XM Satellite Radio

In 2004, General Motors sold Hughes Electronics to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and sold DirecTV's interest in XM Satellite Radio. On March 1, XM Radio launched Instant Traffic and Weather Channels for major metropolitan markets in the United States. Also in 2004, the company partnered with automakers General Motors, Honda, Isuzu, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen, and SAAB to offer in-dash XM receivers on an OEM basis. The Acura TL is the first luxury automobile to offer XM radio as "standard" in every vehicle.

On October 4, 2004, "shock jocks" Opie and Anthony begin broadcasting on a premium XM Satellite Radio station. Also, former National Public Radio host Bob Edwards broadcast the first Bob Edwards Show on XM Public Radio on channel 133. On October 20, XM announced an 11-year, US$650 million deal with Major League Baseball to broadcast games live nationwide and to become the Official Satellite Radio provider of Major League Baseball. The agreement granted XM the rights to use the MLB silhouetted batter logo and the collective marks of all major league clubs. As part of the deal, XM created a 24/7 MLB channel called "Home Plate". The deal started with the 2005 baseball season and ran through 2012, including a 3-year option that MLB could have picked up.

On May 28, 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported that XM had awarded the contract for the XM 5 spacecraft to Space Systems/Loral. On June 7, XM partnered with Audible.com to offer downloadable audio show archives of The Opie and Anthony Show, as well as The Bob Edwards Show. On August 1, XM announced a three-year partnership with the United States Tennis Association to broadcast the US Open tournament through 2007, as well as weekly reports from other US Open Series events. On September 12, XM announced a 10-year, US$100 million deal to carry National Hockey League broadcasts beginning with the 2005–06 season, initially sharing the coverage with SIRIUS but gaining satellite-radio exclusivity from 2007 onward. On November 29, XM launched service in Canada.

2006–2010

In January 2006, XM began broadcasting Fox News Talk. On January 9, XM won top honors at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. On February 9, XM announced a US$55 million, three-year deal with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.

In May 2006, the RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio over XM's new portable devices the Inno and Helix, claiming that the devices corresponded to a downloading service. XM contended the devices were protected because they recorded similarly to a videotape, allowing the consumer to record a portion of their broadcast similar to a VCR, DVR, or cassette player for later playback. On January 19, 2007, a district judge allowed the RIAA to proceed with the lawsuit, rejecting XM's defense that the conduct alleged in the complaint, if proved by the RIAA, would be immune under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1991.

On July 24, 2006, Nate Davis, formerly of XO Communications, was made the president and chief operating officer. In October, the XM-4 "Blues" satellite was launched atop a Zenit 3SL rocket.

On January 18, 2007, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that licensing regulations would prohibit a possible merger of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio. On February 19, XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio announced they would merge. On March 20, 2007, XM and Sirius filed a "Consolidated Application for Authority to Transfer Control" at the FCC. On July 24, XM announced that CEO Hugh Panero would leave the company in August, and that then-current President and COO Nate Davis would step in to serve as president and interim CEO.

On March 24, 2008, the United States Department of Justice approved the merger of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio. On July 26, the FCC approved the XM-Sirius merger and on July 29, Sirius and XM officially merged as SiriusXM Radio. XM Canada and Sirius Canada, subsidiaries of the parent companies, remained separate until April 2011.

In early 2009, SiriusXM prepared to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company had a $1 billion debt obligation in 2009 and $175 million immediate obligation due February 17, 2009. On November 12, Gary Parsons resigned as chairman and was replaced by Eddy W. Hartenstein, as the new non-executive chairman.

On November 24, 2010, XM Canada and Sirius Canada announced plans to merge.

2011–present

On April 11, 2011, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the merger of the Canadian companies, Sirius and XM, into SiriusXM Canada.

Commercial adoption and partnerships

In 2004, JetBlue announced that XM Satellite Radio service would be available in its Embraer regional jets beginning in 2005. Also in 2005, AirTran Airways began putting XM Satellite Radio on their aircraft. United Airlines started carrying XM programming in March 2006. Zipcar, an urban car-sharing service in the United States, initially installed XM receivers in all of their vehicles, but later announced they would be removed from its fleet in the following months due to uncertainty in the market.

Customer service

In contrast to its high-quality broadcasts, Sirius/XM's customer service has drawn fire from some state governments. In October 2010, Richard Cordray, Ohio's Attorney General, began investigating complaints regarding Sirius XM's policies on billing, customer solicitation, and subscription renewals and cancellations. The company informed shareholders of the probe shortly thereafter. According to news reports, Arizona, Connecticut, Tennessee, Vermont, and the District of Columbia had expressed interest in participating in the inquiry.

According to Reuters, "The investigations come as SiriusXM, home to programs by Howard Stern and Oprah Winfrey, has found its footing and distanced itself from years of huge losses and questions about its business model."

In a report obtained in March 2011, The Better Business Bureau reported receiving over 4,500 complaints against SiriusXM in the preceding 36 months, around half of which regarded the company's billing and collection practices.

In Missouri, some people registered on the state's do-not-call list had complained about receiving repeated calls from SiriusXM workers or agents after canceling their subscriptions. Some Florida customers had reported being billed for automatic renewals of accounts they had canceled. Further, SiriusXM was sued in federal court by a customer accusing it of deceptively raising prices.

The report also stated that "Sirius, in a statement, said it was cooperating with the investigations and that it believed its 'consumer-related practices comply with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations.'"

