So The Beatles Channel is debuting on channel 18 on 5/18 at 9:09am ET. I’m really looking forward to this, as is my 8-year-old son who I’ve been trying to get interested in the Beatles since he was a wee tot. It took Beat Bugs for him to finally come around, but now he’s a full-blown fan. But I digress.
I actually hope it’s not too much talk, as much as I love hearing about the Fab 4, I hope it’s just mostly music. And mostly Beatles stuff, not too much solo stuff, “influences” or “musicians who have drawn inspiration from the Beatles.” I *am *looking forward to live and rare takes.
I’ve also been debating with my son about what song they might open it up with-- Love Me Do? Hey Jude? The One After 909? All You Need is Love? Revolution? My prediction is Love Me Do.
What say you? Anyone else looking forward to this?
I’ll give it a listen, but I’m not holding out too much hope. There is just too little to work with to field a 24 hour a day station without lots of repetition or cover versions. The way the Springsteen, Petty, Buffett and Dead channels fill time is with concert tapings. I’m not aware of copious numbers of those for the Beatles.
I really hate that SiriusXM wastes bandwidth on artist-specific channels. I subscribe to it so I can find new stuff I haven’t heard before, not to listen to stuff I already have.
My wife is a big fan, so I hope it goes well. I wonder if it will be all Beatles or incorporate other British artists of the time. Willie’s Roadhouse is not Willie Nelson all day, but classic country.
It would be interesting if it was a mix of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks ect…
I can’t figure it out how these are a thing. No one really wants to eat ice cream all the time. How much of one band can you stand to listen to? If you love the Beatles that much why are you listening to Sirius, where they waste time talking and telling you you are listening to the ALL BEATLES channel (as if you didn’t know, because you tuned to it specifically!)? Just buy the damned CDs.
CDs are on the decline in new vehicles and I find they eventually ruin the discs. I only have one vehicle with Sirius and I’ll give the Beatles a chance. Not many artists deserve their own channel but I think they qualify for one.
What are the limitations on the number of channels they can offer? Is it based on technical limitations or FCC regulations?
I don’t do Sirius, but I’m inclined to agree. Now if a “Beatles channel” meant songs by lots of different artists, from the 60s through today, that were Beatlesque, in the sense of having been greatly influenced by the Beatles or having a similar sound to the Beatles or being the kind of thing that a Beatles fan would very likely dig, then yeah, I could see the appeal of that.
I don’t think they expect people to listen to it for hours on end. Changing stations is pretty easy. You might hit POTUS for awhile, saunter over to 70s music, then the coffee shop, and then you might be in the mood for 3 or 4 Beatles songs. There’s a Springsteen station I visit for a song or two once or twice a week when nothing else is keeping my attention.
It’s not clear to me if this is going to be a limited-time channel (which SiriusXM has frequently done with artist-exclusive channels), or if they’re intending to keep it as a permanent channel.
The Beatles are among my favorite bands, and I’ll undoubtedly give it a listen, but, as Procrustus notes, it’s unlikely to be something that I’d listen to for hours on end.
Who listens to the same SirusXM channel for hours on end? At the very least, you’re limited to the length of your trip, which could be a five-minute drive.
I think It’ll work just fine with the Beatles. Remember, you have the solo work, plus cover versions of Beatles songs.* Hell, they could run an entire day with covers of “Yesterday” alone.
I think the intention is to keep this permanently, but if it doesn’t get enough listeners, they’ll drop it.
*I’d love to see if they have the nerve to run Lol Coxhill’s deranged version of "I Am the Walrus."
they have a fixed amount of total bitrate they can “fit” inside their frequency band (2332.5 to 2345.0 MHz) so they have to divide that bitrate between all of the channels. I think any channel can have a maximum 64 kb/s at any one time, but due to the needs of the different channels they’re constantly varying the distribution. The more channels they add, the less available bitrate is left for the others, and the sound quality gets worse. Some of the talk channels have been whacked so hard they’re no better than AM radio. I was told (but haven’t been able to verify) that- by contract- Howard Stern’s channels get the full 64 kb/s all the time.
and this past week a couple of my favorite comedy channels are just saying they’re “scheduled to be off the air at this time.” I bet it’s to make room for this nonsense.
When they did the Billy Joel Channel a while back, I figured there would only be so much of one artist I could take – no matter how much I love them. I wound up listening much more often/longer than I thought I would. I love the Beatles even more than I love Billy Joel, so I will definitely check this out!
So don’t listen to the stuff you already have…? I don’t understand why/how this is a problem for you. If a restaurant serves food you like and food you don’t like, do you “really hate” that they offer the food you don’t like?
Right. I mean, if it’s a question of spending thousands of dollars and thousands of hours searching out every Beatles rarity, every radio show, every concert, every interview, and every scrap of music they ever made as opposed to buying one subscription and getting hundreds of channels of all kinds including one that has the money and time to get Beatles stuff that you could never otherwise hear, I mean, who wouldn’t choose the first option? It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? You versus the corporate power with limitless resources. You’re going to choose you every time. I mean, aren’t you? Who would think otherwise?
So they led off with “All You Need Is Love” and then “Sgt. Pepper’s.” Good choices to introduce the channel, I think. I was only able to listen to the first 20 minutes or so, and I was a little surprised to hear “Eleanor Rigby” played so soon, but I enjoyed my little snippet.
I got to work at 8:15am ET and the station didn’t start until 9:09am ET, so I’m (not so) patiently waiting until work is over and I can listen on the way home.
What the heck was channel 18 before? I thought it was Limited Edition, but I guess that’s channel 13.
My husband and I agree that we probably won’t listen to the Beatles station full time, but it’s nice to know that there will always be something on that doesn’t suck.
I listened a bit today. The question about what to use to fill time was pretty much what I guessed: solo work and covers along with the regular Beatles songs. Plus influences (they did Mary Wells’s "My Guy) and alternate takes (great to hear the Let it Be – Naked version of “The Long and Winding Road,” which sounds far better than the single).
