SIRIUS XM Channels

Sirius is a waste of money.

You can stream stations onto your smart phone easily and cheaply, and play it in your car. Bing, bang, boom.

[quote] Nowhere near as great as the 80's,

I used to have Sirius before the merger, the QutQ channel was great as was Sirius Left and the Canadian channels. R1 is right though, streaming these days allows you access to most of this stuff. And now they're putting WiFi Radio in cars, so Sirius XM is going to have stiff competition.

"Whoever replaced Love with Yacht Rock needs to be curb stomped. Everyone loves, but few people own a yacht. Isn't Yacht Rock just a rehashed version of the Bridge anyways?"

It'll go away in the Fall. Yacht Rock is cheesier than The Bridge. Yacht Rock is Christopher Cross and Paul Davis. The Bridge is James Taylor and Paul Simon.

My favorite channel is the Spectrum.

I like Watercolors, CH 66. Contemporary jazz.

I rarely listen to the classical channel. Someone there REALLY likes Brahms and Schumann. I prefer J.S. Bach and Mozart. Can't stand the bores on the disco channel-- I don't want to hear people talk about how great Studio 54 was, just play the dang music

Come to think of it, Lithium on channel 34 is very repetitive also. Lots and lots of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, which I guess is to be expected sort of, but also lots of Soundgarden and I don't remember them being overly popular. Weezer's Undone: the Sweater Song also gets a lot of mileage.

Going back a ways, the 60's on 6 is weird. I used to listen to a lot of oldies as a child, but their playlist seems to focus on minor and obscure hits. Very rare to hear a song I actually recognize.

I wish there were a 'Beautiful Music' channel like my mom used to listen to back in the 60s and 70s. This was an even more soporific format than Easy Listening (no vocals!) but the nostalgia factor would be huge for me. A lot of the content was produced especially for the Beautiful Music stations and seems to have disappeared.

R9: That format morphed into Smooth Jazz, which also isn't on most commercial stations these days. I'm a middle-aged gay but I know of which you speak. FM 100 was the easy listening/beautiful music station in Chicago.

Andy Cohn radio is the BEST

I'm thinking of ditching it. It's wildly overpriced, and I only listen to four stations:

- Siriusly Sinatra

- On Broadway

- '40s Junction

- '60s on 6

- Radio Classics

Sorry ... FIVE stations.

How on earth is anyone paying for this stuff when you can get the same for free?

If you like burning money or wasting it, please send it to me!

I only pay for it because it's a lot more convenient to use in the car than Spotify. Plus, I pay for all my cell phone data, so I don't like to use it unless I have to.

I saw they ended EW Radio yesterday.

Mark McGrath talks waaay too much on 90s on 9.

At least McGrath has a nice sexy voice that's easy to listen to.

Fuck streaming

I love my Sirius.

[quote]First Wave channel 33: This should be good, but more variety again is needed here. Too much The Police and Pet Shop Boys.

Obviously, you've never listened during Richard Blade's show, which is mostly him plugging his book, dropping names and playing the Smiths.

Real Jazz is pretty good, until they get into endless interviews with jazz artists and it descends into the kind of shop talk only other jazz 'cats' would be interested in. Nothing more boring than listening to musicians name drop.

Howard Stern and Michelle Collins Show

Deep Tracks, Underground Garage, The Groove, XMU, Rock the Bells (old hip hop), Fly (90s-00s hip hop/R&B), Soultown. Sometimes Ozzie's Boneyard and Real Jazz.

The 60s channel plays all well known songs. I find it repetitious but still listen occasionally. Hate the 80s channel for the most part and Nina Blackwood's voice is painful to hear.

Yep, lots of the Smiths. I almost included that.

The dance stations suck. I like BPM in short spans but a few years ago they scooted Utopia up into the 500s but my radio only goes into the 300s. (They did the same thing with Pops, the chamber music station.). And they bumped BPM to make way for a country station, of which there are what, twenty? I loathe Radio Andy; it is not a substitute for OutQ. And while I love 40's Junction and Radio Classics, I assume they'll be fucking this up any day now, too. (I miss the host they used to have on 40's Junction five or so years ago. He was their Robert Osborne.

