Satellite Radios, XM Versus Sirius

Why do people need satellite radio that has a subscription fee of between $10 to $12 a month earmarked to it, when most of the programs are available on AM and FM radio for free? One reason is both AM and FM radio are more or less confined to the proximity of a given broadcasting station and if one leaves the particular range, there is a need to wait until there is another signal to be picked originating from another source, where there is another totally different broadcaster. Moreover, there are areas finding any kind of signal could be difficult. Even if that might not be the case, being coherent with one's listening experience could suffer.

As a result, for those who are driving a considerable distance away from city hubs, like commuters who have to drive on a daily basis from home to work and vice versa, will get undisrupted broadcasting by installing a satellite radio in their car. They can go anywhere on the continent USA, in fact 48 states, and they can have whatever they had paid for streaming down into their receivers with no obstruction or no degradation to the quality of the broadcasting, which comes close to a CD quality.

One other advantage also is the quality of the broadcasting that is not widespread in the AM and FM broadcasting world, even if digital broadcasting is slowly taking root, and there are at least some 370 digital radio stations that are broadcasting in a digital format, which is totally free of static, and the sound is as good as CDs. However, because of the price of the digital radio, where the cheapest starts at around $250, the number of digital radio owners in the country hovers around 10,000. In spite of the onetime cost and no monthly subscription, simply because of the few number of digital stations that are available and are concentrated in a given geographical area, digital broadcasting is not mainstream yet, creating unprecedented windfall for the satellite broadcasters, because of its near CD quality.