Crumpled Notes

So as I’ve mentioned before, I listen to XM Radio. I even went into a little depth about how incredibly stratified the stations are. I can see how this could be a selling point for some people, but for me, it’s actully XM’s biggest problem. Yes, they do have a few stations that seem to be devoted to eclecticism (XM Cafe, HearMusic (the Starbucks channel)), but the problem for me there is that it’s eclecticism of Not The Kind Joye Likes.

When I’m listening to FM Radio, I tend to listen to “variety” stations like Bob or KGSR, stations that make a point of playing a wide variety of music–Bob’s tagline is “We’ll play anything!” and KGSR really does. So sometimes the very narrow stratification of channels on XM gets to me and I switch over to FM for a while. But then I start to feel guilty, since I’m paying to listen to XM; perhaps I actually should.

So I’ve got an idea for XM Radio: license the playlists from several of the top FM radio stations around the country. Entertainment Weekly did an article about FM radio a while back (FIND ARTICLE OR SIDEBAR), and they had a sidebar about the five or ten best radio stations in the country. KGSR was, of course, one of them. I would SO listen to XM’s version of KGSR or even Bob–even without the local content that gives KGSR some of it’s flavor and appeal, I’d love to just hear the playlist without all the flippin’ ads. Or Bob, for that matter.

I guess instead of writing about it here, I should just go find XM’s version of a suggestion box.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.