Fuck you op. You’re the dumb shit that bought into this.

I put the 40s station on whenever my mom's in the car and I keep expecting it to be gone.

When you remember that this is the Sirius demographic it all makes sense.

In response to reply25: Fuck you too!

OP, totally agree, the 80s on 8 channel really pisses me off, not just because the overplay the same artists and songs, but they neglect many of the big hits of the decade (the country hits of the early 80s like "9 to 5," "Lookin' For Love," "I Love A Rainy Night," etc., for example) or groups/artists who were big but they only play 1 song from that artist (for example, Exposé had 5 top 10 hits in the 80s, but they only play "Come Go With Me" on occasion, you never hear their #1 "Seasons Change").

My perception of the 60s on 6 is that the playlist is dominated by late 60s hit -- I swear, you can listen for hours and nearly all the songs will come from 1967, 1968 or 1969.

Only the 70s on 7 and the 90s on 9 seem to get the variety right.

Sandyland on Radio Andy is amazing. It used to be on 4 times a week and it was almost my daily meditation. Now we only get Sandra Bernhard once a week but I’ll take it. And Cohen Live is really good. I cant help but detest Andy for the many reasons often cited on DL but I can’t deny it isn’t a fascinating peak into his life. He is more himself on this show than WWHL. His sidekick is his ex-boyfriend John Hill and their dynamic is somewhat fraught and it makes for good radio. Also enjoy Bevelations with Bevy Smith. Lots of good shit on Sirius.

Sucks. I was driving from to New Orleans to Philadelphia and my Ipod was stolen in N.O. so I had to use Sirius in the rental car. Played the 80's on 8 the entire time and the people who say they play the same songs over and over didn't lie. 10 years of music by hundreds of artists and I hear "If I'd Been The One" by 38 Special 3 times in less than 24 hours total in the car. Sorry, but no.

The worst part about the Radio Classics channel are the horrible commercials for every low-end, scammy, tacky product ever invented.

I listen to soultown and underground garage. UG plays a lot of the same songs over and over. They have an obsession with The J Geils Band.

Yes, R33, and how The J. Geils Band could be described as "underground," I don't know. FFS, I have heard the Rolling Stones on Underground Garage, and it's like: Buy a dictionary.

Still a lot to love on Sirius, though. Love Richard Blade and Swedish Eagle on First Wave.

Madison on AltNation is the worst. I change the station every time I hear her voice.

40s Junction is pretty good, but got repetitious, so I switched it. I think the Bluegrass channel is also called Bluegrass Junction and it surprised me with the variety of bluegrass out there. It ain't all just fiddle-playin' and tobacca-spittin'. There is some amazing musicianship on there, with Newgrass, etc.

Stern and Sternthology

60s on 6

E Street Radio

Underground Garage

R22, love the Rock the Bells channel and all the rest that you posted.

"Madison on AltNation is the worst. I change the station every time I hear her voice."

At least she isn't on First Wave anymore. Thank God.

I like some of the shows on the Progress channel but why are there so many commercials? It's a pay service!

I don't much about the radio business, but could the limited playlists of individual channels be a financial thing? I can maybe understand the repetition if you pay one fee to play a certain song multiple times in a 24 hour period or something like that. If you have to pay a license fee for every single song every time you play it, then there is no excuse not to have an expanded playlist.

Isn't Escape like a Beautiful Music channel?

Some of the Progress shows (Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartman) are also freely available on terrestrial radio, so they have the ads. Not sure about the Sirius only shows like Michaelangelo Signorile.

I have it for the Metropolitan Opera channel which I listen to every day.

Smooth Jazz, Sirius channel 66. Also known as Watercolors.

I love The Groove and the Yacht Rock channel plays more variety this season than last summer, so I’m really enjoying it- reminds me of the carefree summer days of my childhood lounging around my town pool and crushing hard for the cute lifeguards.

I like Studio 54

Channel 72. I think Seth Rudetsky is a wonderful supporter of Broadway and theatre and brings his enthusiasm to a younger audience. He is a little too inside and self promoting but I guess he has to be as part of the deal. Hate Julie James fake laugh.

