Radio Survivor

The National Association of Broadcasters is sending around an interesting think piece about Internet/mobile radio. The report was published by the Station Resource Group, a consortium of public media services. It’s titled “The Mobile Internet: A Replacement for Radio?” and is pretty circumspect about the question—pondering the various differences between broadcast and Internet audio streams.

This paragraph caught my eye.

A potentially critical new market variable has entered the picture, with the recent AT&T Wireless announcement that new customers will no longer be offered unlimited flat-rate data service. Although early analysis of the specifics of the new AT&T rate structure shows that most Internet radio users would still fall within the flat-rate zone, the move by AT&T crosses a virtual Rubicon. It is now conceivable that the current rate structure is simply the first step in a gradual throttling down of flat-rate service thresholds, and that if one provider has done so, others may follow. This movement could affect the uptake of wireless Internet radio by future consumers.

AT&T announced its two new data capped plans for the iPhone and other smartphones in June. DataPlus offers 200 megabytes of data for $15 a month. DataPro provides two  gigabytes for $25 a month.

Why might other carriers follow suit?

“Witness the still increasing ‘foreign’ ATM charges that nearly all banks now levy after years of offering such service for free,” the survey notes. ”During those years, strong consumer usage patterns were established, and once such behavior was created, the institution of small but incrementally growing fees for continued usage was grudgingly but broadly accepted by consumers.”

It’s an interesting question. AT&T’s DataPro says the plan offers consumers the capacity to watch 200 minutes of streaming video a month, the carrier claims. Streaming audio isn’t mentioned, but obviously that would take up less bandwidth.

Any comments on this out there in Radio Survivor-land? Do data caps make you nervous about tuning into Pandora on your iPhone?

Six wireless industry related trade associations sent Congress a letter on Monday that  goes ballistic on the idea of mandating FM receivers in mobile handsets. The  groups wrote in opposition to a reported deal between the National Association of Broadcasters and the Recording Industry Association of America in which the former would agree to the Performance Rights Act—radio stations paying royalties to performers as well as copyright holders. But there’s a catch: Congress would also require FM receivers in mobiles.

Bad bad bad, the groups insist.

It is simply wrong for two entrenched industries to resolve their differences by agreeing to burden a third industry – which has no relationship to or other interest in the performance royalty dispute – with a costly, ill-considered, and unnecessary new mandate. The proposed imposition of an FM chip mandate is not necessary for resolution of the dispute between performance artists and broadcasters and, if adopted, it would be bad policy for several reasons.

The reasons: It would jack up the price of mobiles; NAB and RIAA don’t know what they’re talking about, technology-wise; and there’s no need for an FM mandate for public safety because the wireless industry is working on a mobile broadcast emergency alerting system, as required by Congress.

And the letter concludes:

Calls for an FM chip mandate are not about public safety but are instead about propping up a business which consumers are abandoning as they avail themselves of new, more consumer-friendly options. Disintermediation should not be a basis for legislation, and a solution to the dispute between the recording industry and the broadcasters should not burden device manufacturers and carriers as they work to extend wireless broadband coverage to every American.

Signed, CTIA – the Wireless Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association, the Rural Cellular Association, TechAmerica, and the Information Technology Industry Council.

Everybody is in a dither over whether the National Association of Broadcasters and the Recording Industry Association of America are going to cut a deal in which they both agree to the Performance Rights Act, if Congress mandates that all mobiles have to include FM radios.

I can’t see why lawmakers would want to do that (besides to make big content and big broadcasting happy). Besides, lots of handsets already have FM radios, including my neat Droid X.

Here’s a Youtube video describing the innards of the Droid FM app.

“Bring a radio for live on the street updates broadcasted from 92.1fm! The day of the verdict bring out a radio and prepare for a mobile radio station broadcasted from 92.1fm, Oscar Grant Radio.

The radio station will be at 14th and broadway, want to say something live on the air? Come by and speak your words. This will be an open forum for anyone who wants to be heard, just look for the sign!

Pass the word around, 92.1fm is Oscar Grant Radio on the day of the verdict.”

“92.1FM broadcasting from 12th and Broadway as protesters continue to gather in the streets. #oscargrant.”

It’s the rumor that won’t die. Last November the blogosphere was alive with reports that iPhones have a latent FM radio built-in, just waiting to be turned on by Apple. However, the new iPhone 4 is on the streets and there’s still no sign of that radio-in-waiting. Now AppleInsider reports on a patent application from Apple that points towards not just an FM radio but possibly an HD Radio appearing in a future iPhone.

