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Subject: AOL Radio & XM Update: 4/30
Time: 2:37:00 PM EDT
Author: theradioblog
Dear AOL Radio listeners
Today the partnership between AOL Radio and XM Satellite Radio ended. As you may or may not be aware, XM’s business is focused on having consumers pay for their channels and AOL's business has changed from subscription based to advertising supported, so we are no longer able to offer XM’s channels. In addition, the record labels have dramatically increased the music royalty rates paid for Internet Radio. This action by the record labels left us no choice but to look for an alternative way to stay in the internet radio business. These new rates have impacted the entire internet radio industry, not just AOL. SoundExchange is the organization that is responsible for the increased fees and we have tried over and over to work with them to adjust the rates to a fair level to no avail.
If you would like to voice your support of lowering these fees to protect the future of Internet Radio, please feel free to email John Simson, SoundExchange Executive Director at info@soundexchange.com or call him at (202) 640-5890.
The good news is that even with all these changes, we have a lot of great things planned for the future. The upcoming partnership with CBS RADIO will offer AOL Radio listeners access to an additional 150+ channels. For the first time, AOL Radio will offer an extensive line-up of news, sports and talk stations, in addition to music. In addition to the new content offerings, we’ll also be launching a new player that will have new functionality, including song skipping -- which is just a start to the new things planned.
The AOL Radio staff is very passionate about what we do and we work very hard to give you the best radio experience possible. We understand that change is hard and but we must adapt to the changing times in order to keep AOL Radio available for our listeners.
In order to maintain your listening experience, we have set up a page which highlights the AOL stations which are similar to the XM channels. For example AOL Radio's Pop Mix & XM's Flight 26 play similar artists. Click here to check out the related station page.
We understand your concerns about the upcoming changes and hope you'll give us a chance to show you that the AOL Radio experience will continue to be the best radio offering on the web.
Sincerely,
The AOL Radio Team
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A tasteful mix of incredibly diverse music spanning the world, many years in our recent past, eclectic levels to suit the most descriminating music lover, amidst a touch of the light heartedness and humor----that is what Beautiful Music, the new radio channel, is about. Listening unparalled anywhere else on radio. I even bought a new woofer to further enhance the the sound and unbelievable pleasure this amazing station brings all twenty four hours of the day.
whit1095@aol.com -
I'M so dissapointed. (it sucks) One thing that I looked forward to is having the same choices that I have with my moble XM, on my desk top. I alread have to pay for XM, and they should at least provide online service at no cost to those who already do pay to listen to the service, and who still pay for AOL. There should be more choices, for us folks! I don't agree with both company's choices. In this time how much money the big corperations can get and give less and less to the customer to get a higher bottom line. In the days of Compuserve this would not have happend. It all comes down to money in the end. This is an unsettling time we live in.
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this is absolutely disappointing. XM is probably the only real reason i still pay for AOL. because it was high quality streams that enjoy having through AOL but now that XM is gone. I'm gone as well. AOL stations are fine but they are just as good as playlists with commercials. i can make playlist with windows media without commercials. XM gave real DJ's that didn't talk for no longer then a minute if they were talking and played some of the best music. AOL is disappoint me to a great extent. we are all paying alittle more for everything.
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I enjoyed XM radio when I was on the computer it was on also. I have it in my car and truck. Bring it back.
5/13/08 8:09 PM