.

Hope you're doing well too.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

Satrad certainly has lost its 'lustre'. Still great to have. I have rental car for weekend which has satrad but not activated. I do miss it in the car. All I really listen is in car and recorded AT40 or 80s countdowns on my SL2 now.

One note to OP, xmfan.com is still there. A shadow of its former self but it is still there.

 

[Tristan]

Satrad certainly has lost its 'lustre'. Still great to have. I have rental car for weekend which has satrad but not activated. I do miss it in the car. All I really listen is in car and recorded AT40 or 80s countdowns on my SL2 now.

One note to OP, xmfan.com is still there. A shadow of its former self but it is still there.

I recently recovered my XMFan.com account. I was never really a big part of that site. I had a brief stint with the owner of that site and were going to try and launch XMDude.com but that never really took any shape. I had a chance to get in on XMFan.com as an early moderator. I went the way of SiriusBackstage.com which was a fun experience. All the moderators at the time got a trip to New York City and had a good time checking out the city back in 2003.

Crazy to think I started this whole Satellite Radio obsession back in 2001 when I was going to college in Indiana. This Seattle kid really missed his non country and non christian stations and Satellite Radio was refuge when 56k modems and spending 20-30 mins downloading 1 MP3 was the norm. But these days I walk around with a computer in my hand and can have a song in a few seconds.

I still on the fence about keeping the Satellite Radio. I like it but I don't $15-$20 a month love it. When you got everything on XM for $9.99 and $2 extra for the Playboy Radio channel it was an interesting time. But not sure if it's worth it these days when I pay $9.99 a month for Google Play Music and get the added bonus of YouTube Red.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

I recently recovered my XMFan.com account. I was never really a big part of that site. I had a brief stint with the owner of that site and were going to try and launch XMDude.com but that never really took any shape. I had a chance to get in on XMFan.com as an early moderator. I went the way of SiriusBackstage.com which was a fun experience. All the moderators at the time got a trip to New York City and had a good time checking out the city back in 2003.

Crazy to think I started this whole Satellite Radio obsession back in 2001 when I was going to college in Indiana. This Seattle kid really missed his non country and non christian stations and Satellite Radio was refuge when 56k modems and spending 20-30 mins downloading 1 MP3 was the norm. But these days I walk around with a computer in my hand and can have a song in a few seconds.

I still on the fence about keeping the Satellite Radio. I like it but I don't $15-$20 a month love it. When you got everything on XM for $9.99 and $2 extra for the Playboy Radio channel it was an interesting time. But not sure if it's worth it these days when I pay $9.99 a month for Google Play Music and get the added bonus of YouTube Red.

If the deciding point is price, when it comes time to renew call their cancellation department. You can get deals particularly if you tell them just that it is not worth $15-20/month.

 

[goreds2]

Still with XM since Dec. 25, 2004.

 

[Aaron]

Still with XM since Dec. 25, 2004.

Hi goreds2!
Welcome back..

 

[goreds2]

Hi goreds2!
Welcome back..

 

[JHDK]

It's certainly been a long while since I last had Sirius. The Stiletto SL2 was the last device I had to listen to Sirius with a subscription. I loved that thing and the S50 before it. I stopped Sirius all together around 2016. That's when I stopped listening the Stern and I wasn't paying for Stern back then anyway, just getting the show through Twitter links.

Well when I bought Goose tickets a couple days ago a popup appeared after checkout offering 4 free months of the app with all channels included.

So far it's fine, it took me a bit to find the channel list, and I'm not sure if you can channel surf suing the app. I think you have to go to the full channel list every time and pick them so that kinda sucks.

Anyway I haven't used it much but I have enjoyed JAM_ON and Coffee House. 2 channels I liked back in the aughts that I'm happy still exist. They have dedicated Dave, Dead and Phish channels now so that's cool too and I think they simulcast some Goose shows from nugs.net so I will likely check that out.

I guess overall the app doesn't seem as intuitive as Spotify but maybe that's because I haven't used it much yet.

I'll report back later with my listening habits over the next couple months.

 

[scotchandcigar]

It's certainly been a long while since I last had Sirius. The Stiletto SL2 was the last device I had to listen to Sirius with a subscription. I loved that thing and the S50 before it. I stopped Sirius all together around 2016. That's when I stopped listening the Stern and I wasn't paying for Stern back then anyway, just getting the show through Twitter links.

Well when I bought Goose tickets a couple days ago a popup appeared after checkout offering 4 free months of the app with all channels included.

So far it's fine, it took me a bit to find the channel list, and I'm not sure if you can channel surf suing the app. I think you have to go to the full channel list every time and pick them so that kinda sucks.

Anyway I haven't used it much but I have enjoyed JAM_ON and Coffee House. 2 channels I liked back in the aughts that I'm happy still exist. They have dedicated Dave, Dead and Phish channels now so that's cool too and I think they simulcast some Goose shows from nugs.net so I will likely check that out.

I guess overall the app doesn't seem as intuitive as Spotify but maybe that's because I haven't used it much yet.

I'll report back later with my listening habits over the next couple months.

The Spectrum was playing Goose about every 5th song, but I'm not seeing it on their playlist right now. Maybe they only get played when a new album is out.

 

[JHDK]

The Spectrum was playing Goose about every 5th song, but I'm not seeing it on their playlist right now. Maybe they only get played when a new album is out.

Live stuff or album tracks?

 

[JHDK]

I'm over a month into my 4 month free trial and at this rate I definitely won't bee keeping Sirius once it is over in October.

Besides what I talked about here when I initially started the trial, a couple days ago I listened to a DMB show. They have a cool thing where they air their Friday shows live and you can listen to them back later so I listened to one from when they were in Camden in July. It was a good show. I'll likely listen to a few more of their shows.

But that is all I've used the app for so far. Nearly everything else I listen to I get from Spotify.

 

[Kryptonite]

Taking Charge
"A co-worker had a car where it would come with a 30 day free trial of Sirius XM. He never signed up, but after getting a new battery installed he found that the trial renewed itself."

"Eventually he figured out that all he needed to do for free Sirius XM was to disconnect the battery every 30 days and the trial would automatically reset."

– Spindlebrook

The Greatest Legal Loopholes People Have Ever Found

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