I worked alone at the store today, so I had a chance to sample in-depth a couple of the "holiday" (can't say Christmas, oh no no no) stations on the Sirius service.
First I went with "Holly," which is a contemporary station. This starts out fine, until you realize that it all sounds the same -- a lot of Mariah Carey-ish singers and bland Justin Bieber-type renditions of various familiar classic songs that are so butchered, they're often unrecognizable. Adding thousands of extra notes is not what you're supposed to do with songs everybody knows.
After about an hour or so, I'd had enough so I switched over to "Holiday Traditions," which purports to be more of the familiar stuff we all know and love (or love to hate). So far so good, the warm tones of Bing Crosby or Perry Como or Ray Conniff sounded good.
But after a while I realized that this station is not programmed at all, it's just a random computer generated playlist. How do we know this? Because there's no rhyme or reason. You'll hear "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby, then maybe 15 minutes later you might hear "White Christmas" by the Mitch Miller gang, and then another few minutes later you might hear the same song again by yet another artist.
Upon fiddling around with the computer I realized that this particular station can be custom-mixed, so I set it to "more instrumentals" (better for the retail environment) and "more evergreens." I celebrated at first, because the very first song to come up was Herb Alpert's stellar rendition of "My Favorite Things" which is one of my favorite songs ever. But then I realized that the "custom mix" just serves to choke down the playlist; now, instead of hearing the same song repeated by different artists, you're likely to hear the same VERSION of songs repeated. By the end of the day I'd heard "My Favorite Things" by Herb Alpert, three times.
Why is this so complicated? Why can't they just program a station to play a nice variety of music (old and new), and use some logic with the song choices?
This is why I'll never be a big fan of random streaming services. They just can't satisfy a listener who actually cares what he hears, I guess.
First I went with "Holly," which is a contemporary station. This starts out fine, until you realize that it all sounds the same -- a lot of Mariah Carey-ish singers and bland Justin Bieber-type renditions of various familiar classic songs that are so butchered, they're often unrecognizable. Adding thousands of extra notes is not what you're supposed to do with songs everybody knows.
After about an hour or so, I'd had enough so I switched over to "Holiday Traditions," which purports to be more of the familiar stuff we all know and love (or love to hate). So far so good, the warm tones of Bing Crosby or Perry Como or Ray Conniff sounded good.
But after a while I realized that this station is not programmed at all, it's just a random computer generated playlist. How do we know this? Because there's no rhyme or reason. You'll hear "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby, then maybe 15 minutes later you might hear "White Christmas" by the Mitch Miller gang, and then another few minutes later you might hear the same song again by yet another artist.
Upon fiddling around with the computer I realized that this particular station can be custom-mixed, so I set it to "more instrumentals" (better for the retail environment) and "more evergreens." I celebrated at first, because the very first song to come up was Herb Alpert's stellar rendition of "My Favorite Things" which is one of my favorite songs ever. But then I realized that the "custom mix" just serves to choke down the playlist; now, instead of hearing the same song repeated by different artists, you're likely to hear the same VERSION of songs repeated. By the end of the day I'd heard "My Favorite Things" by Herb Alpert, three times.
Why is this so complicated? Why can't they just program a station to play a nice variety of music (old and new), and use some logic with the song choices?
This is why I'll never be a big fan of random streaming services. They just can't satisfy a listener who actually cares what he hears, I guess.