Monthly Archives: January 2009

SiriusXM Making Changes, Good Or Bad

SiriusXM It took me a second to adjust to the new station lineup when the two companies merged and started consolidating their content, but I eventually came around and accepted its newness even if I wasn’t all that interested in what was new and what was lost.  They’ve even recently returned the BackSpin station (Sirius channel 39), which they had removed for about a month.  These changes are ultimately good moves for the satellite radio giant drowning in debt.

Merging was step one, consolidating content was step two, but now that we’re at step 3 I’m even less excited and find myself wondering if I’ll continue my subscriptions when they expire.  Step 3 is pricing overhaul.  Translation:  my cost to enjoy is going up.  Not a fan.

The two big cost changes: 1) eliminating free internet service.  It will now be an additional $2.99 to.  2) Second, third, and fourth radios will be offered at $8.99 rather than the current $6.99.  Now I’m not sure it’s worth it to keep two radios.  But, we’ll see when it comes time to renew, which SiriusXM is urging subscribers to do before March 11th when the changes kick in.  (If you extend subscriptions now, you can also extend the current benefits for the life of the extension.)

I couldn’t say for sure whether or not these moves will have any positive impact to the company’s stock which is ridiculously low these days in the ten cent range, but it surely can’t hurt the cash flows, which have been in the red for years.  Hence the massive amounts of debt, a billion of which is coming due this year.  I sure hope they are able to refinance the debt, but if they can’t, who knows what will happen.  Why should I pay more for a service that may not be around this time next year.  (A bit dramatic, but you get the idea.)

All is well and good I suppose in a world where we pay for things we want but don’t really need. In the meantime, I’m going to keep enjoying my last.fm stations.  Hopefully last.fm will soon be accessible from my car stereo unit.

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RIAA Won't Leave Slashdot

I first started following Slashdot back in 1997, right around the time pop music was popping up on file servers across the US in college dorm rooms for thousands of audiophiles to download illegally.  Sure.  And ever since then the RIAA has appeared in many a topic and been the subject of many debates over on Slashdot for any and every step they’ve taken to combat/thwart such activities online.  Even in 2009, the RIAA continues to crawl the web looking for folks to fight, and they continue to show up in Slashdot conversations, which would almost be fine, except nothing has changed.  When it comes to talking about the RIAA, we’ve been having the same conversations for twelve years.  Why?

Of course we have to talk about it on Slashdot because the RIAA continues to make decisions that a lot of folks want to complain about, at least those of us who know the actions are taking place.  Which many of us probably wouldn’t know if we weren’t reading Slashdot, and I can guess with certainty that it’s why I stopped reading daily for a couple years.  (It’s in my feed reader now.)

I’m not really interested in collecting music because I can’t be bothered to make time for it, and I have SiriusXM subscriptions.  I have plenty of legal music.  (I did buy two CDs last year, which I wrote about here .)

How can we get the RIAA to spend its time plotting to help consumers rather than hunting them?  I don’t have the answer, but I sure wish someone would figure it out so we can stop having to hear all the negative chatter on Slashdot.  It’s only a matter of time, right?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t take it anymore, and I’m disappointed that the music industry hasn’t found a whole bunch of ways to keep making money in the digital world.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep skipping those articles.

RIAA Won’t Leave Slashdot

I first started following Slashdot back in 1997, right around the time pop music was popping up on file servers across the US in college dorm rooms for thousands of audiophiles to download illegally.  Sure.  And ever since then the RIAA has appeared in many a topic and been the subject of many debates over on Slashdot for any and every step they’ve taken to combat/thwart such activities online.  Even in 2009, the RIAA continues to crawl the web looking for folks to fight, and they continue to show up in Slashdot conversations, which would almost be fine, except nothing has changed.  When it comes to talking about the RIAA, we’ve been having the same conversations for twelve years.  Why?

Of course we have to talk about it on Slashdot because the RIAA continues to make decisions that a lot of folks want to complain about, at least those of us who know the actions are taking place.  Which many of us probably wouldn’t know if we weren’t reading Slashdot, and I can guess with certainty that it’s why I stopped reading daily for a couple years.  (It’s in my feed reader now.)

I’m not really interested in collecting music because I can’t be bothered to make time for it, and I have SiriusXM subscriptions.  I have plenty of legal music.  (I did buy two CDs last year, which I wrote about here .)

How can we get the RIAA to spend its time plotting to help consumers rather than hunting them?  I don’t have the answer, but I sure wish someone would figure it out so we can stop having to hear all the negative chatter on Slashdot.  It’s only a matter of time, right?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t take it anymore, and I’m disappointed that the music industry hasn’t found a whole bunch of ways to keep making money in the digital world.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep skipping those articles.

A retraction from a previous misleading article.

buzzardzbar:

Lindsay Lohan has broken up with her girlfriend DJ Samantha something! No more jokes about her being a drugged out skank. Oh wait. She’s now a bi-sexual skanky crack whore. Hallelujah! The Republic is saved.

I don’t know if this stuff is true or not, but it’s nice to see that Ms. Lohan is still maknig her name around the way.  Let us all have a chuckle and get to moving along.  very well.