The Sirius Radio Shakeup of 2005- A Review

If you're a Sirius satellite radio subscriber like me, then today September 29th, is probably a pretty big day for you. Why, the non Sirius subscribers ask? Because today is the first day of the new Sirius lineup. Today Sirius has rolled new channels covering a variety of music and talk genres. The upside is that they've added new content. The downside is some other channels had to be cut to make room for the new. Were the changes worth it? Well, I've been by the radio all day today listening to the new stations to see if Sirius has been improved.

First, what's been deleted? The three music stations I somwhat cared about that were taken off were Folktown, Remix and Wax. Folktown, as the name would imply, was all folk, all the time. I never listened to it, so fine, it got cut, no big deal. The next was Remix, which was a channel devoted to DJ remixes of various techno. I like techno, but always enjoyed the offerings on Area 63, which is devoted to trance and progressive house, and Boombox, which is devoted to breakbeats, old school techno and underground hip hop. So again, I'm fine without Remix. The last channel to be deleted (at least the last channel I had any passing interest in) was Wax, which is to hip hop what Remix was to techno. However, unlike Remix, I listened Wax quite a bit and really enjoyed the different takes on hip hop I'd hear there. Seeing as there is nothing like it on FM radio, I'm really bummed to see Wax go. I think there were a couple of other music stations to get the axe, but I don't know what they were and to be honest, I really don't care. But that was then, this is now. What are the new stations and how do they stack up? Let's start with -



Sirius advertises SuperShuffle as having Sirius set to shuffle, like on an iPod. And I guess that would be pretty accurate, if Sirius only had five music channels. I listened to SuperShuffle for about an hour this morning and heard nothing but classic rock, 70's easy listening, 80's hair metal and one Frank Sinatra song. I checked back later in the day and heard pretty much the same type of mix, minus the Frank Sinatra. Essentially, this sounds like a Jack FM station. I'm sure a lot of people will like it, and a it seems to be getting favorable comments on the message boards at www.siriusbackstage.com, but I see it as a waste of bandwidth. Especially since Wax was cut and there's still no dedicated punk and hardcore channel. Thumbs down. So next, I moved over to-


I had high hopes for this channel and I must say that so far it does not disappoint. Sirius describes it as "acoustic rock from the world's best singer songwriters", but there's more to it than that. In addition to stuff like Allison Krauss, Ryan Adams, Counting Crows and Dave Matthews, they also played stuff like Moby and Tony Bennett. It pretty much sounds like the mix of music played at Starbucks, which I have to say is pretty good. This will probably be my morning drive to work and Saturday morning station. Two big thumbs up. Next on the list-


One of the channels causing a stir on the message boards at www.siriusbackstage.com was Revolution, a new channel devoted to Christian rock. At first I was a bit skeptical, because Christian music is so hit and miss. For every Christian band that I like such as Starflyer 59, Zao, Joy Electric, Velour 100 and Demon Hunter, there are about fifty who are a complete joke. I turned it on and as I thought it would be, it was very hit and miss. They played a couple of groups I think are decent such as Thousand Foot Krutch and Blindside, but also played crap like Stryper and bands I've never heard of. I'll keep my eye on this channel and their scheduling. If maybe they have devoted shows to Christian hardcore and metal as well as indie rock, I'll probably listen then. I'm going to keep the thumb neutral and see what happens with this channel.


This was the last channel I checked out and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's mostly New Age instrumental music, some of which is really, really lame. But a lot of it I found to be really soothing and kinda nice. But then I felt really dirty and quickly switched over to Hard Attack, the dedicated metal channel. But I could possibly see a time when I might switch back over to Spa 73. I'll give a somewhat confused and slightly ashamed thumbs up.

While I'm sad to see Wax go, I really enjoy The Coffeehouse, the jury is still out on Revolution and even though it might make me gay, I like Spa 73. The only channel I flat out disliked was SuperShuffle, and that wasn't really due to the content itself, it was just the format it was presented in. Overall, I'm glad to be a Sirius subscriber and would gladly encourage anyone to take the plunge and give it a try.

And besides-



WE'VE GOT MARTHA STEWART, BITCHES!!!