Just downloaded the iheart application after a few years without it. It does seem that the buffering time has been cut way down. Also no prerolls on their owned and operated stations.
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SiriusXM Changing Direction
- Thread starter Barry
- Start date
Actually yeah KAMX FM In Austin used to display the name of the law firm on their radio data system during commercials, I would see it on my 2003 stock stereoHere are a few stories. If you have a new car, it's likely you're getting visual ads from radio:
Radio’s Visual Content Is Becoming More Important. So Is Managing All That Metadata.
Paying attention to your station’s metadata and how it looks on the more robust displays and larger screens in today’s connected cars is becoming more important. About 80% of thewww.insideradio.com
Meet The New :30 – Visual Messages, Displayed During Station Programming.
Quu, the tech company that enables radio stations to display messages and images on vehicle dashboards, has launched a new product that embeds visual advertising directly into programming in an
Quu Partners With Xperi To Synch Messages On Vehicle Dashboards.
Ad-synch technology provider Quu and technology giant Xperi have formed a strategic partnership intended to make it easier for radio to display and monetize content in connected cars. At the
I prefer Spotify because it offers many artists and formats not available elsewhere. I do not care for Sirius' changing channels and limiting the numbers of channels I can mix in into a grouping. The only advantage to Sirius is while traveling outside regions.
Can't you access the same artists and formats on Apple or Amazon?
I've tried all three - Amazon is relatively poor with a lot of gaps, but Apple and Spotify are on a par with each other in terms of artist and song availability. Personally, I prefer Spotify as it has a better user interface and seems simpler to search and create playlists, etc. I only had Apple because my phone company gave me a six-month trial of it, but I canceled it. I pay for ad-free Spotify (although because I work for a university, I get the cheaper "student" plan).
I wish I had access to a service like SiriusXM, though. I find the sheer number of playlists available on Spotify overwhelming, a lot of them are short and/or low quality or algorithmically generated crap, and often I would just like to select a channel and hear a human-curated "format" from that genre or era. DAB has similar channels in the UK (a lot of "stations" are just jockless playlists of 70s/80s/90s pop, chillout music, classical, etc) but they're overloaded with clutter and commercials. I would pay for a SiriusXM-like service where I could hit "country" and hear country. Spotify doesn't feel like it offers that at this point.
I got Spotify via a $99 a year gift card on Amazon.It is worth it.
Spotify bricked their Car Thing service last week, but some people are finding workarounds to keep it working:
The Dream of Spotify Car Thing Is Being Kept Alive by Devoted Tinkerers
Why let a good thing die just because the company who made it declared it dead?
gizmodo.com
Spotify works great in-car on Android Auto, the controls on the steering wheel all work and the quality is good. I just prefer the "radio" feel of SXM, where you pick a channel and get a properly programmed radio station from format experts rather than soulless, endless AI-generated playlists. Spotify feels "empty" to me.Spotify bricked their Car Thing service last week, but some people are finding workarounds to keep it working:
The Dream of Spotify Car Thing Is Being Kept Alive by Devoted Tinkerers
Why let a good thing die just because the company who made it declared it dead?
I use Spotify sparingly, but I'm listening to one of my playlists on it while working (or pretending to work) at the moment. It is extremely good. I checked on my iPhone to make sure I was logged in so I could listen in the car over lunch, and, in addition to showing me logged in, it showed what I was listening to and where I was listening to it. In the lock screen and with the app minimized, it's still showing what's playing and that it's playing on my browser. Since I updated to iOS 18, Apple Music has been intolerably awful. I can't get Siri to play my playlists, let alone play them on shuffle, which is a drop-dead dealbreaker for me because it makes most in-car listening too cumbersome. I never pay for it, but I've gotten free premium subscriptions for at least a few months every year the last few years. If Apple can't fix the current Siri problem, it would be overpriced at a nickel a month. It's almost not worth the hassle of taking it for free because you have to spend a few minutes to cancel it at the end of the trial period!
Like you, I still subscribe to SXM, though I pay a lower than advertised rate. I've said many times that what I like about radio is that it's easy. I just push a button, and I hear what I like. If I don't like it, I hit a different button, or buttons, until I find something I like. Once I find something I like, I usually don't have to do anything for awhile. Building a personal playlist takes time I don't want to spend, and, while I might not ever hear a song I don't like, I do eventually get tired of certain favorites. Plus, letting a service build a new playlist or add to an existing one based on one I already have has never yielded the results I'd wanted. Just this morning, I looked at my Amazon Echo Show in the kitchen as I was getting my dog a treat and putting breakfast in the microwave. It was displaying music recommended for me, and it showed Ariana Grande and Morgan Wallen. The number of times I've listened to either is zero, and I don't think either of my nieces has ever used any of my Echo devices to listen to music when visiting. Plus, neither would listen to Morgan Wallen or anything similar. My first thought when I saw those recommendations was, "What would make it think I'd want to hear that?"
That's really what the choice is. It goes back to the Pandora "genome," that based music playlists on personal preferences. If you like this, then you'll also like this. It's a radio playlist based on each person vs playlists based on a demo or a target audience. Broadcast radio can't personalize. Most of the complaints I read here about radio are mainly about that lack of personalization. Why are they playing THAT song, and not THIS song? Because they can't personalize the experience, and that's what people want. SiriusXM has the same problem. The only difference is they have more stations. When we see people leaving Sirius, part of it is the cost, but the other part is the lack of personalization. And there's really nothing they can do about that.
It's almost as though they're forcing you to listen to something you don't like and really isn't part of your music preferences. Kind of like how broadcast radio works. I wonder about that every time I go to a music conference and hear presentations from the Spotify staff.
It's probably just that a lot of people are listening to them/buying their music on Amazon, so Amazon pushes them to everyone.
It's more like Amazon likely has a financial incentive to promote certain artists and songs. That's how the music business works.
As does Spotify, Apple, and other streaming services. Record labels liked how radio stations promoted new music, and want to continue that with streaming. However, most people use streaming to mainly hear catalog music rather than new releases. So streaming companies all have music curators and programmers who work at promoting new music somehow into the personal music choices they distribute. It's kind of streaming's dirty little secret. People think they control all the music they hear. But in fact, some songs are being forced on them by these professional curators who interact with record label promo people. Since payola is only illegal in broadcast radio, it's possible for record labels to buy new music promotion packages with streaming services, and they don't have to worry about breaking the law.
It's payola, pure and simple, regardless of how many words you use to justify it.
Except that payola was only a thing because it was used to influence airplay on what were then considered "the public's airwaves."
Amazon is a private company. They can do whatever they want within their Amazon/Alexa/Prime ecosystem.
Keep in mind that the only thing broadcast radio stations have to do under the law is disclose that the airplay of a song is "sponsored by" a specific record label. The streaming services don't. That's why I say it's streaming's dirty little secret. There is no disclosure requirement.
There is a website that maintains Spotify playlists of songs heard in the last 30 days on most SiriusXM channels. All you have to do is open the playlist from this website and add it to your library which saves it as a favorite on your Spotify account for easy access to later.
xmplaylist - Recently played songs and playlists from xm radio
Find recently played songs from XM Sirius radio stations. Listen to them on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and others.
xmplaylist.com
Yes, definitely! On Caliente, sometimes the next song is halfway over before the title displays. During the listener request countdown the #XX song graphic will display for at least 30 seconds before the title displays. I also noticed that on Alt Nation when they played their Alt Top 36 of the year yesterday.
Yes, thought it was my car's radio. Glad it's not just me.
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