Digital Radio (Continued)
I was at dinner last night with a friend who works in the radio business. He was telling me about the efforts going on to integrate cellphones and radios in the same way that cellphones and digital cameras have been integrated.
That's exciting to me. Radio is a cheap, ubiquitous one-way pipe. Cellphones are becoming the digital devices of choice for most people (and I include PDA/cellphone combos like the Treo in the definition of cellphones).
Think about the possibilities of a Tivo-like system to record and store the radio shows and stations you like. Then when you are on the plane, train, car, etc, you can just plug into your phone and listen. With the back-channel on the phone, you'll be able to buy things you hear about (songs, books, and most anything else you might hear about on the radio).
Radio has a great future in the digital age and cellphone integration is likely to be a big part of it.
It can't be that far off...
http://www.pogoproducts.com/ lets you "tivo" the radio now... just not on your cell phone.
Posted by: Jonathan Greene | February 16, 2004 at 08:56 AM
I might not have believed this until I got my Treo 600.
I'm using it as an MP3 player (thanks to the new Real Player, which lets me buy music legally). I hook it into the car (though I wish the damned car stereo had a plug; instead, I use a cassette adapter, which will be the one reason to keep cassette players around in cars in the future).
I wanted to use my Treo to listen to one of my favorite radio shows that I often miss, Kurt Andersen's Studio 360, but I couldn't get Audible working in the Treo (and their bad customer service ticked me off). So I fixed that by getting Replay Radio, which turns my laptop into a radio TiVo (without having the buy the separate device, the Pogo plugged in the comment above).
So.... My Treo is my phone, email device, web device (I even blog from it), camera, MP3 player, radio TiVo. All I need now is to be able to listen to live radio on it (not hard) and record that at will. Next: Video.
Once cellular gets to be as fast as a wi-fi connection, there will be no limits to what one device can bring you.
From all of this, I have come to expect to be connected to anything anywhere anytime.
When I took a (rare) coast-to-coast flight last week, I felt as if I'd had my wires amputated and it drove me nuts. (While I was in the air, the Kerry Drudge rumor broke.)
Posted by: Jeff Jarvis | February 16, 2004 at 09:19 AM
a similar device is already in place: Nokia 7700, with its visual radio function...it may not be on demand yet, but you can see that happening and the company execs have plans on it...radio plus back channel commerce capabilities as well...
read more here: http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_01_21.shtml#003976
Posted by: Rafat Ali | February 16, 2004 at 10:13 AM
The Treo 600 can be a radio, too. An internet radio, that is.
The premium version of PocketTunes (http://www.pocket-tunes.com) is capable of playing shoutcast streaming audio.
I found an NPR station on shoutcast which streams at 24K, which works perfectly over the GPRS internet connection. The Sprint Treos do even better.
Posted by: Stig Hammond | February 16, 2004 at 11:01 AM
Not to be a naysayer, but with the quality of radio today, um, frankly who cares? You read Jeff's reply and he uses his phone in interactive ways not broadcast only modes, while in theory it might be handy for radio to be included perhaps it would be far more productive for radio to get involved in RSS so people with Treo's and other devices can download the programs they want. It gives customers a greater range of choice if they just put it out on the web. I think this is something broadcast media has been missing about the web and still miss, they want greater choice not limited options.
Posted by: Thomas | February 16, 2004 at 01:48 PM
They at the end being customers.
Posted by: Thomas | February 16, 2004 at 01:49 PM
Agreed. Radio's not compelling enough for me, but internet radio is. I listen to radio almost exclusively over the web these days, picking and choosing the programs I want to hear from places like publicradiofan.com
But who wants to pay to stream radio packets via GPRS? I mean, besides the carriers and Clear Channel...
Posted by: greg.org | February 16, 2004 at 04:02 PM
Pocket tunes for the Treo works very well. The deluxe version allows you to pick up ShoutCast radio stations as Rafat mentions above.
The bandwidth isn't there yet to make it a pleasant experience. The radio cuts out every 5 to 20 seconds to buffer for a second or two. (THis is with Sprint in Boston, NYC, and Charollette NC.)
Shouldn't be to hard to fix this, but not a good solution for the moment.
Posted by: Adam Smith | February 17, 2004 at 03:39 PM
You should check out http://www.serenadeaudio.com. Ah, the simplicity of well organized catalog!
Posted by: TJ | August 12, 2004 at 11:41 AM
Isn't very expensive to be listening to streaming radio on the internet? most carriers charge per data transfer.. cingular charges 2mg like $19. a song alredy is 3mg to 4mg... and the signal are never good enough.. in NYC that is. Is there any cheap plan for wireless internet in cellphone deals... so I can listen to internet radio? if so, Let me Know. or any other way to listen to internet radio on the go. thanks
Posted by: ben l | October 07, 2004 at 01:07 AM
I'm looking to get our station on phones as well. We're playing Classic Rock and our listeners are really wanting this.
I wrote in just to give you all an idea of bandwidth...MB/hour...
We stream at 2 different rates. The smallest is an AAC stream (which is pretty great sounding by the way) and it will send just under 15MB per hour.
It is true that songs you have on your PC ripped at 128 are about 1MB/min, but our compressed streams take up much less bandwidth.
I like the Treo add-on...might have to go that route for our listeners. Good article!!
Kevin Spence
iROCK109
Posted by: Kevin | March 08, 2007 at 01:50 AM