SiriusXM has followed its purchase of Pandora with the addition of Pandora-like playlists built as sub-brands of their existing channels.
The 100+ new “Xtra Channels” are gradually being rolled out to different internet devices and is currently available on the SiriusXM website and its iOS and Android apps. The channels feature Pandora-like features such as skipping and limited imaging but no personalities and like all of SiriusXM’s music channels are commercial-free.
The channels are mostly branded as sub-brands of other SiriusXM music channels with content mostly self explanatory with names such as “Hits1 Discovery”, “80s On 8 Workout”, “Pop2K Top 100”, “Classic Rock BBQ”, “90s On 9 Dance”, and “Prime Country Party”. Some of the playlists not attached to other channels include “Prom Radio”, “90s Rock & Hip-Hop Mash Up”, “Yoga”, “ChillHop”, and “Cloud Rap”.
They tried something like this before, called MySXM, where you could have “custom” stations on the app and website. You picked a channel like 90’s on 9 and manipulated sliders to have deeper or shallower playlists, more rock or more hip-hop, etc. You could then skip songs you didn’t like, up to 5 an hour. It didn’t work very well- I would set the slider for deeper playlists and it would play the same 5 lesser-known hits each time.
The new playlists sound like a better solution and are more in line with what Pandora, Spotify and others do.