Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Loving My Sirius Starmate

I'm thoroughly enjoying my new Starmate. The TiVo pause and replay functionality is great along with the wishlist alerts. I'm looking forward to taking it on a long drive. My iPod is great but it requires me to create playlists. This requires effort and time, I have plenty of one and lack the other.

Sirius let's me go back to the days of 103.7 WRX in Providence RI. I spent my summers in the Hamptons and was able to tune into the greatest classic rock station ever. It went away in 1999 or 2000, changed to alternative rock.

The deep Pink Floyd cuts were gone.

Sirius has brought them back, consolidation of local radio stations and homogenization of formats has left the radio dead to me. No longer are there a few channels in Baltimore or New York that I can flip between for the perfect song. Choices are limited, but Sirius has brought them back. I've easily got 9 channels of great classic rock and I'm still finding more.

Is satellite radio the equivalent of Web 2.0 for radio?

People talk about Web 2.0 blowing up the portals audiences as people assemble their own custom content from professionals and amateurs. (seems familiar to network and cable tv) Choose any of a number of great stations, scan for your favorite artists, and easily check traffic updates every four minutes. If I want to replicate that with terrestrial radio in NYC, I have to switch from iPod to AM 1010 on the 10s for the traffic. I have to wait upto 10 minutes for traffic, with Sirius it's a maximum of 4 minutes.

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