My jaw dropped in 2001 when I first heard XM Radio. That was before the network even launched, back when it was broadcasting test signals, and my friend Bill showed up one day with a computer and a little black box and a cassette adapter for my car radio.

We drove through the mountains of West Virginia and I heard music the way I used to hear it — and by that, I don’t mean the actual songs. I mean the love behind the songs, the obvious thought that went into picking what got played. It was being done by people who loved music, not by people who loved money. And XM has mostly stayed that way over the years, even as it struggled to stay in business.

When I got my new car recently, I was given a free six-month subscription to XM’s main competitor — Sirius — and I was immediately struck at the sloppier, more commercially oriented playlists that it used. With some noteworthy exceptions, Sirius sounds like those stupid music channels you get with digital cable TV — channels where somebody just dumps a bunch of songs together under a united theme and shovels ’em out. There’s no soul. And I loved XM more than ever as a result.

I’m thinking about that now because XM is about to go away. The feds are about to sign off on an XM-Sirius merger, and Sirius will become the dominant party even though it has fewer subscribers. I don’t understand how things can work that way, and I suspect the whole concept of satellite radio is on very shaky ground anyway, so I’ll try to enjoy my XM now. The music-lovers are about to lose another round and the weasels will do what they always do — ride creative enterprises into the ground, draining every ounce of cash along the way until there’s nothing left. And music will become less important to people than ever.