Finding the Rhythm

Back in March, I wrote a blog posting titled SIRIUS sucks where I laid bare my gripes about the SIRIUS satellite radio service, which are many, and still quite applicable.

This morning, I heard by e-mail from DJ JC Simon, one of the mixshow jocks whose work aired on SIRIUS. I happened to notice JC’s e-mail before the one I received from SIRIUS announcing a new channel line-up, and his e-mail prompted me to go investigate what had changed.

The bottom line is that SIRIUS, following their recent merger with XM, finally got around to realigning their programming and eliminating a lot of duplication. Fair enough; it’s precisely this sort of consolidation that delivers value (in theory) to stockholders in a merger situation. Several XM channels have been eliminated and replaced by existing programming from SIRIUS, and some SIRIUS channels were cut in favor of programming originating from XM.

Of note to JC is what’s happened with dance. The Beat, SIRIUS’ primary mainstream dance channel, got the axe, being replaced with (what I feel to be the superior) BPM, a channel originating out of XM. Frankly, I’m not shedding any tears about The Beat’s elimination. While the mixshow content was good, the day-to-day radio programming was never satisfactory to me, and as I noted in my last posting, hosts like Mr. Seth made as much sense being a radio personality, as Tabasco sauce makes sense being used as frosting for a lemon cake.

While I feel badly for DJ JC Simon, and I sure don’t like opportunities for fellow DJs being eliminated, frankly, I was “over” SIRIUS a year ago, and nothing about the new channel line-up is likely to change my mind. While I’m apt to give a listen to BPM in the office at my day job, to see if it’s as good as I remember from listening to it on the net, chances are excellent I won’t bother for long.

What I think is the real next wave here is streaming Internet radio. Sure, Internet radio has been around for years. First, it was a free-for-all, with thousands of kids in their basement playing whatever they wanted to whoever would listen. Then came the onerous royalty requirements from SoundExchange, and things are still in an uproar. Internet radio may not yet have a financial model that makes sense in most cases, but I have tremendous faith that it’ll all be sorted out, and that Internet radio is really the Next Big Thing (even as it seems old hat to many of us).

But who wants to be tethered to their PCs? You don’t have to be. I listen to streaming Internet radio on my BlackBerry every day. In my car. At the office. At home. At the gym. Sure, unlike SIRIUS I can’t listen to streams on my BlackBerry while tooling down I-70 in the middle of Kansas, but I have an iPod for that. iPhone users have the same capability, and the software to do it is free.  That’s why we’re emphasizing this mode of listening at iDanceRadio.fm, the fledgling online radio station I’m a part of.

Honestly, I think THAT is where the future is headed. In another couple of years, G3 (or G4 or WiMax or whatever) mobile broadband is going to be so widespread that I probably will be able to listen to iDanceRadio.fm in the middle of Kansas.

So who really needs SIRIUS anyway? Not me, and frankly, I don’t want it.