Using SiriusXM over the internet Not unlike competitive music-streaming apps like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal, the SiriusXM mobile app and web player share several cosmetic traits and interface elements. And like other platforms, the more you use and listen to SiriusXM, the better your artist and genre recommendations will be. When you launch the iOS app and web player, you’ll automatically be on the Discover/For You page. A rotating banner at the top of the screen spotlights recently listened to stations and popular music, talk, news, and other stations of note. Scrolling down, you’ll find categories like Your Recent Channels, Channels for You, Live News, Politics & Issues, Shows & Podcasts For You, and From the SiriusXM Studios, which is where you’ll find HD video content. Above, from left: The Music, Library, Search, Talk & Podcasts tabs and expanded playback controls as seen on the SiriusXM app for iOS devices. Everything is divided into rows of colorized tiles that are simple to navigate and easy to find. This same design crosses over to the Music, Talk & Podcasts, and Sports tabs, which you can tap or click at the top of the app and web player. Under Music, you’ll find categories like Essential New Music, Exclusive Artists and Channel Shows, and curated playlist stations that blend multiple tracks and artists, including Take it Easy, Party On, and Find Your Focus. Talk and Podcasts is broken down into its own bevy of scrollable categories, as is the Sports page, which also calls attention to upcoming pass-me-the-ball events with labels like Live & Upcoming NFL and NBA Games. You’ll also find numerous sports talk channels, and you can even break the content down by teams and leagues. When you fire up a station, playback controls will appear at the bottom of the screen. You can tap the ribbon to make it fullscreen in the app or click the Enter Fullscreen button on the desktop web player. Commands include play/pause, track skipping, and options to add stations to your personal library. There’s also a button that will let you cast stations to compatible external speakers. Above, from left: The Discover / For You, Search and Library screens as seen on the SiriusXM desktop web player. Conveniently, SiriusXM lets you skip up to six times between stream-ready tracks, thanks to an impressive one-hour listening buffer. All of your favorite stations, artists, podcasts, and sports programs are housed under the Library tab. On mobile, you’ll also be able to download certain podcast episodes and other programs for offline listening. To initiate a download, just select the episode and tap the Download button (an arrow pointing down to a horizontal line). All finished downloads are stored under the Downloads tab (the final Library category). You can also use the iPhone’s built-in Siri to control some parts of our SiriusXM listening experience. This amounted to play and pause commands, as the assistant couldn’t do any track-skipping. Audio quality If you happen to use both the satellite option for SiriusXM as well as app-based streams on whatever connected device you want, you might well have noticed a bit of a disparity between the audio qualities. Some of that, of course, will depend on what you’re listening through. Basic car stereo speakers will always sound like basic car stereo speakers and not something from a high-end automobile. Cheap headphones will always sound like cheap headphones. But the bottom line is that the satellite stream has a different bitrate than the internet-based stream. SiriusXM doesn’t publish what those bitrates are, but the difference is stark enough that you don’t have to be an audiophile to notice. It’s probably not a deal-breaker for most folks, but we wanted to mention it. But considering that we’re talking about beaming all that data to space and back, it’s still pretty good. (And kind of remarkable, if you think about it, even in this day and age.) The Sirius XM app and web player have options for streaming quality. But unless you have very limited bandwidth, we’d leave it at maximum. If you’re all about hi-res listening, we have some bad news: SiriusXM has no hi-res tracks. Discerning audiophiles and 24-bit fans may be better served by streamers like Tidal and Qobuz. But, again, that’s comparing apples to oranges a bit because SiriusXM isn’t an on-demand music service. How to cancel SiriusXM We don’t generally include sections on how to cancel a service because canceling services online is generally relatively easy. You might have to click a couple of buttons, but it’s usually pretty easy. And if you’ve subscribed to the $10-a-month devices-only plan via your phone, it is pretty easy to cancel through the normal app store mechanisms. But if you’ve signed up via a free trial through your car, you will almost certainly have to call SiriusXM to cancel, and not just do it through your account portal online. That’s a bit of a headache and has led the State of New York to file a lawsuit against SiriusXM for making it more difficult than its attorney general believes it should be. It’s not insurmountable, but it is something to be aware of. Editors’ Recommendations