Mainstream Monday: What are you streaming?

Rather than putting the spotlight on a specific artist, I figured I would write a little about where I listen to mainstream music.  Simply put, pretty much everywhere. 

I tend to listen to SiriusXM’s Alt Nation the most.  More often than not I find that Alt Nation has new music well ahead of most radio stations that play the same type of music.  I really like the personalities on Alt Nation too.  They don’t usually say very much – they’re very generic when they have talking breaks – but they have good voices and every now and then they have some entertaining stories.  Mostly though I come back for the music – though I find extended listening periods tend to mean a lot of repetition in music, which has turned me off several songs now. 

I used to listen to an Ottawa station, Live 88.5, with the Radio Player app.  However lately I’ve been enjoying Sonic out of Edmonton, Alberta.  Sonic seems to play more of the newer songs that Alt Nation plays, but also sprinkles in older alternative songs.  The personalities on Sonic are much better than on Alt Nation.  I wish I had this station on a local preset but at least now with RadioPlayer it’s convenient enough to tune in. 

After that, I play individual songs via Spotify.  Sometimes it’s music based on what I’ve heard on the above sources, but Spotify does a really good job of curating playlists (the Daily Mixes, New Release Radar, and Your Discover Weekly are pretty great).  Generally though, if I’m on Spotify, I’m probably playing music I’ve listened to before and re-discovering old favourites.  Sometimes I will throw Spotify’s algorithms a wild card and play something like Johnny Cash live from San Quentin.