Exclusive channels

America's Talk

ATN-Asian Radio

Bollywood & Beyond

Calendrier Sportif

Canada 360

ESPN Xtra

Extreme Talk

Faction Talk (formerly: The Opie Channel)

Fox Sports Radio

KISS 104.1

Laugh Attack

Mix

MLB Play-by-Play

Nashville!

Quoi de Neuf

ReachMD

Rock@Random

Talk Radio

The Pink Channel

XM Deportivo

XM Scoreboard

Technology

XM provided digital programming directly from two high-powered satellites in geostationary orbit above the equator: XM Rhythm at 85° west longitude and XM Blues at 115° west longitude in addition to a network of ground-based repeaters. The combination of two satellites and a ground-based repeater network was designed to provide gap-free coverage anywhere within the contiguous U.S., the southern tip of Alaska, and in the southern part of Canada. The signal could also be received in the Caribbean Islands and most of Mexico (reports have stated that areas north of Acapulco were able to receive a steady signal); however, XM is not yet licensed for reception by paid subscribers living in these areas.

The original satellites, XM-1 ("Rock") and XM-2 ("Roll") suffered from a generic design fault on the Boeing 702 series satellite (fogging of the solar panels), which meant that their lifetimes were shortened to approximately six years instead of the design goal of 15 years. To compensate for this flaw, XM-3 ("Rhythm") was launched ahead of its planned schedule on February 28, 2005, and moved into XM-1's previous location of 85° WL. XM-1 was then moved to be co-located with XM-2 at 115° WL, where each satellite operated only one transponder (thus broadcasting half the bandwidth each) to conserve energy and cut the power consumption in half while XM-4 ("Blues") was readied for launch. Subsequently, XM launched ground-spare XM-4 ("Blues") ahead of schedule on October 30, 2006, into the 115° WL location to complete the satellite replacement program. On December 15, 2006, XM-1 was finally powered down and then drifted back to its original location at 85° WL, where it remained as a backup to XM-3. XM-2 was similarly powered down and remained as a backup to XM-4. This makes the current active satellites as XM-3 "Rhythm" and XM-4 "Blues" with two in-orbit spares.

On June 7, 2005, Space Systems/Loral announced that it had been awarded a contract for XM-5. XM-5 was to feature two large, unfurlable antennas. Sirius' Radiosat 5, also to be built by Loral, was slated to have a similar single large antenna.

In American and Canadian metropolitan areas, XM and its Canadian licensee "Canadian Satellite Radio" (CSR) and operating as SiriusXM Canada, owned and operated a network of approximately 900 terrestrial repeater stations, meant to compensate for satellite signal blockage by buildings, tunnels, and bridges. In the United States, XM owned and operated approximately 800 repeater sites, covering 60 markets; in Canada, CSR was installing approximately 80 to 100 repeaters that were planned to be owned and operated by CSR in the 16 largest Canadian cities. The actual number of repeater sites varies as the signal is regularly tested and monitored for optimal performance. The actual number of sites in the United States has dropped from the original 1,000 installed when the service first launched in 2001. The repeaters transmit in the same frequency band as the satellites. A typical city contains 20 or more terrestrial stations. Typically, the receiver owner is unaware when a terrestrial station is being used, unless he or she checks antenna information from the receiver being used. Due to a FCC filing in October 2006, the latest list of XM's US terrestrial repeater network was made available to the public.

The XM signal used 12.5 MHz of the S band: 2332.5 to 2345.0 MHz. XM provided 128 kilobits per second of its bandwidth to OnStar Corporation for use with XM-enabled GM vehicles, regardless of whether their owners are XM subscribers. American Honda also retained the right to some of the company's bandwidth to transmit messages to Acura vehicles via a service known as AcuraLink.

XM NavTraffic, an optional service, transmitted coded traffic information directly to vehicle navigation systems using TMC technology.

Audio channels on XM were digitally compressed using the CT-aacPlus (HE-AAC) codec from Coding Technologies for most channels. That said, some channels rely on the AMBE codec from Digital Voice Systems (e.g., for voice channels), including all of the Traffic and Weather channels.

The XM radio signal was broadcast on 6 separate radio carriers within the 12.5 MHz allocation. The entire content of the radio service, including both data and audio content, was represented by only two carriers. The other 4 carriers carried duplicates of the same content to achieve redundancy through signal diversity. The data on each carrier is encoded using time-delayed and error-correction schemes to enhance availability. Effectively, the total radio spectrum used for content is a little over 4 MHz.

Each two-carrier group broadcast 100 8-kilobit-per-second streams in approximately 4 MHz of radio spectrum. These streams were combined using a patented process to form a variable number of channels using a variety of bitrates. Bandwidth is separated into segments of 4-kilobit-per-second virtual "streams" which are combined to form audio and data "channels" of varying bitrates from 4 to 64 kilobits-per-second.

XM preprocessed audio content using Neural Audio processors that are optimized for the aacPlus codec, including spectral band replication (SBR). Audio was stored digitally in Dalet audio library systems using an industry-standard MPEG-1 Layer II at 384 kbit/s, sometimes known as MUSICAM. The audio is further processed by the Neural Audio processors on the way to broadcast.

In the past, the SiriusXM Pops channel, which aired classical music, was broadcast in 5.1 surround sound. The technology, titled XM HD Surround, is the result of a partnership between XM and Neural Audio Corporation which provides content with six discrete channels of digital audio. The former XM Live channel also broadcast in this format for certain concerts and studio performances. XM manufacturing partners such as Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., and Yamaha introduced home audio systems capable of playing XM HD Surround. It is not known if the XM HD Surround technology is used on the service as of 2015.