I have it in car and pay for it as Im tech challenged and its just easier. I love it. I like rythm and blue music (urban/black) and there are several channels to chose from.

It's great for baseball if you're out of town and in the car and want to hear the game.

Yacht Rock is basically the soft-rock that was big in the 70s. I listen once in a while, and yes it's seasonal.

I flip around the stations a lot, but stations I tend to stay on are:

Beatles Channel

Margaritaville

Classic Rewind

Classic Vinyl

Coffeehouse

Spa (when I'm stressed out)

And even the news channels: CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Classics, Doctor Radio, Carlin's Corner

Before anybody "Oh Dear"s me, I know that all those I listed are not news channels. I meant news/talk channels. In fact, I'm listening to Carlin's Corner on my Siruis access web account as I type

BTW, the BBC news channel was really interesting to listen to during the Brexit voting.

When I bought a new vehicle I got a couple of month free Sirius, they talk way too much on that shit. I don't drive too much so it wouldn't be worth it to me even if I loved it but I hated it. For some reason I lost it before the two months was up and didn't even bother to get reconnected. They gave me another free month about a year later, and it still sucked, if I want to hear people talk that much, I will listen to talk radio.

If someone who knew nothing of the human race were to listen to the Sirius channels with advertising, they would think we suffer from an epidemic of sweaty crotches needing moisture-wicking underwear and endure countless agonies that require seamless socks.

Have it for Stern only.

Broadway and the Andy Cohen channel, only ones I listen to

Howard Stern, chill on 53, cnn on 116. Willie's Roadhouse

I love having it but will probably unsubscribe when Howard retires.

Are the Traffic and Weather channels still on for major cities? And does the Weather Channel still provide the weather forecasts? I haven't had Sirius for over 10 years and sometimes wonder about these important things...

R59, yep. I check that often. The weather is still from the Weather Channel.

R60: Thank you, friend! :)

For fun I tried their 60s and 70s country pop mashup. Some surprising gems in there.

I plan my weekends to be in the car with the sunroof open while listening to the 70s station replays of American Top 40.

It’s creepy but great to listen to an in the moment oral history of popular music as it was happening. Casey Kasem had that perfect radio voice for 70s music.

The link explains how the whole thing was recorded and distributed every week in a pre WiFi age. Fascinating.

Yes it's repetitive but I listen to first wave ch 33 for Larry the Duck (I miss WLIR ), Lust for Lists, Richard Blade's the Magnificent Seven.

Pop Rocks Ch 17 brings back great memories of 90s/00s "rock" & non dance pop.

Since Nov 2016 I like having MSNBC 118 in the car too since some crazy ass shit always seems to be happening. Nichole Wallace is what I listen to on my commute home. Once trump is gone I think I'm cancelling.

Alexa smart speakers now have Amazon free music channels, supported by occasional commercials, plus TuneIn and iHeart. You can get MSNBC's audio too.

Sirius has always been programmed by ex-terrestrial radio people, who are driven by internal research. They aim toward short listening spans in the car, so many of the channels have short, hot, repetitive playlists with less depth than you might want for extended listening.

r56 So you ew the one listening to Andy Cohen channel. Please stop so it can die.

It happens to be a great channel 66, lots of different hosts and programs, give it a try, you might be surprised

I don't own a car but it's always a treat when I get rental car that has Sirius. But I agree, even with only a few days usage, I can see how the playlists could be so much better. They are not traditional radio stations but still behave too much like them. With all that time and without commercials, I wish they would be a little more adventurous and less playlist-oriented. I wonder if they are constrained by licensing? For example, not having rights/permission from certain labels and/or artists.

For short durations, I love it but I would not be happy paying for it long term.

[quote]How on earth is anyone paying for this stuff when you can get the same for free?

I bought the lifetime subscription (life of the car, not me) 14 years ago so at this point I'm like the guy in the old Midas Muffler commercial bringing his Model T in for its 12th free muffler. They shut me off every couple years just to see if I notice, but as soon as I call they flip it right back on.

To be fair, 14 years ago it was a real gamble whether they would survive or not, so I think I earned my subscription by showing faith in them.

