New Sirius Lineup Preset Worries

Today Sirius & XM combined most of their music channels. I only knew about it because I keep tabs on these sorts of things by subscribing to Orbitcast in my Google Reader. Sirius XM didn’t actually make an announcement about the changes, just updated their websites this morning. A lot of XM Subscribers are upset because a lot of Sirius channels were picked to live on. Not that it makes a difference, they we overlapping so everyone will adjust. People just enjoy complaining.

My problem is that with my car only has 6 preset buttons (3 sets of them, but I don’t like changing to other sets). I now have to decide what channels to pick.

Prior to the upgrade these were my presets (in order of channel number and if it’s not clear I’ll mention what they play):

1 Sirius Hits 1
6 60s Vibrations
9 The Pulse – 90s & Now
21 Alt Nation
24 Lithium – 90s Alternative
28 Faction – Punk, Hard Rock, Hip-Hop, and Jason Ellis in the afternoons

All the channels I had before still exist in some form. 60s Vibrations is now 60s on 6 and The Pulse moved to channel 12. There are 2 new candidates looking to break into the presets: 90s on 9 and Pop2K (looks like a new decade channel for the 2000s, but 00s on 10 doesn’t really work).

For now 90s on 9 and Pop2K will take the place of 60s on 6 and Lithium. I haven’t listened to those 2 that much recently but on occasion I am in the mood for oldies. As for Lithium, its a nice change up. With so many pop stations I think one of them is likely to be cut in the next few weeks.

I’m not sure how other car satellite radios are setup but they should be more like the plug & play units. Those units usually have 10 buttons for presets (like my car they usually have 3 sets). The plug & plays also let you setup alerts for songs or artists. The only bonus of having it built in to my car is that, well, its that it’s built in. No extra unit. No extra connections. No having to plug it in. No speaker wire running all over. Many at some point they will realize if they give the new car owners ALL the features they give to the people that buy it in the store, more people will keep the service when the trial runs out.