Sirius-ly Flawed

So today is the big day many Satellite Radio fans have been waiting for, it’s the day that the long awaited Sirius XM application for the iPhone is released.

At midnight the application was released to the iTunes store and many of the folks who were happy that the long awaited program was being released are not so happy.

It seems the program is missing the one thing that they really wanted to listen to, the Howard Stern Show.

The new application lets you listen to Opie & Anthony and Playboy Radio but for some reason the biggest draw to satellite radio is missing.

In the application it says that they stream all the channels for which they have mobile performance rights. But really if your listening on your Sirius XM radio in your car doesn’t that make it mobile?

What this app does is allows you to listen to the Internet streams Sirius XM offers on its website. There should be no reason why the lineup isn’t the same on the website and on the iPhone application.

So what would be the motivation for Sirius XM to exclude their most popular channel from their iPhone application? For me my guess would be for the money. Sirius XM would rather have you subscribe to their regular service at $12.95 a month to get Stern then pay $2.99 a month to listen to him on your iPhone.

Or it could be that we are starting to see the phasing out of Howard Stern from Sirius XM as the rumors are then when his contract is done at Sirius XM that he’s heading back to regular radio to “save terrestrial radio.”

This should be a fun day for Sirius XM fans yet many are frustrated, they learned just a few weeks ago that their bills would be going up around $2 to cover royalty fees, and now the long awaited iPhone application is missing the Howard Stern channels they wanted to listen to.

In the iTunes store, the reviews of the application are extremely negative with 10 bad reviews for every 1 positive review. Sirius XM once again screwed something up that should have given them a positive boost.

I played around with the application this morning and found the application itself to be well thought out and easy to use. (Note a number of first generation iPhone owners have reported to me that this application is not working on their phones.) And while the program ran great the sound quality did not seem to be as good as listening to the Sirius XM website. It appears the reason for this is because the new iPhone application uses new “Variable Bit Rate” streams while the web streams from the Sirius XM website are 128k streams.

If you are a satellite radio fan disappointed by the new application due to the lack of Stern or you don’t like the sound quality there are a few ways to get both on your iPhone.
There are three apps that I know of which will allow you to listen to the high bit rate streams and also enjoy the Howard Stern show. The apps are as follows:

Pocket Tunes - $9.99 From Normsoft Inc.
Wunder Radio - $6.99 From Weather Underground
OoTunes Radio 2.1 – $3.99 From Oogli LLC

All of these programs will allow you to login to the Sirius XM radio site and enjoy what Sirius XM has to offer. However it should be noted that to listen using these applications that you must have a Sirius XM online listening subscription.