Does Satellite Radio Play the Same Thing Over and Over and Over and Over and Over ?

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Is it me or do I keep hearing the same stuff on satellite radio, no matter what channel I land on?  As Steve Earle would ask ” . . . is there any body out there one-two-three on the satellite radio . . .”  Some great tunes out there, no doubt, but, considering that there is at least 100 years of content available from our planet, why is it that I seem to hear the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over ?  I pay for satellite so that I don’t have to listen to a) moronic “morning show” blabberers; b) advertisements; c) the “top 40” over and over and over.  But it seems to me that item “c” has really become overtly obvious, more so in the past couple of years since I started to subscribe to satellite radio.  Anyone else in this ilk?  (I try to shy away from the term “ilk” since I’m actose intolerant, but dang this subject is getting really annoying.)

15 thoughts on “Does Satellite Radio Play the Same Thing Over and Over and Over and Over and Over ?”




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  2. Thats why I am letting my subscription go. And I actually like Sat Rad. I listened to several of the Jazz stations and the old time story hour. Before they merged you would hear a lot more variety on the jazz stations. As for the story channel, there were to many times that I would tune to it at various times during the week and would hear the exact same story. I am not yet ready to move to HD radio so there really isnt a good alternative now so far as radio

  3. Ever since the merger, things have went downhill fast. I screamed to the top of my lungs to stop the merger, but to no avail. All of my favorite country stations have really sunk fast. They do play lots and lots of repeats and I’ve noticed the independent artists have become less and less.

  4. I listen to Stern, mostly. But I do have 4 channels I like – so 100 years of music matters to me not. I like to focus on the last 60 years mostly (1950’s – Present). There are actual DJ’s behind those stations, and I realize this. What channels do you listen to, I ask? If you generally like the same genre of music, you should expect such dupes – for instance:

    I listen to Classiv Vynil – whch is basically 60 and 70s “original rock”.
    Then, Classic Reqind, which is the “second generation” of these artists… overlap for sure.

    THEN, I have 80s.. which can have some artists from Classic Rewind, especially if they went new wave for an album or two. Plus, there are some do-dads in there I might really like.

    THEN, Boneyard – some old hard rock, some new, surely some overlap from Classic rewind (artist-wise) and some 80s dupes.

    We have 200 channels so we can find something we like – not really something that is not what we were expecting. Well, that is how I look at it.

    From there, I have my ipod shuffle, that has only Buckethead on it. All set.

  5. I dropped my XM-Sirius after three years. With the exception of a very few shows (say, Bob Dylan’s or Robbie Fulks…) the other programming is weak-loops of the same same same. The other programming is available on wifi radio, along with archive programming, and the usual suspects for streaming music. And MLB.Com gives me all the games on radio for much less. My Logitech Squeezebox (w/built-in rechargable radio) plays more stations, my own music library, and gives me access to entire libraries of content. Sat Radio has babble jockies and a shock jock. The delivery system is nice…but why not use it to give us interet radio programming instead? It would be like a cable TV operator actually letting you choose and pay for only the channels you actually want to watch…..

  6. Over several cross-country trips with Sat-radio, I came to the same conclusion. I searched for alternatives & am very happy with the 20,000+ streaming stations available via the internet & services like Shoutcast. I also enjoy Pandora. With an internet connected smartphone hooked to my car stereo, my music, news, talk radio, public radio & eclectic (ham radio anyone?) entertainment wants are fulfilled. It helps to have a phone – Palm Pre – with many streaming apps, & a carrier – Sprint- with an unlimited data plan.

  7. mwell – as a Canadian living above the 60th parallel, we ain’t got much choice here, especially for those 900-mile trips through the boreal forest. ’cause the caribou, you know, doesn’t listen much to anything so they haven’t built any radio stations around.
    I second the OP – at least over a span of a month or two the nice guys behind the buttons are feeding us the same tracks on and on. my remedy was changing preferences monthly – say I’ve been on Octane and ’80’s in May, I’ll move to ’90’s and Chill in June then ’70’s and Raw Dog in July.
    but then again, we shouldn’t rationalize like this when this is a paid service.
    as a former radio host, I remember acquiring new (or old) music being a tad hairy sometimes, with copyright and all paid in time… or not, depending on the owner’s financial situation. we had our share of tomatoes in the window for playing the same music ourselves. but then again – the scale Sirius and XM operate should prevent this from happening.
    (mumble: especially when there’s a commercial here and there… this thing is not 100% advertisement-free after all.)

