At a few of the restaurants where I ate during my trip last week, XM satellite radio was being used as background music. I find it interesting that Lee Abrams expounded on his blog that he wanted the production and imaging of XM's music channels to sound different than FM radio. My impression was that the presentation on the channels I heard (a 90s modern rock channel and a "mix" channel) didn't sound that much different than anything that I have heard on over-the-air broadcast radio. The only difference was that the XM channels play their liners only once every few songs, whereas many over-the-air music stations use them after every song. Was Abrams just blowing smoke?

I would suspect that the main reasons that these businesses used satellite radio for their background music were (1) lack of commercials and (2) it costs less than buying background music from Muzak or similar companies. Are these assumptions correct?

Finally, does XM have a policy regarding the playing of its programming in public settings?

I know that Sirius offers a business subscription... would not be surprised if XM does as well.

http://www.sirius.com/business

This is very interesting and quite clever. Customers won't hear commercials for the business's competitors, but in effect, they are hearing a long-form commercial for the satellite service.

I know XM has a business service (which they appropriately titled "XM for Business", or as I refer to it sometimes, "XM4B".) They currently use it at the Red Lion at the quay, mainly because they cancelled their Dish Net subscription for the TVs in the bar. They used to get their Muzak service off a satellite (Echostar 7) which, I presume, was in the vicinity of the satellite they also get their Dish Net service off of. Somewhat recently (probably a couple years ago) they started using Direct-TV/DSS, and they have XM channels on there as well........I wouldn't be surprised if XM4B is carried on one of D-TV's birds as well.

Personally I prefer Muzak (hence the "-zak" suffix in my screen name.) I just think their programming is more creative and, well, more interesting than XM.....

XM4B doesn't air commercials but it does air "channel ID sounders" every couple of songs. When we went to the Quay last December for my Grandparents' 50th anniversary, I heard a christmas song followed by an "XM103" sounder (kinda' sounded a little like K103's imaging! ;o) into a song by Celine Dion.

Unfortunately, (just my own opinion) I can't really say XM's programming really sounds that much different from that of FM radio, except maybe for the lack of commercials......................

This doesnt surprise me a bit. Infact I was wondering a year ago or so about this. I suppose the licensing fees are a bit different for businesses and workplace environments so the monthly/yearly charges would be more than 13/month.

It would be a natural progression with total client control of 60 some music channels and formats. You could vary the format by day or hour to satisfy different musical interests in a large corporate office set up or in a service business. And another great area of marketing strategy for Sirius/XM.

There is one thing that I can think of that would top the Sirius and XM business packages, if somebody offered it at an affordable rate: this would be a Pandora-like service designed for commercial subscribers. Since many restaurants and coffeeshops already have Internet connections for the purpose of offering Internet access to patrons, I could see this being feasible.

http://trusonic.com/

Basically, Trusonic's system is a PC-based system which receives music updates over a dialup modem or Ethernet connection of some sort (like a cable modem or DSL.)

Not entirely similar to Pandora, but more business-oriented. Unlike Pandora, these systems usually feed audio data into the "receiver" in large chunks (often times in the area of ~100MB) which are then unpacked and played back until the next chunk is downloaded. This all happens automatically several times throughout the course of the work day, and in most cases all the user has to do is simply turn the machine on and let it boot up.

DMX has had similar systems in place for years, the current "ProFusion" and former "Axis" systems, which also can receive input via satellite and CD-ROM as well as a wired Internet connection. Muzak has only recently gotten into this type of tech (like, within the last 5 or 6 years) with its "Encompass CM" and "Encompass LE" systems.

(Historic footnote: Trusonic apparently is a direct decendant of the "MP3.Com" internet service.)

As a former Muzak employee of 10 years who has recently returned to PDX from their home office in South Carolina, I can tell you the main reason for the DMX, Muzak merger is because XM and Sirius have cut deeply into Muzak’s market share. If you are looking for music and don’t care about the sounders every 15 minutes then XM/Sirius is about 1/3 the cost via satellite. The royalties on music streamed digitally is 3 times the price, which is why most of the on-premise equipment is more expensive or has much smaller playlists.
Muzak is focused on brand image. You pay more for specific genre and playlists. If you want “sound” for the best deal then the other guys are your best bet. It will be interesting to see if the new merged company will directly compete with the low end prices of the other providers. I have no axe to grind toward Muzak; I left on my own to get back to the PNW.

Just had some dental work done and each chair had it's own personal Sirius radio with headphones. The specialist's office however had fully load Ipod's. Nothing like getting drilled on while listening to Dark Side of the Moon!

That brings to mind a day in 1981 when I accompanied my mom to the dentist's office. The dentist had an AM table radio playing, close to the chair. When he turned on the drill, the radio station he was listening to was completely washed out in interference.

That is what I was thinking, and now Puddoc1 confirms it ! I had a brief experience with background point o' sales as a sales rep 25 years ago.

When I got my new car last fall and it had Sirius with it, I instantly thought about background/foreground music applications and how if you werent to picky about an occasional announcer break, it must be rather inexpensive to provide the service with total client control.