An FM radio is already featured in the current generation iPod Nano, as well as MP3 players from competitors like SanDisk. Microsoft’s Zune even has HD Radio. But all of these devices are media players only, not smartphones. As of yet there are no major smartphones available from a US carrier that have FM radios.

According to a recent consumer survey, that might be a major oversight on the part of manufacturers. Research firm Vision Critical asked more than 4,000 adults what missing feature on the iPhone 4 they would most like to see, and an FM tuner was the top pick when averaged across respondents from all three countries.

An FM radio was the most popular in Canada. Vision Critical senior vice-president Jeff Vidler suggests this is because streaming services like Pandora are not available in Canada and because mobile data charges are higher there.

But here in the US features like having a choice of carrier (39%), a 4G network (38%) and an eight megapixel camera (33%) were all more popular amongst respondents than an FM radio (30%). Still, the radio was more popular than a larger display or wireless syncing.

If the recent Apple patent really means an FM radio, then maybe we’ll see it in iPhone 5. If so, then I won’t be surprised if other smartphone manufacturers follow. It’s also possible that one of Apple’s competitors will try to beat them to the punch.

Actually, with the new AT&T data caps pouring some cold water on streaming music to the iPhone I’m more convinced of how desirable an FM tuner would be to the average consumer than I would have been a month ago.

Hot on the heels of AT&T’s new data pricing plans, Slacker Radio released the new version 2.0 of their app which will permit listeners to cache their stations while on a wifi network. Then the stations can be listened to without using up precious data from the 3G network.

On the surface this may sound like a great alternative to Pandora or last.fm. But it must be noted that the caching feature is only available with a paid Slacker Radio Plus subscription. Users of the free service can take advantage of a 14-day trial of caching.

Under the monthly paid subscription model Slacker Radio caching seems a whole lot more like the Rhapsody service, which provides access to unlimited music for $10 a month. Rhapsody also lets you download as much music as you like to your smartphone to listen to without using a wifi or cellular data connection. Now, it’s true that Rhapsody is less radio-like than Slacker, in that you choose the artists and albums. However, the service also features Rhapsody Radio, although it isn’t cacheable and isn’t based upon user preferences.

Overall Slacker caching looks like a middle ground between listening to streaming Slacker (or Pandora or last.fm) and listening to a playlist or music podcast stored on your smartphone. That might be worth the $3.99 – $4.99 a month for some folks, especially since it’s cheaper than the data overage charge.

What a year in radio it’s been!

Back in June, 2009, Matthew, Paul and I agreed to focus our energies on Radio Survivor in order to champion all things radio.

Coming from the perspective of radio fans, academics, and DJs; we’ve devoted much energy to espousing the virtues and lamenting the pitfalls of radio in all of its forms.

There is still hope for radio, not only in expected places like college, community and other non-commercial stations, but also in some free-thinking commercial stations, on the all-but-ignored AM dial, over satellite, online, and through mobile devices.

We think it’s been great fun over the past year, but know that we can always do better. To help keep us on our toes (and to help keep us around), we invite you to:

1) Send us suggestions on stories that we should cover

2) Follow us on Twitter, “Like” Us on Facebook, and tell your friends about us

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4) Post your classified ads and radio events on Radio Survivor (It’s free!)

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We appreciate all of the support, even if it’s just reading our site!

Today Apple CEO Steve Jobs made his now-annual announcement for the new version of the company’s top product. While there were several surprises in store, like the addition of video conferencing and HD video recording, there wasn’t anything unexpected for radio enthusiasts.

Jobs confirmed the debut of multitasking with the new version 4 of the iPhone OS which already had been revealed last month. What’s nice about multitasking is that audio apps like Pandora, Slacker, last.fm, AOL Radio and the Public Radio Player will play in the background while using other apps, just like listening to iPod music.

For a hard core online radio listener multitasking may indeed be the “killer app” that makes it worth spending the $199 to upgrade to the 16 GB iPhone 4 from a first generation iPhone or the 3G. Owners of the 3GS will get multitasking, too, which also makes for a cheaper upgrade for owners of earlier models, at $99.

Apple says the new iPhone has a bigger battery offering up to 40 hours of music listening time and up to 6 hours of 3G web browsing. Listening to streaming radio over 3G is quite a bit more data intensive than simple web browsing, so it’s doubtful you’ll get 6 hours of 3G audio streaming.

Unfortunately, new iPhone owners starting contracts with AT&T will no longer have an unlimited data plan available to them, with the biggest data plan topping out at 2 GB per month, with $10 for each additional 1 GB. It’s unclear if a current iPhone owner can continue to have an unlimited plan if she starts a new contract upon buying an iPhone 4, though I should expect so.

