Satelliting

You’ve had it with the disappearance of musical variety on the radio. You spend all too many hours in the car and you’d like one source for sophisticated music choices, a range of news and talk, comedy, audiobooks, kids’ programming, and as full a menu of sports as cable TV offers.

You’re finally ready to shell out $13 a month for what used to be free.

But you can’t tell the difference between the Coke and Pepsi of the satellite radio business: XM and Sirius.

I’ve spent the past four months with both services in my car and house, listening to just about all of the two companies’ combined 300 channels. Conclusion: Like colas, satellite services do differ, if subtly.

Both services offer an enormous amount of great stuff and also lots of mediocre programming. But depending on your interests, one will be right for you.

Despite the considerable overlap in programming, a handful of distinctions are so clear that you can base your decision entirely on them:

Baseball fan: XM. Football nut: Sirius.

Movie maven: XM. Howard Stern addict: Sirius.

Bob Dylan freak: XM. NPR lover: Sirius.

If movie soundtracks are your kind of music, XM is the only service with a channel dedicated to those sounds, including interviews with composers such as Danny Elfman and Randy Newman. On the other hand, if you want Playboy Radio or Korean-language programming, Sirius is your only choice.

Sirius has the only all-gay channel; XM, the only black talk channel.

As both services reach beyond the early adopters to capture a mainstream audience, they are looking to big-name celebrities to win new subscribers.

Sirius has staked its future on the uncensored Stern, while XM counters with bad boys Opie and Anthony. XM has built its version of public radio around former NPR “Morning Edition” host Bob Edwards; Sirius doesn’t offer original programming of that kind, but does have the real thing, two channels of shows produced by NPR.

XM has signed Bob Dylan, Oprah Winfrey and Snoop Dogg as celebrity hosts. Sirius’ stars include Martha Stewart, Deepak Chopra, Judith Regan and Mark Cuban.

But while both services vie for big names, the main attraction on XM (6.9 million subscribers) and Sirius (4.7 million) is the music. The tunes are often similar; how they’re presented is the difference.

Both services have stations dedicated to the pop music of each decade from the 1950s to the ‘80s; XM adds the ‘40s and ‘90s. Its decade channels sound like radio stations from those eras, a fun, cartoonish approach in which Top 40 hits are mixed in with old commercials, bits from TV shows, and deejays who adopt the style of the time they’re re-creating.

Sirius does a little of that but generally opts for a more contemporary, serious sound. But what it lacks in fun, it makes up for in the quality and intelligence of its deejays.

XM subscribes to more of a jukebox model, providing long sets of uninterrupted music on many channels. The theory is that since song and artist names appear on satellite receivers’ displays, most listeners just want the tunes, thanks.

On Sirius’ more highbrow channels, especially, announcers provide more background about the music than do the deejays on similar XM channels.

In general, if you’re looking to hear new music and understand where it fits in, Sirius is the place. If you’d rather have the jocks let the music do the talking, XM’s for you.