I have XM but from what I can tell they’re virtually identical music-wise. They differentiate mainly in terms of things I suspect neither of us cares about: baseball vs football, the two big shock jocks, and station ID jingles. In other words, they’re within two degrees of identical.
Sirius is said to have slightly better audio quality, or was a year or two ago. I doubt that a little bit; they both tweak & tune the bandwidth allocations constantly, so it varies from channel to channel and is based upon the number of channels crammed into the available pipe at a given time, and the encoding quality assigned to each of them based on whatever opaque metrics they use to make those decisions.
You don’t seem like much of a commercial radio kind of guy. When I looked at it, there really wasn’t much that made me go “Yeah, I’d listen to those dozen stations a lot” — plus too much talk and sports.
Kim has XM, and my friend Neal has Sirius. I’ve listened to XM on DirecTV’s channels a bit and have heard some crazy stuff. For the most part though, Sirius seems to have more “off the beaten path” stations, which in my book is a big plus. I listen to Mojo Nixon’s radio show on there which is quite comical. Kim likes 80’s pop and J-Pop stuff and thats pretty prevalent on XM.
Nobody’s said a thing to make me think that money thrown down for anybody’s satellite radio wouldn’t be better spent on CDs and edgy little underground music ‘zines.
I need John Peel back from the dead and put in charge of programming before radio, satellite or otherwise, is going to be any kind of big deal.
I spend a lot of money on music, most of it CDs from the artists or their smaller labels. I don’t read zines because I used to be a rock critic and they make me something something.
I think satellite radio will be good for a couple-three more years. Right now it’s like early cable TV when they didn’t have so many commercials and they had a lot of range to their content.
I certainly understand about your aversion to the zines; the writing being shit for the most part. For me, it’s one of the only ways I can keep more or less in the loop for new sounds. I’ve heard a lot of neat new things on from Yeti, and Badaboom Gramophone.
Yah, idunno. All this newfangled satellite stuff – bah.
Re: There goes the last DJ…
I actually disagree! It’s about Jim Ladd, who represents the most ossified and self-congratulatory “classic rock” mentality. I mean, the guy talks about bein’ a real DJ and playin’ stuff that matters, man, and then plays… classic rock hits, themed. I think he smoked himself simple sometime around 1974. I think that his generation’s enshrining of “classic rock” is one of the reasons that everything’s a format now and it can all be coopted and clearchanneled.
Be My Blog 
I have XM but from what I can tell they’re virtually identical music-wise. They differentiate mainly in terms of things I suspect neither of us cares about: baseball vs football, the two big shock jocks, and station ID jingles. In other words, they’re within two degrees of identical.
Sirius is said to have slightly better audio quality, or was a year or two ago. I doubt that a little bit; they both tweak & tune the bandwidth allocations constantly, so it varies from channel to channel and is based upon the number of channels crammed into the available pipe at a given time, and the encoding quality assigned to each of them based on whatever opaque metrics they use to make those decisions.
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You don’t seem like much of a commercial radio kind of guy. When I looked at it, there really wasn’t much that made me go “Yeah, I’d listen to those dozen stations a lot” — plus too much talk and sports.
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Kim has XM, and my friend Neal has Sirius. I’ve listened to XM on DirecTV’s channels a bit and have heard some crazy stuff. For the most part though, Sirius seems to have more “off the beaten path” stations, which in my book is a big plus. I listen to Mojo Nixon’s radio show on there which is quite comical. Kim likes 80’s pop and J-Pop stuff and thats pretty prevalent on XM.
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Nobody’s said a thing to make me think that money thrown down for anybody’s satellite radio wouldn’t be better spent on CDs and edgy little underground music ‘zines.
I need John Peel back from the dead and put in charge of programming before radio, satellite or otherwise, is going to be any kind of big deal.
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I spend a lot of money on music, most of it CDs from the artists or their smaller labels. I don’t read zines because I used to be a rock critic and they make me something something.
I think satellite radio will be good for a couple-three more years. Right now it’s like early cable TV when they didn’t have so many commercials and they had a lot of range to their content.
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I certainly understand about your aversion to the zines; the writing being shit for the most part. For me, it’s one of the only ways I can keep more or less in the loop for new sounds. I’ve heard a lot of neat new things on from Yeti, and Badaboom Gramophone.
Yah, idunno. All this newfangled satellite stuff – bah.
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There goes the last DJ…
“As we celebrate mediocrity…all the boys upstairs wanna see…how much you’ll pay for what you used to get for free…”
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Re: There goes the last DJ…
great song, great album, great sentiment.
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Re: There goes the last DJ…
I actually disagree! It’s about Jim Ladd, who represents the most ossified and self-congratulatory “classic rock” mentality. I mean, the guy talks about bein’ a real DJ and playin’ stuff that matters, man, and then plays… classic rock hits, themed. I think he smoked himself simple sometime around 1974. I think that his generation’s enshrining of “classic rock” is one of the reasons that everything’s a format now and it can all be coopted and clearchanneled.
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Re: There goes the last DJ…
I thought it was about Tom Donohue…
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Pandora.com. I think it’s for you.
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I do like Pandora.
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Just looked at pandora. Dying to get home where I can actually listen – This Looks Like Good Product To Me.
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