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.

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.

Now you can download a copy of the radio documentary the GLAAD Media Awards have honored with a special recognition award.

The two-hour documentary aired originally on October 10th, 2008 to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death. Conceived and produced by Romaine Patterson, a friend of Matthew Shepard and co-host of the Derek & Romaine show on OutQ, The Laramie Project, 10 Years Later – The Lasting Legacy of Matthew Shepard examines the impact the award-winning play-turned-film The Laramie Project has had on attitudes towards hate crimes with interviews from playwright Moises Kaufman and members of Tectonic Theater Company.

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.

Now, yet another reason why you should get Sirius or XM… Derek and Romaine!  They’re now not only on Out Q on Sirius 109, they’re also now on XM 98.

You can hear a lot of awesome guests on the show!  The other day, they had Reichen, known from the Amazing Race and having dated Lance Bass as well as his books!  They also have some regulars like one of my favorites, sexpert Ducky Doolittle, Hedda Lettuce, Tabloid Tuesdays, etc…  Now that RuPaul’s Drag Race is on, you can even “sashay away” with the most recently ousted drag queen from the show.  These are just a tiny sampling of the reasons why I love the show!

At any rate kids, get off your butts and give Sirius XM a shot and check out Derek and Romaine and don’t forget to call in when you’re “desperately fucking angry” or with “what’s your gay problem!  They also just launched their new blog so check it out!

Just remember… don’t ask them how they’re doing!

I used to belong to their little music survey thing The Beat Builders where they’d send out emails and you’d rate songs on how much you like or dislike a song and if you’re tired of hearing it played.  It would even play a sample of the song.  A few days ago, they sent out an email to the list with the subject “The BEAT Morning Show Returns to BPM” and explained how by popular demand, the show is coming back.  

A move like this really came as no surprise to me as after giving BPM (the dance station that was on XM) an entire day’s chance of listening, I quickly changed stations.  I came back for a listen a while later and it sounded a lot more like The Beat again.  Awesome.  And then tonight, I got another one of The Beat Builders Survey now called the Sirius BPM Beat Builders.

If anybody from Sirius is reading this.  Good move.  Bring The Beat back.  Mr. Seth too.

But what changed my attitude?  It was my new car.  The car has Sirius Satellite Radio built into it (I’m assuming as an add on by the previous owner).  Not only is there a menu that tells me what type of programming is on, it tells me exactly what I’m listening to.  I believe it’s billed as over 36 commercial free music stations.  There are also a number of other stations that have to be able to afford hosts and programming so there are some with commercials.  I became hooked almost instantly.  The biggest thing that I like about it is that I can get it wherever I go.  Most of my family and many of my friends live about 120 miles away.  When I travel to visit, I don’t have to fuss with the dial when I’m traveling through different markets or listen to commercials.

I was so hooked that I bought a second radio for the house.  I also upgraded the included ability to listen online for the high quality rate.

I primarily used the online player when I was at work.  This was fine.  I had a Windows machine at work which worked seamlessly with their player.  The only problem was that at home, I have a Mac.  I looked and found a player which would work but was sometimes a little shaky.  Then they updated it and it became even more shaky and I pretty much gave in to only using the additional radio at home rather than the convenience of the computer.  Until now.  Now, I have a Mac at work as well as home.  What to do?

I primarily used Parallels and an install of Windows in order to use the online player.  Then I abandoned that when I became aware of Simplify Media.  This alone deserves its own post and review, but in using that on my home computer and work computer, I was then able to stream my own music from home at work or on my iPhone.  It’s as easy as it’s billed.  Free, easy, integrated.

Simplify Media was fine until I grew tired of listening to playlists and creating more (even though this was made easier by the iTunes 8 release).  So once again I turned to Google to see if I could find anything new.  And to me, there was!

StarPlayr2.  Not only do they have Windows desktop software to stream Sirius and XM, they also have a desktop application for the Mac to stream Sirius!  And their site claims that software for the iPhone is being developed – awesome, I can’t wait!

StarPlyr2

If you subscribe to Sirius (or XM and have a Windows machine), check it out, I’m sure you’ll love it.  If you don’t, get your free trial and give it a shot!  I’m sure you’ll love it.