One thing that makes the 80's on 8 so shitty is that it is so rock-oriented, which the OP alluded to. The great thing about the 80's was the variety. You could hear rock, pop, country, AC, new wave and r&b all in the same hour on a radio station. SIRIUS also has a "hair bands" channel, which makes it all the more unnecessary. Currently, 80's on 8 is playing the bejeezus out of Def Leppard and ZZ Top's "Legs".

I have yet to hear Chaka Khan or Belinda Carlisle.

r70, just this morning I was stunned to hear Belinda's "Circle in the Sand" on the 80s on 8; of course, she was bracketed by Def Leppard and Bruce Springsteen.

Sound quality is terrible and they only play a handful of songs by each artist. I mostly play MSNBC.

I don't own a car, but I discovered OutQ while driving a rental car in TX. I bought a little Sirius stiletto radio and listed to it constantly. The quality was terrible, the devices kept dying and I kept buying new ones until I got an iPhone from work and downloaded the app.

In one of the very few smart decisions I've made in my life, I got a lifetime subscription (I don't think they offer it anymore) so it costs me nothing, but I'd gladly pay just to be able to listen to Signorile and Dean Obeidallah on Progress. And I love listening to that sexy-voiced Latino Millennial, Xorje Olivares on Affirmative Reaction on Saturdays. After the 2016 election I couldn't even turn on the television for 6 months (sorry Rachel) and it was Progress that kept me from jumping out a window.

Being an old coot, I also listen to the 40s channel, but I mainly listen to Progress.

[quote]I have it for the Metropolitan Opera channel which I listen to every day.

Maaaaa-rrrrryyyy!!

For some reason, old Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks are often played on Alt Nation which is supposed to be current music.

I don't get the amount of U2 on 1st Wave or any Joe Jackson at all.

^Yeah, that's a weird one. Joe Jackson did have different styles throughout his career, but his early 80's stuff was more AC than anything else and seems totally out-of-place on the new Wave channel.

My most listened channels are Broadway, MSNBC, BBC, E Street Radio, and New Wave. On occasion I also put on the comedy channels as well as Patriot (which should be called the White Person's Horrors channel) just to hear what the other side is saying about the news.

I hate modern Country & Western, but Willie's Roadhouse plays the classics from the 50's-70's, and it's good in small doses.

The best for long drives is the Old Time Radio channel--3 Dragnets = 100 miles, and it really does make the trip seem shorter. I know I could download almost all of their programming, but I like the randomness of letting them pick for me.

r79, I loved country music in the 70s and 80s, but not in the 90s (when it turned into Southern Rock). I wish SiriusXM had a country station devoted to the music of the 70s/80s.

80's and First Wave play a shit ton of Howard Jones

Bob Eatman is a fucking saint letting Dopie & Tranthony go down in flames like he did.

That is all.

Richard Blade is the one who plays too much Howard Jones. He plays too much British new wave in general. He rarely plays US new wave or punk.

WHET the hosts of Out Q's morning show? I used to tune in occasionally and it was okay but they had this sidekick that just giggled the whole time. Very annoying!

Progress channel is good especially Signorile and Dean Oblidi-Obli-Dah. There used to be a black guy early morning who used to get into good fights with people but I just checked the schedule and see he is no longer there!

I really only listen to Chill when I drive or sometimes when I go for a walk. Channel 53.

Listen to 60s, 70's, 80's, 90's, First Wave, Classic Rewind, Classic Vinyl, Hair Nation, Groove,and Lithium. Tons of overlap but still good enough variety. The ones I listen to most often are 80s, 90s, and First Wave. Never listened to the current top 40 channel for more than a couple minutes at a time. Loved the top 40 countdowns. It inspired me to get the Whitburn books and now I'm a billboard junkie. Still discovering artists I never heard of before and a whole bunch of deep tracks. An excellent companion to Sirius or even Spotify.

Whitburn still put out books? I used to buy them years ago, some were pretty expensive, and used to thumb through them to kill time. Of course, this is before the internet. I look at the Billboard charts on line now and don't even understand the difference among them sometimes...airplay, streaming,sales....

