Yet, whenever I check what the online financial media is saying about Sirius XM, I always find that the loudest negative voices are spewing from the Motley Fool website. I have no problem with an analyst saying that a stock is not worth buying (at this point, unless you’re a long-term investor I wouldn’t suggest buying Sirius XM either), but the group at Motley Fool is viciously against this radio company and I can’t figure out why? Maybe a bunch of their writers got burned on the stock – who knows?

The latest article was posted up on MSNBC’s website and it talked about how Sirius XM is the worst stock of 2009. Bear in mind that 2009 isn’t even a month old yet! What bothers me, though, is the complete one-sided opinions that they put out there and the implied stance that their ideas are obviously applicable to the rest of the country. An example:

Satellite-radio competes for my ears with my Apple iPod and its dedicated car jack, my custom-burned CDs, and with a host of new mobile applications, including Ford and Microsoft’s Sync. And with other automakers experimenting with putting routers in their cars that could stream free Internet radio, Sirius’ competition for luxury dollars is increasing.

And satellite radio is very much a luxury. A past subscriber myself, I found my use waning in the months following a cross-country trip. As use fell, I found defending the monthly cost difficult — and that was before the economy cratered, when luxury spending was easier to justify.

First, just because your ears have multiple listening options, that doesn’t apply to everyone. I’m glad that you can afford a car with a dedicated jack for your iPod. I – and a great deal of Americans who are struggling in the current economy – cannot afford this luxury. Second, I’m glad that your new, expensive car has either a router or Ford/Microsoft’s Sync program. The 2000 Civic that my Mom just gave me doesn’t have those options. Neither did the 1999 Chevy Blazer that I donate to charity at the beginning of the month. Maybe the next used car that I buy will have a fancy feature or two, but again – the vast majority of Americans can’t afford these cars with all of these bells and whistles that you apparently can afford.

Need proof? Isn’t the domestic car industry in the crapper? Exactly.

It’s a shame that this writer’s cross-country trip is used as one of the driving factors in his purchase of Sirius XM. That was his dumb choice. For me – someone who drives more than two hours per day – I enjoy the variety that I get from Sirius XM. Sure, sometimes the lack of original content on Howard Stern pisses me off and yes, even with dozens and dozens of commercial-free music channels there is sometimes nothing to listen to, but that’s no different than cable television with hundreds of channels with nothing to watch!

For me, Sirius XM is the perfect companion during my daily commute and drives around the state. It’s also nice to turn it on in the office and be able to listen to commercial-free music. For some people, Sirius XM isn’t right.

However, as a shareholder I have a serious problem with Motley Fool publishing around 10 negative articles on Sirius XM this month alone. That’s ridiculous and an obvious show of bias. I wouldn’t care what Motley Fool does with their webspace, except that Google Finance uses their updates in their news feed so every few days I get another death story from these bias folks. If the rest of Sirius XM‘s investors are getting the same reports, then what does anyone expect besides a huge sell off?

If this company dies, it will be in no small part thanks to the one-sided, arrogant comments by online groups like Motley Fool.

As a shareholder, I’m completely in favor of Sirius XM raising their rates because I know that the company has a series of “financing events” coming up this year where billions in existing debt need to be refinanced. The company is working hard to strategically position itself for the coming years so that it is a streamlined company that continues to grow and generate revenue, but this has been a tricky process.

Towards the end of last year, many of the niche music channels that Sirius XM listeners grew accustomed to hearing were removed in favor of condensing the company’s offerings. This attempt to streamline its services by removing duplicate channels has generated mixed results. Some of the condensing made sense. For example, adding the 40’s on 4, 50’s on 5, 60’s on 6, 70’s on 7, 80’s on 8, and 90’s on 9 channels was the only logical move to make with the standard music channels. The same is true of the Sirius XM Love channel which plays love music all day. Having separate Sirius and XM channels for these standardized playlists is a waste of money.

On the other hand, when Sirius’ Back Spin Radio channel was replaced by XM’s Pop2K channel, the Back Spin fans went bonkers. Through a coordinated campaign, they successfully lobbied to get the Back Spin channel brought back to the Sirius XM line-up (fans of the Strobe channel did the same thing). Creating cost synergies makes sense, but so does listening to your fans.

Now, from my standpoint as a consumer of Sirius XM radio some of the pending price increases really piss me off. First, they are removing the free internet feed and adding a $3.00 monthly fee without increasing services. The company’s argument will be that they are upgrading the internet fee to the better, clearer 128k connection. Guess what? I don’t want the better connection! I’m perfectly okay with the lesser connection that I have now because it works fine!

My way around this fee, though, will be to NOT order the internet service and instead purchase a boombox for when I want to listen to Sirius XM in the house. Plus, with the boombox I can pause and rewind the radio because I’ll be using the unit that I have in my car. So take that!

Second, Sirius XM is increasing the additional account fee by $2.00 to $8.99 per additional account. In other words, if I have my master account paying $12.95 per month (that’s $13.86 per month with tax) and I want to add an additional radio to my account, instead of paying the $6.99 rate, I’ll now have to pay the $8.99 rate. For one extra radio, that brings my total monthly payment with tax to $23.48. If I was to throw in the internet radio on top of that, then my monthly payment with tax to $26.68. That’s too much for anyone to pay for a monthly convenience like satellite radio.

Third, I’m greatly concerned that Sirius XM is now finding ways to skirt around the government’s decree that it could not raise rates for the first three years it existed as a merged company. When approving the merger, the government said that basic rates could not be increased for three years. Well, if the basic internet rate was free, then isn’t charging $3.00 per month essentially raising the rate? And isn’t raising the additional radio rate by $2.00 per month essentially raising the rate? I don’t like it and I would imagine that other consumers won’t like this either.

And yet because of my daily commute and the amount of driving that I do, I still find the company well worth the $13.86 that I pay each month. But paying anything more than that? Well, frankly I don’t know if I could justify an additional expense for not getting an additional service.

However, as a committed shareholder I hope that you clicked on one of the links in this entry and purchased a product from Sirius XM! I truly think the company has great long-term potential – I just question whether squeezing more money out of its already committed subscriber base is the right way to realize additional income.

As someone who spends a great deal of time in my car each week because of my job, I can tell you that the benefits of commercial-free music channels far outweigh the benefits of terrestrial radio (which is, essentially, the fact that it is free). I’m willing to spend $13 per month to listen to commercial free music for about two hours every day that I have to commute to and from work or travel around the state. Sure, some other commuters may not need this service and if I traveled a much shorter distance to work, then I might not have Sirius XM installed in my car.

But what bothers me in this situation is the rumor mongering that only takes into account what Stern said on one day. No one mentions that on the very next day he said that if he wasn’t on Sirius XM then he wouldn’t be in radio, period. So as a Sirius XM shareholder please forgive me if I want the full story out there and not just the negative sounding part.