{yawn} XM Radio proudly announced last week it had upped the ante in the competitive and growing satellite radio field with the launch of XM Radio Online, ostensibly an online music service. (XM Canada is a competitor to Sirius Canada, of which CBC is a partner.) With the service, XMs existing customers who own satellite receivers can listen to about 60% of XM’s channel lineup (XM Online reduced channel lineup).
I’ve tried the service. You can too for free for three days. It sounds like hell. It’s compressed down to what sounds like 32k to my ears. (Note to XM: If your brand is built around crystal-clear audio, why on Earth would you allow this quality to stream under your name?) Internet audio can sound great. Check out CBC Radio 3’s site to hear how good.
But worst of all, XM Radio Online requires customers to already own a XM satellite radio and plan. I suppose they’re positioning it as a value-added service for their existing customers — a serious strategic blunder. This ignores a large and fast-growing market of Internet-connected folks who gladly pay for good-quality audio with a choice of channels.
But imagine. Imagine if we had our own network with dozens of digital-quality music channels operating 24 hours a day. And imagine if the music rights-holders would come to an agreement (the same agreement, presumably, they signed with XM) about letting us stream it. Imagine the amount of serious ass we could kick if we put it online and charged for it.
Well, we’re working on it. Eric Albert (no, not that Eric Albert), the new GM of Galaxie Music has several projects in development currently, including an initiative to offer Galaxie Music Channels through the Internet. Like XM, the service will be first be offered through CBC’s commercial partners free of charge to the customers of those partners as an added value to their digital cable or satellite subscriptions — the difference, of course, is that many more Canadians already have cable or satellite. But Galaxie is also considering offering the service to consumers directly on a subscription basis as well.
As for quality of the audio, Eric told me listeners will get a level of service “much better than the one offered by XM. We will be streaming at a higher rate, resulting in better sound quality for the listener. Since all of our channels are programmed in Canada, we’ll have the ability to offer a service that will be better suited to the taste of Canadians, including the French speaking population, which XM can not do currently.”
Plus — and here’s a nice killer-app — customers will be able to purchase songs heard on the service, tickets to concerts and other items related to the artists directly from the music player.
Hope it comes soon. Customers are waiting.
Related: How to Hack Galaxie (not really)
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XM’s online service is where they direct the people who get mad that their favorite channels aren’t on the bird any more. For example, when XM moved in to Canada, they needed room for the Canadian channels they promised the CRTC they would air. They didn’t have room for them. So now two of the channels I listened to most on XM, World Zone (world music) and Ngoma (pan-African music) are dropped from the satellite and only available online. Where they sound like crap. Where they bog down my computer and keep me from doing what I need to use the computer to do. Where I can’t listen to it in my car.
Feh.
(Not to say Sirius is any better; their single world music channel, which wasn’t very good to start with, has been unavailable for about a year, replaced with a channel that plays all Rolling Stones, all the time. I suppose I can get up at 6 am and listen to Philly Markowitz on CBC 1 on Sirius 137….)
I think you’ll find that Sirius is not exactly "crystal clear" either. Just try listening to the Radio One Channel.
Tod responds: The voice channels on both satellite services are compressed — nothing wrong with that, since one doesn’t need CD-quality audio on voice. I mean, it’d be nice, but I’d rather use the bandwidth for music.
But I was talking about XM’s music channels as sent through the Internet. Compare XM Radio Online’s music channels to Launchcast or CBC Radio 3 and there’s a distinct difference in quality.