XM Radio and why it sucks
A couple weeks back, someone rudely hit my car as it was parked on the street in front of my house. As a result, I’ve been in rental cars for a couple of weeks now. One of those rental cars was a brand new Cadillac DTS.
That car came with XM Satellite radio, and that gave me about a week to try it out.
Let me tell you, XM Satellite Radio is crap. I’m not even going to say that I think it is crap– I’m going to outright say that it is crap. Let me explain.
First, it just does not work very well here in Downtown Savannah. As I drove through the squares– very common for locals and even more common for tourists– XM cut out every 60 seconds or so, for at least 5-10 seconds at a time.
Now I know that trees block the signal, and I know that we have a lot of trees. But, I also know that local AM and FM radio stations have no signal problems here in Savannah. I also know that XM bills their product as digital radio. Fine, it’s digital. But who cares when it is basically unusable?
Every time the signal dropped, it showed me that XM is really a step backwards.
Another reason: Their music sucks. I basically listened to six or seven stations. Blues, reggae, classic rock, 60s, 70s, CNN, and some talk station.
I heard zero BB King songs on the blues station. I heard zero Buddy Guy songs on the blues station. I heard zero Muddy Waters songs. I heard zero Robert Johnson songs.
I heard many, many “new” blues songs by artists with less soul than the whitest white guy you’ve ever seen. Imagine Larry Bird singing blues. Or maybe Conan O’Brien. I imagine that would sound a lot like the crap XM plays.
Not only did XM play a very crappy selection of blues, but also in a week I heard several songs repeat several times. Blues is a huge genre. Let’s not repeat until we’ve played some of the classics, OK?
Another reason XM sucks: Their DJs suck. I don’t know where they got these guys, but they’re just terrible. They’re annoying, their sound quality is poor, and they fail to provide anything of value to the broadcast.
Here is the main reason XM Radio sucks: XM Radio sucks. OK, to expand: The sound quality sucks.
It really does. If you disagree, that is either because your ear is weak, or you are in denial that you were suckered by a marketing pitch and are paying for less-than-FM quality radio.
I’ve done some research. The research indicates that XM’s average bitrate is 64kbps. Their minimum is 32kbps, and their maximum is 80kbps.
NONE of these equal the quality of FM radio.
This is just like the digital cable myth. Everyone thinks that because it is digital, it must be better. Well, folks, I hate to break it to you but digital cable is actually digitally delivered cable. Basically, it is the cable companies’ way of saying, “Please, pay us more for lower quality.”
Don’t believe me? Fine. Just go ahead and keep watching your crappy digital cable with its poor picture on your overpriced lcd/plasma tv that can’t produce a picture at the same quality of a tube tv.
Ignorance is bliss, and marketing is gospel.
Mike
This blog is great and just re-affirms everything I’m going through with this god awful company. I am literally on hold yet again for the 4th time as we speak trying to cancel this service. The non english speaking reps don’t seem to know how to do anything but transfer you to another dept. And I love the fact they have the most annoying music and constant commercials for their hold music to try to get you too TRY and log onto their website. Yea, tried that but apparently they don’t recognize my name, phone number, address nor radio ID. How do I fix it you ask? Simple, call the bloody customer service dept. Years ago long before satellite radio, I swore I would pay good money to listen to radio without commercials. Satellite radio was a god sent, and I was happy to pay the money. But guess what? All my favorite XM stations now have fn commercials!! What the hell am I paying for? And don’t even get me started on the DJ’s. I scream “Shut the F*CK up” at my radio on a daily bases. Dangerous Darren and Nina Blackwood, and that english guy on Area can all go jump off a bridge. I let my service expire once, and had automated calls from XM for 3 months as much as 3 times a day. When I told them to stop, they said it would take up to 2 months for the calls to stop. 2 MONTHS!! Are you kidding me? What, does that message have to travel to Mumbai via the pony express??? If I have to listen to this music 3 more minutes I’m just going to cancel my credit card. Thank god they don’t have my current telephone number. DO NOT GET XM RADIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The first three months were slightly disappointing to say the least. I was under the impression that i was paying for commercial free high quality sound radio. What i got was “meh” quality sound, a radio signal that disappeared everytime i get too close to a tree, and oh yeah, commercials, lots of em. The straw that broke the camels back though was when my renewal came up they made me pay $64 for 6 months of service, when i was on the 3 month plan. I called them to correct the issue and they told me my refund would arrive in 2 business days. 2 days later, i got a refund for $6.07 this prompted me to call back and ask them “wtf?” To which they replied that $55 is the normal price for 3 months (which still doesnt add up numerically) they then told me that the lower amount i paid for the first three months, was just a promo period, (i paid something like $36 for the first three months) i then went to check their website, and it said my package was $12.95 a month and said nothing about promo periods or the like. When i told them i wanted to cancel and to give me a refund i was put on hold for another 15 minutes and then told i would only get a partial refund of about $40. Dont do business with this company, they have no problem with lying to you and stealing your $