Ryan Morris loves satellite radio, and he wants you to love it too.
“You can’t hear good music on FM radio,” said Morris, 21, of St. Louis. But Morris said he hears nothing but a good mix of eclectic sounds beyond the Top 40 stuff you hear on standard radio. Also, songs are never interrupted by commercials or prattling disc jockeys.
If you’re into the same things as Morris–who was so into it that he created www.xmfan.com–then satellite radio may be for you too.
XM Satellite Radio offers 120 channels, 68 of them music, while Sirius Satellite Radio has 65 music channels and more than 50 new talk and sports channels. The music channels on both stations are commercial-free.
You’re going to need a satellite radio receiver and a subscription. XM subscriptions costs $9.95 a month; for Sirius it’s $12.95 a month. Both have multiyear packages that cut prices.
XM receivers start at $49, with the popular ones going between $120 and $200.
Morris’ site doubles as a retailer for XM products, and he said most of XM’s subscriber base is males 40 and older. Most of his online sales come from women buying XM as a gift for their husbands.
Manly, yes, but ladies like it too.
“I wanted more choice,” Evanston’s Elizabeth Buccheri said of the XM system she got for her car. “I recently drove to Cleveland and could keep the stations on XM all the way to my destination.”
Reception “is excellent and clear,” said Rick Morris, associate professor of radio/TV/film at Northwestern University, although you can lose reception in a tunnel or in some buildings.
Guys hooking up to satellite radio will find exclusive programming that isn’t done on regular radio. Music stars such as old-school rapper Kurtis Blow, who does a daily hip-hop show on Sirius, thinks satellite is “the future of radio happening right now,” which is why he would front such a show in the first place.
“It’s so easy to get the music out there with the modern technology that all the studios have,” said Blow, 45, whose rap classic “The Breaks” came out in 1980.
“As the technology continues to improve,” said Gary Schoenwetter, rock programming director for Sirius, “and people are more disenchanted with what they’re getting through their FM and AM receivers, there’s that much more reason for satellite radio to exist.”
