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The XM radio site has samples of most of their channels. (requires Windows Media Player I believe). I have been listening to the classical music channels this afternoon, and I have been very pleased with their selection. I would easily pay $10 a month for this. I'm still trying to justify to myself paying $300 for the receiver though. It sure beats FM radio hands down (0 classical channels in my area!)

Please take a look at the channel listings. here. before talking about it.

Now, I would be willing to pay a lot of money for unlimited high quality of music, I'd say for up to $50 a month. But the channel listing tells me that these programs are not for any serious listeners. Now I am not an audiophile, but I can tell you what I'd like to see on paid radio: For example, under "Dance", there should be at 40-100 channels of specialty, like "techno", "house", "drum&base", "gothic/industrial", "jungle", "trance", "hip hop", "tango", "Son/Cuban", "Walts", "Twists/swing", "2step/cha cha", "rumba", "Conga", "country","disco" ... and on and on. Along with mixed style dance channels, like "club dance", "ballroom", "Salsa" and so on. It should be clear that everyone would benefit from the variety; sometimes you just happen to flip to a channel where you hear this incredible bluegrass tune that you really like, although you may have zero exposure to that type of music.

Classical music fans nationwide suffer from the lack of choice. If they spawn 100 classical music channels than I'm sure classical music fans have the pocket to purchase the subscription. But "The Greatest Music of the Last 1,000 Years?" give me a break. Why don't they just say it as it is: "the bubblegum classic channel." "the billboard top 20 underground music channel."

It doesn't take a lot of money to do so, either. Once the fix cost is invested, it doesn't take much to add channels. Underground musicians don't ask for a lot of money to spread thier kind of music.

Do I wanna listen to Britney or backstreet boys on 100 channels? No.

I personally will subscribe and pay my dollars if they get at least 2 opera channels, 40 dance music channels, 1 spanish/classic guitar, one 30's, one 40's, ... one 90's, one 00's, 8 Jazz, 30 classical channels. 2 Asian, 10 Euro's, Gothic/Industrial, one middle east/Indian, one Maria Callas, one Bach, one Mozart, one Piano concertos, one Baroque, one Dead Can Dance... you got the picture. I'm not saying that "No doubt" or "Snoop dog" aren't good, but these are the music we are force fed. I want to know what's really out there. I don't want to listen to whatever the RIAA tells me to listen to. Unfortunately, the MX is doing just that - force feeding us the RIAA tunes.

XM Radio Inc. has filed an application for modification of its authorization to construct, launch and operate two Digital Audio Radio Service (DARS) satellites. XM Radio seeks (1) to increase the maximum EIRP of each of its DARS satellites to 68.5 dBW, (2) to revise its downlink channelization plan by increasing the number of channels from five to six, including four carrier frequencies (two per satellite) of 1.84 MHz each and two frequencies for terrestrial repeaters of 2.53 MHz each, and (3) to increase the transmission rate of each of its satellite carriers to 3.28 Mbit/s.

Our satellites will transmit audio programming within a 12.5 MHz range of S-Band radio frequencies that have been allocated by the FCC for our exclusive use. Megahertz is a unit of measurement of frequency. This 12.5 MHz bandwidth will be subdivided to carry the transmission of six signals, two signals to be transmitted from each of our two satellites and two signals to be transmitted by the terrestrial repeater network. The audio programming for XM Radio will be carried on two satellite signals, and the remaining two satellite signals and the terrestrial repeater signals will repeat the audio programming to enhance overall signal reception. The transmission of higher quality sound requires the use of more kilobits per second than the transmission of lesser quality sound. In order to provide high-quality digital sound, we expect that music channels will require approximately 56 to 64 kilobits per second, depending on the type of compression technology used, whereas talk channels will require significantly less bandwidth. We expect to use our allocated bandwidth in such a way as to provide up to 100 channels of programming, with our music channels having a high bandwidth allocation so as to provide high-quality digital sound.

We have signed a contract with ST Microelectronics to design and produce chips that will decode the XM Radio signal. We have completed the production chipset design and ST Microelectronics has commenced fabrication to make the components available to radio manufacturers starting the end of March 2001.

Technology will include the use of COFDM (Code Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex), which is a superior modulation technique for the delivery of high quality audio, video and data. This modulation technique allows a moving vehicle to receive quality service at highway speeds.

http://www.xmradio.com

Click "Programming" at the top of the screen, and then choose away. I personally like channel 51, The XM Music Lab (progressive rock/metal, psychedelic, etc.; a very underrepresented genre, IMO). If I could afford it (I'm being hit by the crappy high-tech economy right now), I would buy it. It's better than all the banal crap that plays here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas, US, metroplex.

Check their full channel listing and take a look at channel 52. Nothing but unsigned bands. XM seems to have a little of everything. If I here from someone with realworld experience that reception is pretty good in most places, I intend to get one.

Anyone who happened to catch the XM launch event (a video replay is available here) will have noticed a few things:

1. The CEO is a self-obsessed, buzzword-dropping twit who treats his employees and customers as subservients. The "command chair"!! I laughed. This guy is hardly Captain Kirk.

2. The programming staff for each of the channels are apparently experienced in traditional commercial radio, as evidenced by their oh-so-carefully crafted "cool" vocal intonation and phrasing -- you know what I mean -- the kind of voice you always hear on commercial radio, the one you just know the DJ drops the minute he's off the air (or he would never get a girlfriend).

