Beck446 said:
Yeah, it makes sense if you live where traditional radio signals are poor. But I have a feeling that most of the subscribers to this stuff are 25-30 year old males who thinks it's cool. Cable gives alot of great entertainment and news; satellite radio gives the same stuff that traditional radio does, except without ads. You're paying $200/year to look and feel cool. There's no way around it... unless you're a trucker or have a 2 hour commute or live in the country. I'm sure that 95% of their subscribers don't.
Just my opinion.
I've got XM and I don't spend $200 a year on it, I pay $156 a year and it is worth every penny, you are overlooking that there are ways to record XM and move it to a portable player. My XM receiver cost me $29 and that's a one time fee until I buy a new one, so for $156 a year I have access to a very deep playlist in any genre that I want that I can record and move to my iPod...so for a little over 42 cents a day and not needing to put up with 20 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes I'd say that it is well worth every cent.
As for the comment about portable XM units being between $200-$300 you couldn't be farther from the truth, you can easily find a portable XM unit for $100 after a $50 rebate.
For those of you who say sat radio are fluff you are mistaken, XM with well over 5 million subscribers and Sirius with over 3 million, is more than fluff, it is a viable entertainment alternative that traditional radio has taken notice of and tried to squash, just like the RIAA did when the iPod and other portable players took off. If you want to see how much of a threat a product is to the market look at how it's competition react to it, if it were fluff than traditional radio wouldn't bother trying to impose strict restrictions on it, they'd ignore it.
It is like when cable TV first came out, TV station didn't think people would pay for TV when they could get it for free with an antenna, how many of you have TV with no cable...they called it fluff too...I'll bet that 99% of us shell out between $50 and $90 a month for pay TV when you still can get local network TV for free.
I'll gladly pay my 42 cents a day and enjoy great programming that isn't interrupted every few minutes for an ad for Uncle Ted's Furniture Warehouse or a lawyer looking to file a class action lawsuit, enjoy your commercials and the frustration of hearing a DJ talk...I'll enjoy my XM (in my car, in my house, in the office) and sometimes when you see me with my iPod, guess what I just might be enjoying recorded XM there too