I’m not sure exactly why, but the recently released Retro-Fi app by Romanian company Onyx Apps makes music on your iPhone sound like it’s on an old AM radio. Don’t get me wrong, I have a soft spot in my heart for music on AM radio, at least partly fueled by memories of listening to the classic New York City AM top 40 stations as a young kid in the late 1970s. But I’m not quite so crazy about it that I have a hankering to simulate it on my iPad.

According to Onyx,

For those who loved listening to rock’n roll on tiny transistor radios, those who find modern digital audio too clean, and those who want to create a retro mood with music, Retro-Fi is the solution!

Looking at screenshots at the App Store, it appears Retro-Fi gives you the ability to adjust parameters labeled “ambiance” and “static noise,” just in case you decide you don’t really want to understand those song lyrics any longer.

Now, I do understand why an artist or record producer may want to add a AM radio effect to elements of a song, as an aspect of a larger sonic palette. But it must be obvious that I’m having a hard time seeing why anyone would want to use this app for more than a few minutes, making it barely worth its 99 cent asking price.

Maybe Retro-Fi fits into the Instagram/Hipstamatic trend in iPhone photography, where these apps add effects to make your photos look like they came from forty year-old Kodak Instamatic camera. Honestly, though, I see more value in these photo apps, because the iPhone cameras are not necessarily high fidelity to begin with, and photographers have actually been embracing these effects for years before iPhones were invented.

Perhaps I’m just being a curmudgeon. If the idea of making your indie rock playlist sound like it might have been played by Wolfman Jack on a border blaster station, it will only cost you a buck.

I made some rough calculations based upon the typical bandwidth consumed by streaming internet stations that use MP3 to estimate that the 2 GB monthly cap would be good for 34 hours of stereo music, and the 200 GB limit would only let 200 minutes squeeze through. While 34 hours seems like quite a bit of listening on a mobile device, I could see how the hours could add up for someone using an iPhone to stream internet radio in a car during a long commute. Of course that wouldn’t account for any other data usage for activities like email, browsing and facebook.

Therefore I was surprised to read a recent interview with Pandora CFO Steve Cakebread in which he declared, “The impact of data caps for Pandora listeners is almost non-existent.” Speaking with the investment site Seeking Alpha, Cakebread explained the typical bitrate Pandora uses is 32 kilobits per second, which is one-quarter the 128kbps rate I used for my estimate.

Bitrate and fidelity are tied together, with higher bitrates typically meaning better quality sound. MP3 is a nearly 20 year-old codec, and 128kbps is generally considered the bare minimum bitrate for obtaining acceptable stereo sound for music. However, Cakebread explains that Pandora utilizes the much more modern AAC+ codec which is more efficient and delivers better fidelity at lower bitrates than MP3. He tells Seeking Alpha that the average Pandora user listens to 10 hours a month, which adds up to 140 MB. This means that even if an average user did all her listening on a mobile device using the cell network, she would come in way under her 2 GB cap.

It’s good to have this kind of data directly from a major internet broadcaster like Pandora because it does help us understand the actual constraints faced by mobile streaming. At 32 kpbs a mobile listener with a 2 GB data plan should be good for some 142 hours of Pandora a month, which would be like listening for 17 whole work days. I can definitely imagine there are folks who listen to that much terrestrial radio, and I don’t doubt there are some power subscribers who tune in to Pandora for that much. So it does also illustrate the gap between mobile internet radio and its wired broadband and terrestrial broadcast counterparts. While mobile listening may not be seriously curtailed by data caps, it is still limited in ways that wired broadband or wireless broadcast are not.

My Imagining Silicon Valley box

I grew up in Sunnyvale, California, in the heart of “Silicon Valley,” and my entire life has been shaped by the ever-advancing technologies being invented in my childhood backyard. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why the death of Steve Jobs yesterday has hit me in ways that I wouldn’t expect.

It was a source of pride for many of us that the founders of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, were locals who grew up in the same surroundings that we did (they both went to my junior high and high school). Parents of elementary school friends worked at Apple in the 1970s and I first got my hands on an early Apple computer in 1978 or 1979 when I took my first computer programming class in elementary school. Probably using the BASIC programming language, we learned how to translate code into graphics that ended up looking like a boxy needlepoint display of letters on the computer screen. But it was magic.

The first computer that I bought was an Apple and my first smartphone was an iPhone. Although I’ve eschewed online music, I can’t ignore the fact that iTunes changed everything for the music and radio industry. Before its launch I worked at a start-up that tried to figure out how to use online playlists for music discovery; but it wasn’t until iTunes that the masses truly understood digital music’s potential.

Oddly enough I heard about Steve Job’s death over the radio. I’d been glued to the TV and radio all day yesterday, following the manhunt for the disgruntled worker who shot 10 people in Cupertino. My family still lives in the house on the Cupertino/Sunnyvale border where I grew up and the gun-toting mass murderer was on the loose very nearby. As I listened to KCSB for the latest word on his whereabouts, I was shocked when the radio announcer casually stated the news that Steve Jobs had died. I wasn’t expecting it and it seemed even more surreal since Cupertino was the focus of so much news attention that day already. It’s only natural that both events would lead me to reflect back on a childhood in the suburbs.

