[Passacaglia]

So I recently got a car with Sirius XM Radio. I'm really liking it -- there's a lot of stations, no commercials, and enough decent stations that I can usually find something on. But the feature that got me really geeked was the alerts. When a song comes up, you can hit a button to tell the stereo to alert you whenever that artist or song is about to be played, on any station, and gives you the option to go to that station with one button. That really helped me relax and just enjoy whatever I was listening to, since I didn't have to feel like "yeah, this song is pretty good, but there might be something better on one of these other stations" which can lead to a lot of flipping around. However, I was pretty bummed when I found out that the limit is 20 of each, and after that, if you want to add something, you have to replace an old one.

Anyway, since this forum is a place that likes its lists and likes its music, I figured it would make a good thread here. You've got slots for 20 artists and 20 songs, how do you use them? This should be something a little different from "tell us your 20 favorite artists then your 20 favorite songs" -- it's a little different in that you'd have to expect to hear these songs on the radio (in fact, since you can't search for stuff on my stereo, I can't add anything until it gets played). For those who listen to a lot of radio, this shouldn't be a problem -- but those who don't might have to come up with an idea of what their "radio experience" would be like before tackling this. The same with people who listen to just one station -- in your radio experience, you don't need any notifications, since you're not switching back and forth ever, so you'll have to imagine a radio experience where you are switching.

That said, choosing artists is probably a function of not just how much you like them, but how often they get played on the radio. If an artist gets played a lot, you'll get alerted a lot. This is for the most part a good thing -- if you like the artist, it's nice to get notified a lot that they're playing. On the other hand, if they get played a lot anyway, you might feel like you don't even need to be alerted, since you'll hear them a lot just by flipping around. And if an artist doesn't get played very often, it might be a waste of an alert, because it will hardly ever pop up. On the other hand, if they're played so rarely, do you really want to miss the few times they do get played?

Choosing songs is a little more detailed, IMO. Obviously, if you have that artist added, you don't need the song. Although, covers might be an exception -- as far as I can tell, the only thing that gets stored is the song title, so if you add "I Think We're Alone Now" I think you'd get the version by Tommy James and the Shondells as well as Tiffany -- however, you can't get "I Saw Her Standing There" by the Beatles and "I Saw Him Standing There" by Tiffany with one song, since the titles are different. I'm not sure about how this works, so I'll let you guys make your own assumptions here if you want. Anyway, I would think that the song slots should be taken by artists who have only one song that you're really interested in hearing. But some people may think that's a mistake, or that it's worth it to use up two songs slots for one artist, because it would save an artist slot.

Okay, I've pontificated about this enough. I'll post my list next.