AOL Radio Featuring XM Radio is FREE!

Imagine my surprise when I was doing a bit of digging into online radio stations to realize that while Sirius Satellite Radio Online charges for their service unless you happen to be a paid subscriber to their regular service, at a pricey $12.95 a month, XM Radio is free in partnership with AOL Radio. XM does charge for their full featured online service, but their service that is bundled together with AOL Radio has a free version and comes with enough channels to keep you in listening pleasure day in and out.

Moreover, for the record, no pun intended, you do not have to be a paid member of AOL either. If you are, you do receive more stations in addition to those you would get in the free version, but as I stated, the free version offers up quite a varied selection of music channels. For example, when I was browsing, I was interested in finding holiday music to listen to, and was pleased to see that I had several choices to choose from, including a country holiday channel, rock holiday channel, classic holiday channel, jazz holiday channel, an oldies holiday channel, and several others. These are of course in addition to a full selection of channels including country, rock, hip-hop, Christian, metal, news, sports, talk, and many, many more.

The AOL Radio featuring XM interface is easy to get up and running and easy to navigate, though you do need high-speed Internet access. When I first tried to access it, I did run into an issue with with my pop-up blocker and a request by my virus protection to let an Active X control run. After approving the Active X control, and turning my pop-up blocker off just for the radio station page, and allowing a small download from AOL, I was up and running.

The small browser window that opens for the AOL Radio featuring XM Radio stations shows you the current song that is playing, along with the artist's info. What I thought was an interesting feature, was that while a group or artist is playing, there is the option to click on Buy Tickets, located below the Artist, Song, and Album information. When you click on it, a separate window will pop up and if there are currently any tickets to their shows or events available, you will be directed on where to buy them and all show information.

The stations are easy to navigate by category and if you are a member of AOL, AIM, Netscape, or CompuServe, you simply sign in with your screen name and password and you can preset stations for easier listening, the same way you do on your vehicle's radio. In addition, while I am listening to AOL Radio featuring XM Radio on my PC, there is a MAC version available, though I was unable to test it or find out if the features are similar to the PC version. If you are running a MAC though, and have either an AOL or are an AIM user, and are interested in online radio, be sure to check it out.