Radio is dead/dying

First piece of background: My new-ish car came equipped with an XM radio. When I was looking at the car, I'm pretty sure I said, "Hmmm, whatever." About a week ago I received a letter from Sirius/XM letting me know that my XM radio (serial number blah blah blah) was eligible for a week-long free trial, and a special 3 month free trial membership if I wanted. I decided to go ahead and try it out. I turned my car radio to XM for the first time ever since I got the car. So far, so good.

I began scrolling through the available channels.
I heard stuff I've never heard before.
I heard stuff I never care to hear again. Ever.
I saw some categories, rolled my eyes and said, "next!"

I have come to the realization that, #1: I won't be subscribing to XM and #2: Sirius/XM Radio to me is a step backwards and will likely die soon. Here are my observations. In addition to the ones I have made so far.

The channels are not very granular. There are single channels devoted to, say, 70s music; 80s music; 90s and so on. There were 4 channels dedicated to specific artists, though I heard things played that were by other artists. There were approximately a million channels (OK, I'm exaggerating just a bit here) of talk. There were college sports, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB stations ad-nauseum. Gotta say that the 70s station seemed devoted to disco-era music ONLY. The 80s station played a few songs I recognized, but there were more that I'd never heard before, and some genres that I don't like much. I really wish that they specialized their stations even more. I'd love to see a 70s rock channel, a 70s disco station so I could avoid it, a 70s folk station and so on. Each station would avoid the crossover stuff that made it such a tedious chore to wade through the stations. I'm not a fan of rap, yet there were half a dozen stations that played it, including the 90s station. There doesn't seem to be any way to choose the few stations I'd be interested in actually listening to. Surprisingly, one of my favorites was one called 'Hair Nation', which is pretty much what it sounds like. 80s hair bands. Sort of tells you a lot about what was available if it was a favorite.

I looked into the cost somewhat. Granted, I didn't dig very deep. The basic figure I saw was around $12.95 per month. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but still... This price would be worth it to me if I had the ability to pick and choose the stations that came to my radio. All of the talk and sports channels would be gone. Even better would be the Eric Manning channel. I could go online and set up a list of artists whose music I want to listen to. Maybe even set a list of songs I consider favorites that I could play any time I'm in the car. Maybe once in a while they could throw in an artist similar to my list and let me sample some of their songs. Oh, wait! That's Pandora, which is FREE.

They actually have DJ-type people. The 80s channel has Martha Quinn of MTV VJ fame. They interrupt the beginning and end of most of the songs and irritate the CRAP out of me. Especially for a pay service. I'm paying for the music, for Pete's sake, not to hear someone talk. Isn't that what the talk stations are for? Guh! Since the radio displays the genre, artist and title, DJs are completely unnecessary.

My stereo system in my car has an 1/8 stereo plug input that I can use to connect my MP3 player with 250+ CDs worth of music on it. Why on earth would I pay anything per month when I can plug in my player and get my favorite artists and songs with no interruptions? Short answer is, I won't. I can plug my phone in the same way and get Pandora over the stereo system if I don't want to listen to any of the hundred or so MP3s on my phone.

Long story short, if this is the future direction of radio, I predict its imminent death. At least in this current form. If my XM radio could do a Pandora-like thing, I'd probably sign up tonight. I use the FM radio to listen to traffic reports on KSL. I use the AM radio to hear KSL when I'm out of FM range, which is very, very close to never. I'm not sure I will mourn its passing, to tell you the truth.