Still missing from the iPhone is an actual radio capable of receiving traditional analog or HD broadcasts. When the radio-equipped iPod Nano debuted last October rumors starting swirling that there was a latent radio receiver inside the iPhone. One would think that if the rumor were true, that radio would have come out with the introduction of the iPhone 4. Since we’ve seen no sign of an iPhone radio with this major update of its OS, I’m guessing we’re unlikely to see one in the near future, if ever.

Last week AT&T announced that new smartphone customers will no longer be eligible for the unlimited data plans that current customers enjoy. Instead, two somewhat less expensive plans will be available. For $15 new customers may download 200 MB of data per month, with a charge of $15 for every additional 200 GB over the limit. 2 GB per month will cost $25, plus another $10 for each 1 GB after that. Current data plan customers pay $30 for unlimited data. For its part AT&T says that either of these new plans provides enough data to satisfy 98% of their customers.

While it may be true that the vast majority of AT&T customers use less than 2 GB of data in a month, I would argue that’s because data-hungry mobile streaming media is just starting to take off. But the these new caps threaten to stunt that growth just as mobile internet radio is gaining steam.

The 200 MB of data offered by the least expensive plan covers only about 200 minutes of streaming stereo music at the common bitrate of 128kbps. And that’s without any other data usage for email, web browsing or anything else. Even listening to a lower-quality mono talk station at 32 kbps will only stretch listening to 800 minutes, or 13 hours.

The 2 GB plan will cover about 34 hours of stereo music and as much as 136 hours of low-bitrate mono talk. At first blush that seems like a fair amount of listening time, but how does it measure up against real-world radio listening? Someone whose commute lasts about an hour each way will easily listen to over 40 hours of radio in a month. If that commuter wants to use her iPhone or Blackberry to listen to Pandora, last.fm or another streaming music station she’ll be over her limit by the last week of the month.

Without access to hard statistics on how many hours the average mobile Pandora or last.fm user listens it’s hard to say for sure how many new AT&T customers are likely to be affected. However, I do think it’s fair to say that these limits will make many smartphone users cautious about how much time they’ll spend listening to internet radio on the go, especially in order to avoid overage fees.

Of course, AT&T is not the only wireless data carrier in the US. As long as you don’t have your heart set on an iPhone there are lots of other carriers to choose from who still offer unlimited data plans. But for how much longer? Computerworld quotes several analysts who predict that Verizon, the nation’s second largest carrier, will set caps in as soon as six months. While there may be some pricing competition on these plans, I’m guessing they’ll offer pretty similar amounts of data for prices that only vary by a few dollars a month.

With a cost between 75 cents and $4.50 and hour, listening to mobile internet radio on an AT&T smartphone starts to look pretty uncompetitive compared to traditional broadcast, which is free, or satellite radio which offers unlimited listening for $10 – $20 a month. While it may be inevitable that the days of unlimited data plans will come to an end, I hope that the metered pricing quickly becomes more reasonable, permitting a reasonable amount of streaming radio listening. If not, this vibrant new way of listening to radio might be stunted before it has a chance to blossom.

Happy news for Last.fm scrobblers. Now if you’ve deleted some artist or composer from your profile, you can restore it via the Last.fm scrobble restore tool.

“Being in charge of the database that stores everyone’s scrobbles is a great responsibility and one I don’t take lightly,” explained self-proclaimed Last.fm ‘Scrobble Overlord’ Ricky Cormier (aka ‘evilrix’) on his blog on Tuesday. “One thing that I get asked now and again is, ‘I’ve accidentally deleted Artist X from my profile, can you restore it please’?”

“Well, the simple answer is, ‘yes I can’ but up until now I’ve not had anything that allows it to be done with the click of a button or two. I decided enough was enough and the result is this Playground app.”

For those not initiated into the wonderful world of scrobbling, it’s basically a means by which you can communicate your musical preferences to Last.fm. You automatically scrobble to Last when you pick and choose songs and composers on the site. But you can also download Last’s scrobbler application, which will allow you to convey to Last your iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, and Foobar 2000 tunes.

Cormier explains scrobbling and this new restore app further.

“When you delete anything from your library we don’t actually delete it, we move it to a different table in your database. We need to do this so we can keep track of what you’ve deleted to make sure we don’t keep offering it to you as a recommendation.

All this Playground app does is allow you to review what’s in your deleted tracks table and if you choose to restore them it just puts them back into your main scrobble table.”

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