Digital Radio From Around the World, Not Above It

Dec. 19, 2008— -- For years, XM and Sirius engaged in a subscriber acquisition war that resulted in low prices for receivers and high prices for talent. It was a war that both sides lost.

Despite attracting millions of customers willing to pay $12.99 or more per month for access to digital commercial-free music programming and exclusive content, the high costs of subscriber acquisition forced the companies to merge.

Receivers that can tune into both XM and Sirius may revive the aftermarket for these tuners, which has plunged 24 percent in units in the past year, according to NPD's retail tracking service.

Terrestrial radio fought back with the adoption of its own digital standard -- HD Radio. It doesn't offer as much variety as satellite radio, but it doesn't require a subscription because it uses the same advertising-based model as conventional radio. That's good for people who have an HD Radio receiver, but bad for convincing people to get one, because unsubsidized prices are still relatively high and the selection of products that feature HD Radio is still relatively limited. For example, so far this year only 3 percent of in-dash players sold had an HD Radio built in.

Internet radio, however, would seem to deliver the best of both worlds -- a virtually unlimited selection of genres, most of it delivered free of charge. These have generally come in three flavors. The most flexible are on-demand music services such as Rhapsody that allow you to choose any music in their library to play but require a subscription.

Free managed services such as Pandora, AOL Radio, Slacker, last.fm, Grooveshark, Deezer and others offer personalized radio stations based on genre or the music or an artist. These also frequently offer basic interactive features such as giving a song a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" or skipping past a song you dislike.

Finally, there are the Internet equivalents to terrestrial radio stations that simply play back music streams or may have a deejay or talk programs. Some of these are simulcasts of actual terrestrial radio stations from around the world. Aggregators such as Live365 serve as a guide to these streams.