Now that the merger of XM/Sirius has resulted in bankruptcy, screwed up programming, more commercials, and almost certainly an increase in annual subscription fees, I decided to look for an alternative.

I can across a free streaming Internet radio service called Slacker Radio for Blackberry and iPhone users. I've been listening to Slacker Radio on my Blackberry 8900 for the past week and have been very impressed with their programming and sound quality. It streams nicely over the EDGE network, and caches 500MBs of station programming onto your phone, so there's no interuption as you go in and out of coverage. I plug it into my AUX jack and it just WORKS!

They also sell portable players for those that don't own Blackberry or iPhone. I recommend checking them out.

 

I have to second the streaming stations. I use 3 radio streamers on my iPhone in the car. All are free, Slacker Radio, Pandora, and AOL Radio. One Radio Streamer that costs $6 but is worth every penny is Wunder Radio.

All of these work just fine in the slower Edge networks as well as the 3G service.

Essentially all of these services either give you a totally customizable way to create your own channels, or have hundreds of genre stations.

I highly recommend this.