It”s interesting to me that once again I”m out in L.A. with an XM-equipped rental car (another Pontiac G6 – again, not bad for an American sedan, but why would anybody buy an American sedan?), but once again I chose to listen to local L.A. talk instead of tuning in to XM.
Of course, I”m a huge proponent of satellite radio, and I hate commercial music radio. But XM”s programming just sucks. How many ways can you slice “popular” music? XM”s damned determined to find out.
From what I can tell, there”s very little on XM that”s ever going to surprise you. The brilliance of Sirius is that they really explore formats (a very loose term there). Underground Garage has a focus – “garage rock” – but it”s not like all you hear are the icons (The Stooges, Mitch Ryder, The Ramones, etc.). UG”s mission is to bring you the new artists and the obscure artists that are part of the genre, are influenced by it and have reimagined it.
It”s exploration, not recitation. As I”ve said before, about 60% of what I hear on UG is stuff I”ve never heard before, and I like about 90% of this new stuff. The net result is that I not only hear music that I know and like, but I hear music that I don”t know – but because it”s a niche I like – that I also like.
It”s the same over at Outlaw Country. Very clear mission, great exploration of the genre.
But on XM, it seems they just slice the known (i.e. popular) tracks into more specific genres, but I”ve never been surprised by anything I”ve heard on XM.
This all means, of course, that XM will win and Sirius will ultimately go away. People are sheep, after all.
