Commercial-Free Media: Tivo and XM Radio paradigms
I now have both “Tivo”:http://www.tivo.com and “XM Radio”:http://xmradio.com. These two services completely change the ways television and music are parts of my life. In fact, I watch TV more like I used to listen to music, and I listen to music more like I used to listen to other people’s music. Let me explain.
I’ve had Tivo for almost one year, and I would gladly pay them twice as much money for their services if they asked me to. Seriously, everyone says this, but I love Tivo. I have West Wing episodes saved up, the latest Daily Show, the latest PTI, and hours and hours of primetime TV at my fingertips. And I don’t watch commercials anymore. I don’t even remember if commercials use to bother me.
I’ve had XM Radio for three days, and I’m about ready to ditch iTunes. Not that I use iTunes all that often. I long ago stopped downloading a lot of music, not because I thought it was immoral or illegal, but because it was a lot of work and a waste of my time and I sucked at finding good music. That wasn’t a technical problem, that was the fact that I don’t know who good artists are besides the artists who are always in the news, and I don’t know the names of good songs. I’m not a “music aficionado”. I know what I like when I hear it. Eventually I would just have my 4 or 5 full CDs that I listen to from start to finish, and 4 or 5 mix CDs that I would also listen to straight through. When I wanted to listen to one of my CDs, I’d put it in and I’d know I was going to like it.
I’ve always watched a lot of television, but television is a broadcast medium that dictates to you how you’re going to watch and when you’re going to watch it. You go to the TV, and you eat whatever it’s serving. With Tivo, I tell it what it’s going to play, and I tell it to play my favorite 4 or 5 shows, that I watch without interruption. I start a show, and I know I’m going to like it. It’s how I listen to my CDs, except updated every day.
DVDs are like CDs too, but they cost money, and I watch them with other people. So it’s different.
Music can work either way, as a broadcast medium or a pulled stream (yeah, radio or listening to your own playlist). Radio is okay, but it has commercials and plays the same things over and over. Listening to my own playlist, as I’ve mentioned, is too much work for me. My ideal music situation would be, and I’ve never had this, a roommate who loves playing good playlists all the time, all music I like. I like hearing music I wasn’t expecting, and I like hearing my favorite songs, and I like lots of types of music. I just don’t want to think about picking something out. A good music collection has thousands and thousands of songs, so how do you pick one? Is playing music on random shuffle good enough? Sort of, but then again, my music collection isn’t all that great. I like listening to the music playing in restaurants or trendy clothing stores because it’s new, I don’t think about it, and I just get to enjoy it while I do other stuff.
So, that’s how XM Radio works. It’s my music-expert roommate who doesn’t snore or leave clothes all over the floor. XM plays Top 40 when I say “1″ and Cafe music when I say “3″ and Blues when I say “9″ I even have a button (”6″) for “instant dance party (just add people),” although I haven’t used that button much yet.
The most curious part of all this is that I want completely different things from the two services. For Tivo, I know exactly what I want, and I want great menus that let me choose a specific show, which it gives me. For XM Radio, I want something general, like hip-hop or blues, and I don’t want to know what’s coming up specifically, because I probably won’t remember the name anyway, and I’ll enjoy it all the same.
The XM Radio also plays AirAmericaRadio, which has Al Franken’s radio show and the Jeanine Garofalo show. On that note, I’ve abandoned music for my commute and I’ve been listening to NPR in my car the whole summer, which I think makes me gradually smarter. (Sometimes I wonder if when I have kids I could get them to listen to NPR, but I don’t think so, I think it’s more of an “I’m-having-a-conversation-with-three-really-smart-people-who-know-a-lot-about-something-and-I’ll-just-sit-here-quietly-and-not-share-my-own-opinion-because-they-can’t-hear-me” kind of thing).
Basically, I can’t tell if having no commercials is what makes these services great, although it’s definitely a part of it. I think the ease of use and amazing design of the interfaces is a bigger part of what makes me have overwhelmingly positive feelings for them. Maybe I’ll get into those details another time. Right now I’m just happy with these paradigm shifts in the way I experience audio and visual media.
August 7th, 2004 at 4:34 pm
My first time visiting Darren’s site, and I must say, wow. Darren’s kind of a big nerd. But we love him anyway. =) I’m going to read all these little entries now. =)