For the past three months, I have been enjoying a free trial of Sirius XM satellite radio as a reward after getting an oil change at the local dealership. Not the one where I bought my car, because I would rather drive five minutes from my store rather than an hour from home for such things. This happens about twice per year, give or take, and it can run concurrently with the quarterly free trials that Sirius normally has. While the free trial is mostly for the car radio, it technically includes all formats, but I didn't explore those opportunities this time. I have tried to use the app on a previous free trial, but I can never seem to activate it. I only realized a day or so ago that I could have also been listening online, since I could have used my Mac's music player separately from being on the actual website all the time. It just didn't come up until it was too late to fully enjoy such things, especially since the interference on my favorite radio station at work has been truly horrible these last few weeks. (I've mentioned this problem in many posts before, so I won't go into it again this post.) The signal is usually so much clearer and steadier than some local stations, especially this time of year when vegetation can cause interference. There are a few dead zones where the reception is blocked along my regular route from home to work, with the longest one being over a minute, although I managed to keep the signal once along that stretch. Maybe the satellite was in the proper position. I am supposed to get about 250 channels, based upon my model. However, not only are some station call numbers not used, but some channels were left out for some reason. These are mostly in the 100s, as the lower numbers seem to be all used and I rarely check on the really high ones as they are used for targeted sports play-by-play. About halfway through this trial, there was a shake up of some of the stations, aside from the switching out of limited run channels, including Taylor Swift and Billie Ellish when their new albums were coming out. The primary change was Chris Stapleton getting his own channel at the end of the Country lineup, forcing one of the Gospel channels to drop into the 100s music categories, just before Latin and Canadian but after the ad-supported ones. Like many of the artist-driven curated channels, the majority of the songs are influences and favorites, and not just Stapleton's hits. I guess he just doesn't have a deep enough repertoire for that yet, unlike some of the other artists who have their own channels. Also, he isn't just having his name tagged onto a channel to draw attention to a particular genre of music. Pitbull is a good example of this, as his channel is more of a general global pop station than a showcase for his own music. Generally, even with dozens of music channels, I usually just listen to a few seconds of a song, and move onto the next station in the lineup if I don't like it. I rarely stay on any one station beyond Hits 1 and DMB Radio for long. I usually skip a few of the rock and country stations, and I don't even try to listen to anything past 74. Not a fan of Elvis, blues, or symphony orchestra for the most part. So, just two out of dozens of music channels. Barely touch anything else. Sports, comedy, news, et cetera. I will miss it when the trial ends this week. I won't miss all of the notifications I get. See, I had to set up the radio to notify me when certain artists and/or songs pop up for when my mom is with me. In particular, "September" by Earth, Wind, & Fire, or however they were spelling it at the time. One can only hear this song a certain amount of times before one starts hating the 21st day of that month.
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