Way too much Def Leoppard. If you weren't around then, the way Sirius overplays them you would think they were the biggest of the decade. Yes, they were big, but not as much as they play them. I wish I could opt out of hearing any and all of the announcers, DJ's, VJ's, whatever the hell they are. One of the things that was originally attractive about Sirius is that it was jus music. Now these people drone on and on, have their personal stories (I don't care) and they have the cheesy advertisement soundbites announcing to you what station you're listening to. I know I'm listening to the 80s station, I put it on, I recognize the music, and the radio spells it out for me in the car. The overexcited dumb soundbite with stupid noise is not up-scale, get rid of it!

David Lee Roth's brother is a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g

My main station is 70s on 7. Well done, and the weekly Casey Kasem countdowns are a fun trip down memory lane. A little too much emphasis on the Bee Gees, though. And why are certain songs by artists played over and over, but others ignored? I've heard "Superstar" and "Close To You" by the Carpenters a million times, but never "Hurting Each Other" or "Please Mister Postman". 60s on 6 is good. Their morning man Phlash Phelps knows nothing about music, but he has a huge following because of his travels across the country...apparently he's been everywhere twice. They also have weekly shows by 60s icons like Peter Noone (of Herman's Hermits) and Tommy James. The stations devoted to one artist usually don't work because the artist usually doesn't have enough material, and it gets old soon. An exception: The Beatles Channel not only plays the Fab Four catalog (of course), but their solo work, their influences, those they influenced, their contemporaries (Peter Asher has a weekly show that's particularly goo.)

R88 I know all the material is online but flipping through the books are where most of the fun is. I refer to it often, especially when I'm compiling playlists. The Top Pop Singles books are my favorites for the way they are organized. I don't have the most recent edition but I sort of lost interest in pop music in general since the mid 2000s with only a few exceptions so its fine by me. The books dedicated to specific genres are also highly recommended.

I tired Cohen's channel. It is vapid and annoying like him. HIs interviews are terrible. Bevy Smith is about the only one I could stomach. I believe OutQ is gone - they got rid of the whole channel.

When Sirius takes over channels for weekend football games, it's interesting how they're careful to run the games on two channels, one for the home team's fans and one for the visiting team's fans so they never need to leave their partisan bubbles.

The 1980s produced the worst music of the 20th century

R95 May I ask what makes you such an authority?

I have many of the Whitburn books, but did you know he put out a Radio & Records book within the last few months? This was the newspaper which they used for many of the countdowns -- they were using that in 1993 when I first tuned in. Lots of huge discrepancies in terms of where songs peaked in relation to the two, with some songs peaking way higher on one chart as opposed to the other and vice versa.

I like a lot of shows on EW radio. Sad they did away with that channel.

Nobody likes the Bakersfield Beat? It's a really good eclectic mix except every third song is Dwight Yoakam. He does the programming.

[quote] I have many of the Whitburn books, but did you know he put out a Radio & Records book within the last few months? This was the newspaper which they used for many of the countdowns -- they were using that in 1993 when I first tuned in. Lots of huge discrepancies in terms of where songs peaked in relation to the two, with some songs peaking way higher on one chart as opposed to the other and vice versa.

Interesting, and decidedly off topic. But who knows how accurate any of these ranking systems are, especially before the computer age?

Way too much Def Leppard and U2. Its like Sirius is trying gaslight us into believing they were the best and only.

R100 The Pop Annual Books ranks singles according to how many weeks they spent in their peak position. Probably not entirely accurate but good enough.

WEHT to Larry Flick?

My favorite station has been the Spectrum, and thanks to this thread I’ve started listening to the Underground Garage, which is fantastic. I also love E Street Radio.

I got such a kick out of them firing scumbag Nikki Sixx and booting his dumb advice show, then him turning around with the old “you didn’t fire me I quit”. Priceless.

R105 hahahahaha the shade of it all. I hope his ego took a massive beating even if it didn’t matter much financially.

Now at least he knows how Vince must have felt when the rest of Crüe threw him out, only he was unfairly scapegoated so it isn’t really the same schadenfreude.