BetaNews is reporting that AOL has begun testing it’s new AOL Online Radio with XM.

The player is still in open beta right now, and AOL is asking for participation in the program to work out the bugs.

First impressions are mixed. First, I’m happy it works with Firefox (I expected IE only), so that’s good. It seems that connecting to channels is spotty, but when you do finally get a music stream to work (clicking around generally fixes it), the sound is… uhmm… not so good.

I think it’s great exposure, but there’s still a bunch of kinks that need to get worked out. Most importantly I’d like to have a higher quality stream, but I do understand this IS free.

Go check out AOL Online Radio with XM for yourself and comment here with your thoughts on it. I’d love to see what everyone else thinks.