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AOL and XM Joining Forces for Online Radio
Josh writes "BetaNews is reporting that AOL and XM are joining forces to make available 20 XM music channels plus 130 of its own available to anyone on the internet for free starting this summer. AOL members will have free broadband access to 70 XM channels, although apparently there are plans for a $5/month option for non-subscribers. The deal means AOL Music specials will make it onto XM's channels, and XM promos will be heard across AOL Music's properties."
This could be a good thing for non US countries (or wherever broadband isnt 'dirt cheap')
Speaking as someone from Australia, where we are still fairly limited by bandwidth, the great unwashed masses will LOVE IT. Seriously - most broadband down here is still limited or throttled to stupid amounts, so anything that gets them free music channels for free is going to be H0T!
From TFA:
The co-branded service will be free to all Web users, with a premium counterpart that includes more stations for a small monthly fee.
-mkb
Just because you are wrong, it doesn't mean you are stupid.
So far competition has been very good for satellite radio. Sirius dropped commericals from music channels, and XM followed them. Sirius put its music on the net for free, and XM also put theirs online for free (for some subscribers).
Add me to the list of people who want to see competition.
I've been a subscriber for a couple years, and they recently "forced" everyone to add their online radio bit to their subscription, in the form of a $3/mo rate hike, but then you get the online radio for "free". So far, I've been very underwhelmed, for a couple reasons:
1. The player uses lots of Flash trickery that doesn't work well, as far as I can tell- the ticker that tells you what song you are listening to is frequently wrong.
2. The player itself is WMP, which is useless to me at home (with no Windows machines); I loathe their choice, but I'm sure they had to go with WMP due to contractual concerns from the record labels, and WMP offers strong DRM.
3. The real killer, though, is the shitty quality- the "high quality" mode is only 64kbps, and sounds like crap. I am not an audiophile, and most of my music is 128k/160k mp3's, which sound great to me. XM radio sounds great to me. XM radio online sounds terrible. So, it's pretty much worthless, IMHO.
not sure about AOL stuff, but XM online offers either 32k or 64k windows media streams...
they sound about like a 64k and 128k mp3, respectively
If it doesn't let me custom build my own radio station, then there is no way I'm switching from LaunchCast from Yahoo
Its cheaper too. =)
You can listen to all the XM channels online since you're already a subscriber. Chill...they just opened it up as of March.
You are only popular on the Internet.
Sirius already has free access to all of its music stations - if you have a subscription to Sirius.
You can also have free access to Sirius without paying for Sirius. Just for access to Dish TV to get free access to Sirius.
TAANSTSAFL