3. As even the clueless CEO admits, this is a new medium. Unfortunately, he failed to hire clueful people to build a dynamic (as in "frequently-adjusted") channel selection based on input from the listening audience, with a choice of subscription OR (not AND!!!) advertising-supported channels.

The current list of ingredients doesn't add up to a meal, and I predict XM will fail fairly quickly.

-David.

Maybe if they can get enough cars to come with the hardware preinstalled, they have a shot.

That said, it would still take several years for any significant percentage of cars to have a satellite-radio receiver, as most sane people don't "upgrade" their cars on the same schedule that they upgrade their computers.

Try it out at their web site. It seems to be broken right now, but it looks like they are trying to provide a trial service.

Ok, so XM Radio has one metal channel, playing wannabe metal such as Korn, Limb Bizkit, and Marilyn Manson. But, out of "100 channels", there's still not one that offers melodic death metal such as In Flames or power metal such as Helloween!? Bah. (And, FWIW, it doesn't look like Sirius fares any any better)

But, to their credit, XM Radio does offer BBC World Service, which is almost reason enough alone to sign up :).

Ok, so XM Radio has one metal channel, playing wannabe metal such as Korn, Limb Bizkit, and Marilyn Manson. But, out of "100 channels", there's still not one that offers melodic death metal such as In Flames or power metal such as Helloween!? Bah. (And, FWIW, it doesn't look like Sirius fares any any better)

But, to their credit, XM Radio does offer BBC World Service, which is almost reason enough alone to sign up :).

nevermind, I found the answer to my last question (coverage area) here

They forgot Front Line Assembly Mindphaser:

"The kill is swift
It makes no sound
Aggression take its toll
Rhythm of violence
Cuts through the air
There's no more control
The sky turns brighter, a evil red
Missiles fly through the air
Shattered dreams
Shattered hopes
There's bodies everywhere"

Oh wait, no radio stations play FLA anyway. Damn! I want my XM Radio!

There are several providers of satellite radio. The target market is mostly high end cars. Two popular ones are Sirius Radio and XM Radio. If I had the money, I'd love to give it a try. I believe they're subscription based, but it's probably well worth it. Has anyone here used such a service?

The birds are already in the air, they are called, oddly enough, roll and rock (that is in order of launch). For more information check out this link (flash heavy site).

The service launches in San Diego and Dallas Fort Worth on 12 SEP 01. Most of the stations will be commercial free, some (I suspect the top-40 and biggie news stations) will have less than 6 min of commercials/hour.
I'm quite excited about this. Could be very cool.

A lot of supporting points have been made regarding these doubts, but I believe that XM Radio (or something like it) has a good chance of putting digital music into ever home, car, and office.

So, you can subscribe to XMR for $9.95 per month, not including the one-off expense of replacing all your old audio equipment with XM-Ready equipment. Or, assuming you already have a computer, you can put the money into a decent Internet connection, and listen to a gazillion radio stations worldwide for free.

I know it's easy to predict the death of one technology when another comes along, and (for example) it's clear that TV hasn't killed radio yet. But considering that a fair number of Americans have Internet access already, if they put the cost of XMR access into improving the bandwidth into their house, they'd be getting radio freedom XMR users could only dream of.

M

So, you can subscribe to XMR for $9.95 per month, not including the one-off expense of replacing all your old audio equipment with XM-Ready equipment. Or, assuming you already have a computer, you can put the money into a decent Internet connection, and listen to a gazillion radio stations worldwide for free.

I know it's easy to predict the death of one technology when another comes along, and (for example) it's clear that TV hasn't killed radio yet. But considering that a fair number of Americans have Internet access already, if they put the cost of XMR access into improving the bandwidth into their house, they'd be getting radio freedom XMR users could only dream of.

M

The narrowing of radio options is reasonable when you consider the technology of radio. There is no way to reasonably target micro-niches with radio, as a broadcast medium that is not on-demand or interactive. It is tough to prove the details about who is listening. The radio stations with the largest audience (in a wide demographic) can charge the most for advertising.

So the natural evolution of things is to consolidate stations of similar musical taste, and eventually the stations within a local area will become "orthogonal." Their listenership is determined by the fact that listeners of one station will probably enjoy none or few of the other stations.

For instance, in DC, we have one dancy/uptempo pop station, one urban-rap-pop soul station, one crunchy/grungy modern rock station, one old-school-rock station, and a mix station. I usually listen to the dancy station, and rarely listen to the others. We might have a country station, but I'm 100% orthogonal to that myself :)

Radio broadcast is, by definition, a mass-broadcast-medium. You need large audiences to make it pay off. So you need to not only consolidate audiences over a single city's spectrum, but over multiple cities.

Now where does regulation come in? Spectrum should be auction-leased by the FCC for whatever use the leaser would like (AM/FM/digital/cellular/etc.). The auction would determine the true value of the spectrum leased. That would move "cellular" Internet (such as Ricochet) forward.

In the end, our dream of a 20 independent stations per FM band is not possible unless the government runs the radio stations. However, we have the reality of a limitless number of Internet radio stations. I never listen to radio at home, only Shoutcast. I'd love to listen in my car, but there is no high-speed ubiquitous wireless Internet service in DC yet.

Let's also keep in mind that satellite radio will launch this year to give us 100 stations spanning an incredible variety of musical tastes: jazz, gospel, tejano, caribbean, rock en espanol, christian adult, christian teen, techno, not to mention the PBS News Hour, CSPAN, NASCAR, BBC World Service, etc.