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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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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> 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).

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