What happen to the joint on SiriusXM Radio?
Reggae music station The Joint on satellite radio SiriusXM has not been removed contrary to utterances by crooner Leroy Sibbles. In December, 2020, SiriusXM launched Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Radio on Channel 19 and The Joint moved up to channel 722. Leroy Sibbles, a Jamaican Lovers Rock singer, says Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Radio is problematic for the reggae industry and artists are getting less money from songs played on the platform.
He told I Never Knew TV in an interview that, “They have taken away the food, Tuff Gong, have taken away the food out of everyone’s mouth.
“America have millions of listeners, not like Jamaica… I America we have millions and millions of listeners in each state and as an internet radio the do the same thing, they play a song for you, you get paid,”
Leroy’s understanding is that The Joint has been removed from SiriusXM and that Jamaican music is no longer significant on the platform but Tuff Gong has replaced it with playing Bob Marley’s music.
“They have a lot of different stations but one call The Joint they play all Jamaican music, strictly Jamaican reggae music from the early days and from this it made them a special source of income for people in the reggae business, we look forward to this,” he said.
“What Tuff Gong has done it really hurt…if Bob Marley was here he would not have done what Tuff Gong has done,” he inferred.
Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) is the leading audio entertainment company in North America, and the premier programmer and platform for subscription and digital advertising-supported audio products.
SiriusXM’s platforms collectively reach approximately 150 million listeners, the largest digital audio audience across paid and free tiers in North America, and deliver music, sports, talk, news, comedy, entertainment, and podcasts according to their website.
Leroy may be seeing a dip in his mechanical royalty statements but now more than ever reggae and dancehall music is benefitting from SiriusXM’s shows and their subsidiary companies.
Starting July 4 last year ,Shaggy’s Yard became another dedicated reggae-dancehall Channel on SiriusXM’s channel 47 which features a wide range of contemporary, rare, and classic tracks spanning the hip-hop, dancehall, and reggae genres with insights from Shaggy about the musical history of Jamaica and its global impact.
Pandora, a subsidiary of SiriusXM, is the largest ad-supported audio entertainment streaming service in the U.S. SiriusXM’s subsidiaries Stitcher, Simplecast and AdsWizz make it a leader in podcast hosting, production, distribution, analytics, and monetization. The Company’s advertising sales arm, SXM Media, leverages its scale, cross-platform sales organization, and ad tech capabilities to deliver results for audio creators and advertisers.
In July this year SiriusXM announced that its SXM App, which delivers more than 425 SiriusXM channels of the best in audio entertainment – Howard Stern, ad-free music, sports and more – is now available to tens of millions of Comcast customers nationwide on Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex and XClass TV, giving its subscribers a new way to experience SiriusXM programming at home.
The move seems more like a move to compete with streaming platforms rather than a slight to reggae musicians. Unlike the car play, The app is available in Jamaica and subscribers of in car play get the subscription on the app complimentary.
The Joint’s daily playlist can be accessed here and their wide ranging songs for today came from Bounty Killer, Don Carlos, Collie Buddz, Protoje, Masicka, Dunwell, Sugar Minott, Gregory Isaacs, Burning Spear and others.
