Recently, we’ve acquired a new (to us) car that has SiriusXM built in, just like almost every car built in 2019 or newer has. I decided to go ahead and activate the 3-month complimentary trial to see how things have gone in the past 20 years. I used to be a staunch XM believer when the service first came out many moons ago. The extremely deep playlists, DJ’s that loved the music they curated, and keeping things fresh throughout the service were something I had never experienced. Since music streaming wasn’t really all that widely rolled out. Plus, there were many niche channels that scratched the itch perfectly. One of those channels was called Cinemagic; it played movie soundtracks that the channel director lovingly had short clips from the movie in between the tracks, to give it that personal touch of someone who loved the genre just as much as the rest of us did.
I, like so many more of us who loved the XM library and service, was crushed when we learned that XM would be acquired by what was deemed to be the lesser competition, Sirius. The new direction proved to be fewer deep hits and more repetition of popular songs. The service became more in line with what you would experience with regular FM radio: DJs (if they weren’t pre-recorded) talking all the way to hitting that post, to put it simply, the DJ talking over the intro of the song right up to the point when the lyrics begin.
The magic had been extracted from XM by corporate; channels were ‘streamlined’ to fit into the new direction, and many were removed to make room for what they referred to as ‘what the focus groups and customer surveys wanted’.
It’s been almost 20 years for me since I last listened to SiriusXM, and I was curious as to what this modern experience would be. Luckily, I only have 3 months to see what it’s all about, and it’s free to do so; I don’t have to deal with trying to cancel the service. Even though I’ve heard of all those horror stories.