www.sirius.com/freetrial

http://xmro.xmradio.com/xstream/index.jsp

Why not signup for a FREE, yes FREE trial, to both services. Both use the the online player, since your internet connectivity is so wonderful.

And as for cost.. I’ll break it down for my own situation. Yours may vary.

Satillite radio (XM)

XM subscription = 12.95 per month. I pay quarterly installments via CC.

Delphi Roady XL receiver = $28 bucks at Wal-Mart.

Podcasting

High Speed internet connection = $40-$100/month. Which because where I live, is not avalible to me. So I’m forced to use dial up.

Home computer = free-$3000+ Still another piece of equipment needed.

Ipod = $99+ Just a guess here, I’m sure you can find them cheaper.

So for my situation, satellite radio is a much cheaper option than podcasts. Then you add the time and effort finding and subscribing to podcasts, it’s alot of effort. Where I can just turn on my receiver and go. So podcasts aren’t exactly free…

Plus I do quite a bit of traveling, so I regularly use my XM radio. I couldn’t imagine listening to podcasts being on the road for 10+ hours.

I suggest you at least try out the free trials, then you can listen for yourself and make a decision.

As for cost of hardware, the merger uncertainity has created some great prices. TiVo players cost more than some satellite receivers right now. I’m seeing some models in bargain bins for less than $20. The Sirius Replay model we bought works in both home and car, although we also bought the Stiletto for more portable listening. We weren’t that impressed with the Stiletto (C-).

As far as not knowing what I’m missing, here’s the thing. I know that I’m happy with what I have and Sirius and XM haven’t done a good enough of convincing me otherwise. I know roughly what they offer and it’s not something that I’m willing to incur a monthly fee for, mainly because I know that the opportunities I’d have to listen to it are few and far between, mainly because I’ve found enough podcasts that I enjoy to fill up my commute. So asking me to subscribe to Sirius is kind of like asking someone who only turns on the TV for Jeopardy to sign up for Tivo. I might find some value in it once I’ve subscribed, but not enough to justify the initial hardware investment and the monthly subscription. If I end up buying a car in the future that comes with it built in, sure, I might give it a shot every so often, if there’s a baseball game I wanted to listen to or whatever. But, based on my current listening habits, I know I’m not going to use it enough to spend that kind of money on it.

I wish my EVDO would work everywhere so I could tune into live streaming from the car. Someday we’ll have that and every argument I made for the value in satellite radio above will rightfully be under fire.

As for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray comparison, I’m not quite getting the analogy. Those are nextgen formats for DVDs. Is satellite higher quality than terrestrial radio? Not if you’re near a strong signal. There is the whole HD Radio thing which is kind of bogus marketing thing in my opinion, but that’s another story. Podcasting will be as high quality as the production value and the bitrate that the files are ripped at. If it’s lossless, then we can expect a better sounding experience with a podcast than over satellite radio. It’s not possible to make a DVD higher quality than than Blu Ray without paying for the extra player and buying the special format disc.

As for you not willing to pay for content that is not any better than podcasts? How do you know if you’ve never subscribed? That’s my second point and an important one. Ok, you’ve heard Howard before, but he’s merely one of hundreds of shows (and 130+ channels). Subscribe, try it for three months and then come back and say there was no value to you. It’s like saying podcasting isn’t any good without listening to any podcasts. That’s my point. Most people I’ve spoken to who are down on satellite radio are people who have never subscribed and/or do not like live radio content.

As for treating podcasts as channels? Not sure where that’s coming from. I know there are many different types of podcasts (some are music focused like Coverville, some are genre focused like TwIT, many are personality focused like Dawn & Drew) and covered some of them when I wrote about some of the personalities of podcasting here. I don’t see podcasts as channels, I see them as shows, some of which have a regular publishing schedule and others which don’t.

However, if you’re looking for indie music, as I said in the post above, podcasters have the line on the indie music scene much better than satellite.