  8. I used to have Sirius for the car but canceled after 2 years since it wasn’t “interesting” for me. Now I just use Pandora on the iPhone with the car kit. Works perfectly and loving it! Plus it’s free!!

  9. I’m still a *STAUNCH* advocate of satellite radio and will stick to my opinion that anyone who considers themselves an audiophile is doing themselves a disservice by *NOT* having this subscription-based service. I will agree that when you have decent internet service the need for sat radio becomes far less of a concern but as far as having access to unlimited streams of a wide variety of music this still remains be best option to date. There are commercials on only the fewest of stations (seemingly the ones ‘geared’ towards truckers) and i have the odd grumble when I occasionally tune in but there is a slew of others to listen to. For those of you who seem to begrudge the fact that sat radios playlists are indeed *NOT* infinite, take the chance and push the boundaries of your listening experience and see what else is out there on dial. There *ARE* a lot of options. I’m not ready to go back to “terrestrial radio” and listen to old fat guys pander for my attention while talking about things that insult what intelligence I perceive myself to have.

  10. I dropped my Sirius XM after 3 years also. My daughter and I both had the car receivers and she had the home dock. Same thing I noticed. The oldies stations have this marvelous history to pick from but I kept hearing the same songs within a month or so. Some of the other stations were bordering on that as well. No way was I gonna pay that quarterly rate for that stuff. Now if I could just get my local FM stations to play REAL oldies!

  11. I really only like Underground Garage and Outlaw Country, which have live DJs much of the time. I don’t have satellite radio in my car, but I have and iPod Classic with >12K songs on it, which is like having my own custom station.

  12. I too dropped my satrad — at one point I even had both Sirius and XM for at least a year, with flagship hardware for both, because I couldn’t decide which one I liked better. I ended up picking XM because even back then, their music playlists were a lot deeper — at least on the channels I listened to — than Sirius’ equivalents, especially on the non-“hits” channels. Of course when they “merged”, the Sirius side of the new entity’s programming won, and it took me a matter of days afterward to give up in disgust.

    I’m sure I would feel different if I was into sports or talk radio, especially since the merged entity now essentially has complete coverage of those genres regardless of which side of it you pick. But I’m not.

    For music I usually just listen to my iPod, or if I’m near wifi, Pandora or Slacker. For a while I used a Slacker G2 in the car but I lost it somewhere in my home office (no, I’m not on A&E’s “Hoarders”… yet 🙂 but now that the iPod Touch version of Slacker does caching, I don’t really need it any more.

  13. I like to tune into the BLUES…but the last few months I hear a lot of crap from the 30`s 40`s and 50`s….who wants to hear that..YAK…and talk and talk…I want to hear some up beat moving grovin Blues…and try to get an answer from them tru an E-Mail..Good Luck with that!!!!

  14. Our family is still a fan of sat radio, but then I paid for a lifetime subscription on one radio and do family plan on the others. So the price isn’t too bad. While I do agree the merger “ruined” some of the stations, I can still find enough to flip around and find something to listen to. Of course, I don’t ask for much – some background noise while I work, so it’s either the 70’s station or The Bridge on XM.

    DH lives with his, as a swing shift courier. Baseball, hockey, sports talk shows keep him entertained. Sure, I’d like some mixup in the play lists sometimes, but just like any other radio station, you just gotta turn it over to somewhere else when it gets repetitious.

  15. I’ve been doing a music magazine for over 18 years now, and it’s CONSTANT complaints like this one that prompted me to start my own online radio show. Granted, it’s a pre-recorded weekly 2 hour show, but I guarantee you I DO NOT repeat the same songs every week! In fact, many of the CD’s I get from labels, I may play one or two songs from in the span of two months, to keep it all fresh. My content is mainly metal, but it spans the eras from the late 70’s all the way up to new releases I received a few days ago! I am working very hard to get my show ported over to Satellite radio, and I cover all different genres of metal (you’d be amazed at how many sub-genres of heavy metal there are!) and I guarantee you all fresh, new and diverse content every show, as I get CD’s from bands all over the globe. (Hint: Russia has a VERY active music scene, complete with 4 or 5 different labels I service).

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