After a few days with Sirius’ 7-day trial since the release of their iPhone app, the experience on it has been great for the most part.

Let’s review my previous use of Sirius (before my subscription expired).

While in the car, mostly music and sometimes talk. When it was on a talk station, it was primarily Derek & Romaine. When it was on music stations, it was either on Hits 1, The Pulse or BPM (I still like to refer to it as The Beat).

I had two radios: 1 in the car that wasn’t plug-n-play and one that was in a plug-n-play boom box that I hooked into my home stereo. I also used the Internet streaming pretty heavily at work and while in my home office.

And how has my 7-day trial stacked up?

I can’t use it in the car. I have been using it on the iPhone in my JBL On Stage Micro while getting ready in the morning and have also used it at work rather than streaming from the desktop. The one thing that I’m still wanting is a Sirius supported desktop app. I have yet to try the new app from NiceMac but plan on using that tomorrow at work. I really don’t like having to use a web client for a variety of reasons at work, but mainly, if I have no other browser windows open, when I click the icon in the dock, I want a new window, it bugs me that I have to open a new window since one is already open with the streaming.

Is it enough for me to start my subscription back up with Sirius? Not so far. Does driving with terrestrial radio suck again? Yes. Am I willing to burn CDs to not have to listen to commercials? Yes. We’ll see how it goes.

While I had been looking forward to an iPhone app that was coming out from the NiceMac team, the app was bounced by Apple. I still stuck around for a while as a subscriber. There had been some other changes and in general dissatisfaction on my end and ended up not renewing.

I was starting to think about renewing with the updated efforts over at NiceMac and the StarPlayr project. With their work and the iPhone app news, I was minutes away from clicking the submit button on my order when I saw a news item in my RSS feed about yet another rate hike from Sirius XM.

I’m stuck in a holding pattern with you Sirius… I’m glad I haven’t received any more calls begging me to come back (and they stopped after requesting to be placed on the do not call list only once… not many places honor that as quickly!) but you’re making it so hard for me to come back. I do have to say though, that if it wasn’t for StarPlayr, I probably wouldn’t even be thinking about it.

Exactly what you think it is.

If you’re looking for an amazing version of Georgia On My Mind, check out a Live version by Maceo Paker… you won’t be disappointed. (Link opens iTunes)

Until then, just say no.

Personally, without the convenience of a product like StarPlayr, I have let my Sirius XM subscription lapse with no immediate plans to subscribe again. I still have the Sirius unit in my car that was installed when I bought it and have never paid for a subscription on so I don’t feel bad about that one.

At work, I’ve once again fallen in love with Pandora and in particular PandoraJam.

What I can say is that Sirius XM is already on thin ice in my book. The channel merger was absolutely horrific! I didn’t see any emails or receive notice regarding changes of my subscription. When I got in the car the morning after, the receiver updated the channel list and one of my most listened to stations (Sirius 36, The Beat) was turned into something totally unrecognizable which turned out to be BPM. Sirius XM must have received tons of complaints about this channel and others. I listened to BPM for a whole day and at the end, switched over to Hits 1 and The Pulse. A few weeks later, I switched back on BPM and except for some of the personalities being gone, the music was back to the way it was. Even the morning show, renamed The Beat Morning Show on BPM.

I was ready to cancel my subscription right then based on that and other changes. Luckily, Derek and Romaine survived the merger.

Now that it is becoming more apparent that Sirius XM is going to be releasing an app for the iPhone, if they require me to pay more for the convenience, I’m ready to say goodbye Sirius XM.

I was so looking forward to the quality App that NiceMac was beta testing and was willing to pay for the app, but not anything additional for the service. I recently even donated a small amount of cash for the project as well.

I’ll be on the lookout for updated information and SIrius XM has one strike left before they’re out of my life for good and I’ll settle for services like Pandora or Last.fm.