Sidebar: interesting historical note that Adam Curry’s podcast show on Sirius stars 103 bombed and was taken off the air. Why did that happen? IMO Curry spent too much time choosing podcasts that were from his friends rather than exploring the podcast landscape at large.

If you have an iPod, syncing up new podcasts really isn’t a big deal. You subscribe and iTunes handles the rest unless you start messing around with the settings, in which case you probably know what you’re doing anyway. You plug in your iPod to charge and the new podcasts get delivered to it. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve run out of content on my iPod, even when I first started listening. And then I’ve got a whole library of music on my iPod to listen to.

And I think you’re seeing podcasts as channels rather than as programs. We can argue the high production values point (I honestly think that a lot of podcasts are pretty close to what you’ll hear on the radio, and when you’re in a car, you really can’t tell the difference), and I’ll agree with you that most podcasts don’t come out with that much content per week, but I honestly wouldn’t want them to. I’d rather have 30-60 minutes a week from 20 or 30 different podcasts than 20 hours from one podcast. That’s one of the things that turned me off to talk radio in the first place; they generally have about 45 minutes worth of actual material that the end up having to stretch into three or four hours of show.

As far as music goes, I’d put up a music podcast against what a Sirius DJ can play any day. I’ve found a ton of great artists that I like through Accident Hash, or Jersey Todd, or All Axis Radio, and the benefit is that it’s almost always stuff I’ve never heard before. And, if I don’t like a song, I can fast forward through it. Plus, when I go to buy the music, I’m supporting independent artists who may never get heard otherwise, even on satellite.

I also know that Stern is a huge draw; it’s not for me. I just don’t enjoy that sort of program, and I know I’m in the minority to some degree in that regard. But you don’t need to convince me that’s he’s the main draw for Sirius (as Opie and Anthony are for XM, to a lesser extent); at least once a commute, my iPod’s FM transmitter gets overtaken by a Sirius receiver playing Stern. (You practically don’t need to pay for Stern in Boston; just turn your radio to 87.9 during rush hour and you’re almost guaranteed to hear him loud and clear.) But the flipside of their looping Stern throughout the day is that, with podcasts, I know I won’t miss anything, because I can listen to content when I want to listen to it, not when it’s offered to me.

I think it’s mostly an ease of use issue, though. Satellite radio works seamlessly in the car and you really don’t need to think about it, while podcasting is still, three years later, somewhat difficult for people to understand and requires software and such, even if it happens to be software that people already have (read: iTunes). I do think that will change eventually. Satellite’s always seemed to me to be more of an interim solution in the same way that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray are; they’re good right now because they’re a natural progression from existing technology, but the real next step is digital delivery, and that’s coming pretty soon. It’s not here yet, of course, so these stopgap solutions are the best option for right now.

For me, personally, though, there’s no reason for me to pay for content that, in my opinion, isn’t any better than the podcasts that I listen to. If i want live local content, I’ll turn on the terrestrial radio. I don’t really need to listen to sporting events in the car; if I need to see them badly enough, I’ll TiVo them and catch up once I get home. And if I need to listen to Stern… Well, that’s not gonna happen.

That said - a merger is probably going to happen, and at that point the combined subscriber base may indeed make the company profitable, which is actually good. So we’re going to see the demise only of Satellite radio as a delivery mechanism, not as content producers. These companies attract a lot of high level talent - talent people will still want to hear from. We can talk about the Long Tail of content, but at the end of the day most of us also like to hear what’s near the head. SO the question really is - when will we see Satellite radio hardware’s demise?

Terrestrial radio, by the way, has yet to figure out they are in the audio content business, and rather is still hanging onto their old business model. THey are the ones in for a rude awakening.

–*Rob

I do miss the immediacy of live radio ( I used to be the afternoon drive guy on WCOP AM 1350), but as a podcaster (http://www.dogearnation.com) I think it is better that people can carry their selections with them. Neither format should be considered a direct competitor, instead they should be considered different formats and distribution channels. Just like today you can see movies at a Theater, via Satellite, via DVD, cable, or wait for the network television premier!