Anybody else peeved at XM on DirecTV?

[N. Abstentia]

MusicLab - gone.
Deep Tracks - gone.
The only two channels that played the less heard stuff and not top 40 or generic classic rock. They replaced Deep Tracks with Big Tracks. Great. Can't get enough Boston/Aerosmith/Skynard rotation on my local classic rock station, now I get it commerical free.

But at least we have 32 rap/hip-hop/electronica channels

Liquid Metal..I'm actually somewhat glad to see it, being a metal fan. But most of the stuff they play does not appeal to me...too much 'cookie monster' vocals.

Didn't realize how much I missed MusicLab and DeepTracks, now the only channels I like now are The Loft and XM Cafe and I can only take so much John Mayer

[BradH]

Deep Tracks was still there last night. I think it was Ch. 840

[BradH]

Oh wait, you said XM Cafe. Yeah, that sucks.

[BradH]

Oh wait, you said XM Cafe. Yeah, that sucks.

Hell, I'm all confused. I even read the other day in a Yahoo trading group that both XM Cafe and Deep Tracks were cancelled. But, for the record, Deep Tracks is still there.

[N. Abstentia]

Sweet, Deep Tracks IS there. I swear it was not a few week ago! Thanks Brad

[Woochifer]

I'm still getting used to the XM stations, and they're already changing them around?

Most of the time, I have it tuned to Beyond Jazz, which is a HUGE improvement over the old Music Choice offerings. Lot of fusion, jam bands, garden variety contemporary, nu-jazz/acid jazz, and older stuff like Miles, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, etc.

The Music Choice channels on Directv got progressively narrower over the years. My old favorite channel on Music Choice was Channel X, but that went away several years ago when Directv purged about half of the music channels (not sure if Directv or Music Choice was responsible for this). Sounds like either Directv or XM are blanding down their offerings again. Oh well, history repeats itself.

[DariusNYC]

XM satellite radio really gets on my nerves. Because I feel the further, ever more narrow and specific, genre-fication of music is just a bad thing. And then within the genres (or decades) they're really willing to play any old crap it seems that fits within the bounds. You have to go to the "top 40" station (KISS I think it's called) to here any true mix of genres (rock, dance, pop, hip hop, etc., although no country), and a decent portion of the music on that station is geared toward 13-year olds. It's great that at least our 13-year olds are hearing a mix of genres and black and white music, etc., even though a lot of it may suck (hello, Nickelback?), but their parents are cocooning themselves in ever more hermetically sealed subgenre categories. And . . . . they don't have an All Elvis station like Sirius does!

[Stone]

XM satellite radio really gets on my nerves. Because I feel the further, ever more narrow and specific, genre-fication of music is just a bad thing. And then within the genres (or decades) they're really willing to play any old crap it seems that fits within the bounds. You have to go to the "top 40" station (KISS I think it's called) to here any true mix of genres (rock, dance, pop, hip hop, etc., although no country), and a decent portion of the music on that station is geared toward 13-year olds. It's great that at least our 13-year olds are hearing a mix of genres and black and white music, etc., even though a lot of it may suck (hello, Nickelback?), but their parents are cocooning themselves in ever more hermetically sealed subgenre categories. And . . . . they don't have an All Elvis station like Sirius does!

I like it that way. If I want to hear 80s alternative, I go to Fred; if I want to hear some reggae, I go to The Joint; and most of the time, I just flip through a bunch of channels [Fred, XMU, Ethel, The Loft, X Country, The Joint, etc.) on my commute to get a variety of stuff I like.

By the way, good to see you around again.

[BradH]

Because I feel the further, ever more narrow and specific, genre-fication of music is just a bad thing.

Hey, wat up? You should stick around, this board is on life support.

Deep Tracks does just the opposite of what you're describing. It breaks open the fossilized Classic Rock list by playing the other ten songs on a record instead of the same three for literally decades. That's a broad range of music that doesn't fit in any category. For something like 25 years I've been ranting, "Do we really need 'Born To Be Wild' again?". How many people have heard "Take What You Need" or other great songs on that album? It's sick. DJ's in the Jurrasic Rock format used to play Deep Cuts or whatever but it was usually just the longer songs from the same list.