We’ve had Sirius and/or XM Radio subscriptions in our cars for over a decade. Needless to say, when we’re renting a car for a road trip, we want to bring our radio stations with us. That usually meant searching through all the cars in the rental lot to find one with a functional Satellite Radio. This was one of the only things I liked about being able to pick my own car.
If you wanted to pay Alamo for SiriusXM, you’d pay $5.99 per day, $24.99 per week, or $49.98 maximum for 30 days.
Turns out, this is a non-issue.
Starting on July 10, 2019, SiriusXM started allowing all Select members to stream content from outside the car. I can listen from my computer and more importantly I can listen through the app on my phone.
What this means is that I have my subscription wherever I travel as long as I have a data connection. Most of the time I can connect my phone to the car via Bluetooth or I could plug in with a USB cable. Either of those methods should enable me to listen to music from my phone in the car. I bet if we tried hard enough we could even find an AUX cable in our bag of wires if we needed it.
I’ve even found out that I’m able to listen to our favorite stations outside the US, like how we listened to 80s on 8 through the car’s Wi-Fi connection while driving to our hotel in Iceland.
Final Thoughts
If you’re paying for a SiriusXM subscription at home, make sure to make an online account and download the app to your phone. That way, you’ll be able to listen to your stations wherever you are, even if your rental car only has a CD player.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
3 comments
Thanks so much for this! Made my road trip in a rental much better.
Still, this is totally unfair and consumers should act to force rental car companies to allow those with an active subscription to stream on the car radio.
Still…. this incurs data charges. I do not have an unlimited data plan so if I stream Siriusxm to my phone for a 7 hour drive that is a lot of data charges.