When you think about satellite radio, thousands of channels, millions of listeners, you might picture a faceless algorithm, a machine spitting out the same ten songs over and over. I’ll admit, that was in the back of my mind when SiriusXM invited me to their Nashville studios for a special live recording with Katy Nichole. But I walked away thinking about how much humanity drives what they do.
Their Nashville studio is stunning. Intimate, beautifully lit, and located right across from my personal favorite venue in the world, the Mother Church itself, the Ryman Auditorium.
Katy was there for a deep dive into her new record, Honest Conversations. We sat in the studio with a few dozen lucky fans who packed into hear from one of the most unique new voices in Christian Music.
Ashley Till hosted the afternoon. If you listen to The Message, you know her voice, but in our house we also know her from The Pulse and Y2Kountry. In person, she’s magnetic, quick to laugh, quick to cry, and unafraid to go deeper than the typical “Radio DJ.” After exploring the new album, Katy closed her set with a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” If you want to witness effortless, jaw-dropping vocal power, sit front row at a Katy Nichole show.
Before our trip downtown, I sat down with Al Skop. “I’m the human being behind the music you’re hearing,” he said, a humble way to sum up his official title: Sr. Director of Music Programming at SiriusXM. Al’s been with SiriusXM since day one, literally. “I started working here the day we launched the second satellite into space. We didn’t have any customers. We didn’t have anything. We were still building it from the ground up,” he told me. For the last 18 years, he’s been programming The Message. “Really, what that means is that I’m the human being behind the music you’re hearing. And not only the music, but the hosts, the special content that we air, that’s all chosen and designed by me and a team of a few others that really try to provide not only the best music, but obviously we have a higher purpose than that, amongst all the other channels here on SiriusXM and we take that very seriously.”
That higher purpose has been meeting a moment. “When you think about a music festival like the CMA Fest that happens every year in Nashville and there’s Jelly Roll on stage at Nissan Stadium with 40,000 people and very willingly and of his own volition, here comes his good friend Brandon Lake to sing the song ‘Hard-Fought Hallelujah,’ and all of a sudden, in a place where you totally wouldn’t expect it, the stadium erupts into a church… that’s a beautiful thing.”
You can hear that shift in what The Message plays. For years, the format leaned toward worship. Now, with a dedicated Message Worship channel in the SiriusXM app, something Al says is performing incredibly well among 150 specialty streams, the main channel has more room for variety. “We’ve always had that desire to try to show everybody the full breadth of this genre. Honestly, you and I both know you could take the word ‘Christian’ and put it in front of any genre of music, and there’s another genre of music. How do you sort through it all? Especially now with the explosion of artists tapping directly into fans with social media and TikTok and Instagram? You need a human being at the other end of that to kind of tame down everything coming out of that firehose and make it something that is palatable for a wide audience, for everyone to listen to and enjoy and be benefited from it.”
In an era when endless streaming choices can make music feel disposable, SiriusXM’s value comes down to trust. “It’s really all about having a relationship with your audience and with your listeners. They’re invested in us, they pay us money every month to listen. And so it’s our duty to take the load of having to deal with this flood of content. It’s almost been a relief for our subscribers to be able to say, you know what, I trust you. We have this relationship. Why don’t you go through and it’s your job to actually tell me what you think I’m going to like and present that to me. And it really does actually help them in the long run.”
That trust extends to the artists too. A couple nights before my visit, I had dinner with Jeremy Redmon from Big Daddy Weave. I mentioned I’d be interviewing someone from SiriusXM. “Al?” they asked immediately. “Al’s the man.” That kind of recognition doesn’t happen unless you’ve built real relationships. “That goes way back to when I started programming The Message about 18 years ago here. I hold a very special place in my heart for some of the artists that were also brand new at that same time. That was a pretty big time. Brandon Heath is brand new, for KING + COUNTRY’s brand new. Those relationships last. It’s great to watch each other grow in our respective fields, with them as an artist and me as a curator and a programmer, trying to bring those artists to the fans.”
SiriusXM’s investment in Christian music is no small thing. This isn’t a Christian-owned company—they could easily cut the channel or replace it. Instead, they’ve doubled down. “SiriusXM has been super supportive of the format and of me, guiding it through, and being able to present it to the fans. And that’s not nothing. That’s not free. It takes resources to pack everybody up and bring a full team to cover the Dove Awards every year like we have since 2019, for example… to have these live events, in our Nashville studios, in New York studios. It’s been really, really great to have that partnership knowing again that we’re one of hundreds of channels that are all vying for attention and resources here, that they recognize that this is important for many reasons.”
For artists trying to get noticed, The Message isn’t an impenetrable wall. Al also programs Christian stations on Pandora, where he can take more risks with emerging artists. “We’re trying to sift through the flood and the firehose of artists and music coming at everybody and boiling it down to the best of the best, and also giving a little more leeway on Pandora for emerging artists, songs that we might not have too much of an inkling about yet, and then letting it find its home, letting it find its audience on Pandora and then starting to see with the flood of data… being able to say, well, you know what? This song is really raising its hand. I think we’re going to add this to The Message.”
As my family stepped out of the studio and onto Broadway, the sound of Katy’s last notes still ringing in our ears, I realized it wasn’t just the music that stuck with me, it was the feeling. This wasn’t about metrics or playlists. It was about a roomful of people being moved by something real. That’s the human heartbeat behind Sirius XM’s The Message.