Results tagged “XM” from ScottandMargo.net

It's been a couple years now since I got my XM Roadie2. It had a lot of use over 2004 and 2005. I really enjoyed the service...no commercials on the music stations, lots of different music stations to enjoy, and I didn't have to worry about finding new radio stations to listen to on long road trips.

During 2006, it seems like something happened to XM. Commercial music stations came up. I didn't listen to those stations anyway, but Margo did. Then it seemed that the playlists at drive time for my mainstay channels (Squizz, Boneyard, Fred, Ethel, Lucy) started getting really short and repetitive. Then the DJs started coming out to jabber more. This is the kind of stuff that got me to stop listening to FM radio.

In response, I started listening to my iPod a lot more. There's a bunch of podcasts that I listen to now, and with some playing around with my playlists, my music rotation is a lot more interesting. Around summertime, I noticed that I hardly ever even turned my XM unit on anymore. That continued through Saturday when I called XM to cancel and I removed the Roady from my car. Margo hates what has happened to XM too but I don't think she wants to mess with hooking her iPod up to the car yet so XM still has one customer in this house yet.

The funny thing is that when I got the Roady, I was trying to decide between getting it and an iPod. I figured that XM had better access to more music than I do, so I went with the XM. Eventually, when I finally got an iPod it took over my music listening in the car and at work. I could have probably saved myself a lot of time and money ($10 a month?) if I would have just gone with the iPod in the beginning. Oh well.

Update: Just to be clear, in the car, I have the iPod plugged into my car's stereo system...I don't drive with the earbuds in like I see some people do around here. I'll describe my at-work setup in a future post.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, iPod, iTunes, Technology, Travel

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/27/D8J4BG600.html

The company said it now expects to end the year with a customer base between 7.7 million and 8.2 million, and that it would refine that range at the end of the third quarter. The company cited "current marketplace dynamics" and regulatory uncertainty regarding certain of its radio models for the change.

Um. I've been an XM subscriber for a couple of years. I've been listening to my iPod more and more. I can tell you why they're losing subscribers:

XM is learning too much from Clear Channel.

In the last year, XM has added commercials to some of the music channels, and they've really, really shortened their playlists on the rock stations during the day.

I spend most of my time in the car in the typical drive-time slots and I hear the same stuff over and over whenever I turn the rock stations on anymore. It's especially frustrating when I'm doing a roadtrip during the day. That trip to Blacksburg was something like a four hour drive. The repetition of songs was maddening. I was actually reduced to finding FM stations to break up the monotony.

The worst part is that when I hear XM at night, it's like it used to be. It's interesting. I hear music I hadn't heard in a long time, if ever. They have interesting shows (the industrial show on Fungus on Saturday nights) and not so much DJ talking.

I really wany to like XM, but they're screwing it up. They got big and they're forgetting why they got big. If they don't start to remember soon, I'm dropping my sub too. I'll get Margo a hookup for her iPod so she won't miss it.

Come on, XM, wake up! Clear Channel's destruction of FM is why you have your subscribers. Running XM like Clear Channel runs their FM stations isn't going to keep your subscribers.

Technorati Tags: XM, Radio, ClearChannel, Advice

Vowe posts a link to a study by Paul Lamere on the statistics that were gathered by his iTunes Registry.

The whole article is worth reading. I found a couple interesting points in the analysis:

“It turns out that 80% of all plays are concentrated into just 23% of the tracks. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that 64% of the over 20,000,000 tracks had never ever been played (not even once). This means that the average ipod user (with 3542 songs), actively listens to about 800 songs in their collection, and has never listened to about 2200 songs.”

I think that's just nuts! I can't imagine what it's like to have listening habits like that. Are people just listening to the same songs over and over because they like to, or because the random shuffle feature doesn't take play frequency into account? I'm hoping it's the latter but I'm afraid it's the former...those numbers sound like they'd line up with how radio stations work.

Personally, I'd hate a rotation like that. I hate commercial radio because of it. I'm becoming increasingly dissatisfied with XM Satellite Radio for the same reason. I've spent a lot of time since I got an iPod trying to work out how to get a good thorough mix across my music library when I'm listening to music. My most recent thinking is based on what I found in a post I did in March about some Smart Playlist resources I found. Below is a breakdown of my iTunes library:

Collection Size: 4022
Plays: 5694
Number of songs purchased from iTunes: 2
Active songs (80% of Plays): 50%
Sings never played: 872
Manually rated songs: 1215

It looks like my persistence is paying off. I'm getting a pretty good mix of music across my library. Definitely higher than average. How much higher was kind of surprising to me to be honest. Looking at the numbers, I think I'm going to need to raise the representation of unplayed songs in my main mix playlist, and I need to get back into the habit of rating my songs.

Technorati Tags: iPod, iTunes, Music, Technology