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AOL and XM Joining Forces for Online Radio

Posted by samzenpus on from the refresh-my-station dept.

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."

9 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. When will satellite radio become profitable? by bfline · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Listen to the XM CEO on NPR.org

    XM Satellite Radio has added more than a half million subscribers in the last 3 months and shares of XM have quintupled over the last 2 years. Questions discussed in the npr broadcast: Can XM continue its meteoric growth? When will satellite radio become profitable? Is there room for both XM and rival Sirius?

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    sportsdot
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    1. Re:When will satellite radio become profitable? by calbanese · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. What a great idea! by jaakko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would gladly pay a monthly fee for hearing music that I can't choose, and maybe advertisements every now and then! It's like radio, but it costs money and bandwidth!

    1. Re:What a great idea! by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      music that I can't choose

      That should read: 'don't have to choose'

      That's the whole point if these services are run right: you get to enjoy good music without wading through thousands of titles and deciding what should be played. It's like going to a good restaurant, and telling the chef you trust to just fix you a really nice dinner. Some unexpected pieces are part of the experience, and just like the chef (who costs you more than the food would at the grocery store), you're buying someone's time and expertise - and trusting them to get it at least mostly right most of the time.

      Places like RadioIO have been doing a pretty good job at this for a while now. It's worth the cost of a six pack of Guiness to have someone else spend all month digging up music for me to hear.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  3. Re:Yeah, free... by isa-kuruption · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So does XM, http://listen.xmradio.com/. I'm listening right now.

    The real advantage to this, of course, is that XM increases it's potential customer base. Customers who will use the XM via AOL option will fall in love with a couple channels and end up getting units and paying the $12.99/mo. Of course, I'm all for this... I'm a shareholder (tm).

  4. is is missing a chance to revitalize itself... by dAzED1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    for years, techies laughed at users of AOL and said it wasn't the "real" internet. AOL didn't work with normal browsers, wouldn't allow one to have access to normal things, etc.

    There is a HUGE market for that now. Imagine an environment where spam is mostly non-existent because the network is isolated and only approved hosts can send email. Imagine an environment where sites didn't do mischevious things to your system. There's a market out there right now almost screaming to get the very thing for which AOL used to be criticized. There are millions of people out there that don't want 15,124,617,179,945,562 different search results for what they're after (esp when only 5 of them will be what they actually want, the first being on page 20 or so, and the rest will be trash), and they don't care to have to deal with all the other junk out there.

    A couple nights ago I was looking for something online, and my wife and our roommate were in the room goofing off. After having to wade through pages of squatter-crap and such that had all the dumb tags that improve search engine results, I yelled "what have you people done to my beloved internet? It was a wonderful place until you all started getting on too!" I was only half-kidding. I never used AOL (I owned an ISP back in 95, and after that went to broadband for personal use) but I would count myself as someone that would sign up for a trusted environment.

  5. Howard Stern and $500 million reasons by bfline · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Stern, who signed a five-year deal with the other satellite company, Sirius, worth an estimated $500 million, left no doubt about his allegiance at the event. "Once you start listening to (satellite), it's like crack," Stern said to cheers. "You will be addicted."

    XM has to do something to stay competitive with Sirius to stay on the map.

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    sportsdot
    The slashcode sports site
  6. Apple could make this irrelevant by sjonke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    by providing an iTMS Subscription service, ala Napster's "On the Go". Napster offers (reportedly) poor quality, no indie music and no support for the Mac (all of which are deal killers for me.) If there were a similar, but done right, "on the go" subscription service for iTMS, for me it would put the last nail into "broadcast" music radio (not that it had much life anyway), be it satellite or otherwise. Apple could provide daily (hourly?) "radio" playlists sans "radio personalities" (and perhaps even some with "personalities" inserted between some tracks if you wish) that you can select to sync directly with your iPod to carry it with you. And with that on your iPod you can skip forward, back, pause, etc. Try that on XM. Not to mention that you could do it yourself, including exactly what you wanted, if Apple extended iTunes so that, with a subscription, the iTMS became part of your iTunes "Library", and thus applicable to "smart playlists".

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    --- What?
  7. XM Radio Online, meh by rainwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.