XM Radio Online

I’ve had an XM subscription for quite some time now.  One thing that they started a little while back was the ability to listen to most of their stations via the Internet.  If you have a monthly XM account for a receiver, then you automatically get access to XM Radio Online.

From their website, you can login to XM Radio Online.  It opens a new window with their player interface.  The problem with this is that it’s another browser window and if IE crashes for some odd reason (and it happens), then you lose your session…Plus things get cluttered.

Tonight I discovered that in Windows Media Player 11 (and I believe version 10 does this as well), that you can to the “Online Stores” inside media player.  XM Radio is there, and you can login from within Media Player and consume the same XM Radio Online experience, but through Media Player instead.  No dependencies on the browser, and you minimize media player to the tray and still get the information about what is playing.  That’s cool.

I’d personally like to see a Windows Vista gadget that would allow you to listen to XM Radio Online.  I’ll have to look into that.