No, this isn't about the merger (which just went through, I believe). No, this question is about programming.

You see, my wife and I are rock fans, and most of the presets in our car are for rock stations, 47 and 54 being our first two, followed by 9 (which isn't rock, but is part of my complaint).

Here's a fact: if we go anywhere in our car, there is a 95% chance that at one point, one of the three aforementioned stations will be playing U2. There is an %80 chance that one of them will be playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There is a 33% chance that one will be playing Social Distortion. [these figures are precise measurements ]

Then there's other weird things. For instance, the White Stripes have a lot of great albums (IMO), but on these stations, 95% of their White Stripes programming is "I'm a Martyr for My Love for You."

So I guess what I'm saying is that the variety on XM leaves something to be desired. When my wife was driving home last night, she found that 47, 54, and 9 were all playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the same time. Different songs, but still, that's crazy. For the most part, we really like XM. We listen to other stations that seem to have good variety.

I think it would be easier to stand if I just knew an explanation for why there are so many songs being programed by just those bands. Does anyone here know why, or know of some special Google-Fu to find out? I've done my best, but haven't found anything.

You ask this question about radio?

Whether digital or not, it still sucks.

I think in the case of XM, it's even worse because the entire suite of channels is run by one company. With regular radio, at least you have a fighting chance of stumbling across an independent station.

Was just reading a bit of editorial on why the current music industry sucks, and radio is part of it.

When I had xm I found the same thing as you. I thought it was silly because they should be able to play anything they want with no FCC telling them what they can't play. I just thought the DJ liked those bands but it's probably more nefarious than that

I don't own an XM receiver, but my girlfriend does, so I listen to it on long car trips, and occasionally on my Treo.

I enjoy the three stations you mentioned (Ethel, Lucy, and 90s) but you have to understand that they're all focused on basically the same musical neighborhood, so, if you're listing to mostly those three stations, you're going to get some repeats. Ethel and Lucy in particular have a lot of overlap, though Ethel plays less of the late 80s stuff and Lucy plays less modern rock. And the 90s channel just plays popular songs from the 90s, and, surprise! a lot of that was modern/alternative rock.

I like all three bands you mentioned, and I think U2 and RHCP do come up a lot, but did it occur to you that those bands just had a lot of hits during the time period covered by those stations? (I've never really noticed a lot of Social Distortion, and wouldn't mind more, actually.) If there's any significant deviation between how much airplay those bands got in the 90s on terrestrial radio and how much they get now on XM, I'm not hearing it.

But, apparently, some others are. Here's a blog post that mentions "the U2 issue." Someone on the Internet agrees with you, so you must be onto something!

Anyway, it just so happens that a few months back I wrote some Python code to scrape XM radio's site to collect what songs are currently playing. I never did anything with it, but maybe for fun I'll collect data for a week or so on what songs are played on those stations, and see if you're onto something, or just on something.

Alright, the script is collecting data for those three channels and a couple others I listen to. I'll let it run for a week or so while I'm away for a conference.

After a half hour or so of running, the three artists that have more than one play are R.E.M., The Offspring, and some band named U2.

Reading that editorial put me very much in mind of a song, "The Ballad of the Sandman", by Mike Agranoff.

I found a place on the internet where you can listen to it. It will take a bit of fiddling to get to it, but it is well worth the trouble!

Go here , then do a search for the word "Sandman". that will give you a link to a one-hour radio show recording. Go 44 minutes in and listen...

tanstaafl.

Every now and then, I turn it on again
but it is plain to see that radio still sucks - The Ataris

Since I got my empeg a long ass time ago, I've listened to the radio in my car exactly once, and that was for the news. Overplayed songs aren't something new, just think back how bands like Pearl Jam, Bush, Sound Garden and the like were pushed down the listener's collective throats. I swear any at given time you could find at least two or three stations and MTV playing something from the same handful of bands.

I just wanted to clarify something a little. My feeling is that the issue I'm running into with XM is not the usual overplaying of music that you find on terrestrial radio. I feel that in the latter's case it's an issue of playing what's hot at the time, and yeah, you'll definitely hear the same songs over and over again for several months until they fade into less rotation to make way for new songs that are given higher rotation.

The issue with XM, I feel, is slightly different: in the year that we've had it, the programming hasn't changed at all! U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers are just as prevalent now as they were a year ago. And I think the frequency they play them at is abnormally high. [note: I'd still pick XM over traditional radio: the commercial breaks in our area are out of control]

I suppose the issue is that when we got XM, we figured that the variety would be better than terrestrial radio, not worse. I think the variety of stations is better, but the variety of music on each of those stations is terrible.

Of course, this is all pretty moot for myself. My wife is the one that listens to XM most, and I listen to it when I'm in the car with her. In my car, it's empeg all the way, baby!

Back when I was in high school, one of the local radio stations decided to change format. I don't know if there was an ownership change as well or not, but I suspect there was.

Regardless, while they had decided that they wanted to change format, they apparently hadn't decided what format to change to. So for about a month, there was no DJ and they apparently had the whole company's music library on shuffle. You would get Louis Armstrong and Social Distortion back-to-back. It was awesome.

Of course, they soon figured out what format they wanted and it became lame again. But that was the best month of radio ever.

Why is it you were expecting them to change? You said you listen mostly to 9, 47, and 54. Of those, 47 is the only one I'd expect to be regularly adding new music to the playlist, and even then, they've got 10-15 years of stuff that isn't going anywhere.

Might I be so bold as to suggest you just need flip over to some of the other stations whose focus is newer music?

And to further clarify, I meant my original programming issue of playing some bands far more than others.

I'm listening to those stations because I want to listen to that type of music, but it seems that they're pulling from an extremely small pool of music.