By the time that I was a teenager, I thought that Sunnyvale was boring. I was drawn to the East Coast for college, in large part because I felt that there was more history there. But after college I became fiercely protective about Sunnyvale (and Santa Clara Valley)’s hidden history. All of my life, remnants of the past (orchards, farm houses, feed stores, lumber yards, etc.) and signs of the area’s history were being torn down and replaced by modern structures and office parks.

Places like Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Atari were lauded as tangible examples of the Silicon Valley brain trust. Yet, I also thought it was important to remember the ghosts of Santa Clara Valley, from the one lurking in the Toys ‘R Us of my youth, to Sarah Winchester (of Winchester Mystery House fame), to a long-gone train store in my neighborhood. For a graduate school project I wrote a paper, built my first web page, and created a shoe box full of memorabilia all around the idea of “imagining my suburbia and searching for ghosts.” As I pulled out that shoe box today, not only did I find my college application essay and a printout about the demographics of Cupertino, but I also found a scrap of paper that said “Jobs & Wozniak” and another that read “work hard = success.”

Everyone has hometown heroes and Jobs was certainly the most famous of those heroes to emerge from the community where I was raised. But I don’t think it was until the last decade that the true impact of Steve Jobs was felt. iPods, iTunes, iPhones, and the iPad helped to elevate Apple to a whole new level as they continued to innovate products that touched even more aspects of the daily lives of people everywhere.

Paul has already pointed out some connections between Apple and radio and I’d have to agree that iTunes and the iPod have presented challenges to the radio industry. But at the same time, iTunes and the iPhone have also facilitated both the discovery of terrestrial radio stations and have allowed for new ways to listen in. Some have likened the iPhone to a modern day transistor radio, since it can be held in one’s hand and can stream radio stations.

As I continue to process the news of Jobs’ death, I also realize that his “local” status has always been a big deal for me. In Silicon Valley, many people are transplants, having migrated here in order to chase their dreams. As a local gal, it’s somehow reassuring and comforting that someone who shared similar experiences as a kid was able to have such a huge impact on the world. I’m just sorry that he didn’t have the time to realize even more of his dreams.

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?

It was 1975. I was 20 years old. I had just left home. I worked and went to college in Manhattan, and lived with my girlfriend in the Bronx.

Meanwhile, Kool and the Gang‘s hit tune “Jungle Boogie” jumped to one of the most requested songs on the radio. Transcriptions of the lyrics to this enduring hit don’t really do it justice, but here goes:

“Get down, Get down, get down, get down, get down, get down . . . .
Ahhhhhhhhhhh !
Jungle Boogie
Jungle Boogie
Get It On
Jungle Boogie
Jungle Boogie
Get It On”

I did not experience the lines as such. Here’s my version of the chorus:

JUNGLE BOOGIE
(deedly-up! deedly-up!)
JUNGLE BOOGIE
(squawk! squawk!)
JUNGLE BOOGIE
(deedly-up! deedly-up!)
JUNGLE BOOGIE
(squawk! squawk!)

Anyway, you get the idea. I saw Jungle Boogie as the archetypal Disco song with the archetypal Disco message. Forget the Sixties. Forget all that Woodstock crap. Just dance, wiggle, screw, then dance some more. Be yourself. Be your identity, no matter what it really is. Don’t be afraid. Just be.

Most political types I knew in college strongly disapproved of Disco. They thought it wasn’t radical enough or something. Gay people, black/Latino people, and women loved it—especially if they fit into all of those categories. As for me, I did not have the New Left sophistication to resist Disco’s charm, although I more often listened to classical music at the time.

Back in those days, to get to a train into Manhattan, I took a bus that ran from the northern Little Italy area where I lived through the South Bronx. This was quite an experience. The latter region was falling apart. Landlords and tenants took turns torching their residences. Drug use skyrocketed. The place was a mess.

So riding the bus meant touring some pretty mean streets. Kids threw objects at these vehicles with great gusto. The projectiles included rocks, cans, and soda bottles. Once during my ride somebody tossed a glass milk container filled with vodka through the window. The vessel landed on my lap. In addition, since the city rarely repaired South Bronx roads, the buses rocked up and down like rough water motor boats, tossing the passengers about in every direction.

On top of that, I was often the only white person on the car. This meant that some disgruntled type would periodically try to start a fight with me. These confrontations usually began with my antagonist angrily yelling something that I didn’t understand, since he was generally drunk or stoned. I responded to these gestures by quietly sitting in my seat and looking very confused. Once the fellow realized that I wasn’t going to stand up and defend my racial honor, he stood down. But it wasn’t a very relaxing way to commute to school and my job.

One very hot summer evening that year, a quartet of high school kids boarded the bus taking me home. Although these vehicles had air conditioning, it rarely worked, so they ran around the carriage snapping open the car’s small upper window panels.

After that, two of them tuned their radio cassette machines to a station playing “Jungle Boogie.”

“Get Down Say Ugh
Get Down Say Ugh
Till You Feel It You’ll
Get Down You’ll
Get Down
Get Funky Ya’ll
With The Get Down!”

As the music blared, the youngsters danced—ecstatically, I should add. I will never forget how happy they looked. They sang along with the broadcast, mostly intoning the “get down get down get down” part, and putting extra vigor into the chorus. When the tune ended, one expressed great dismay. But not to worry, his comrade declared, and popped a Kool and the Gang cassette into his box. Thus, “Jungle Boogie” boogied on.

Needless to say, most of my fellow commuters did not appreciate this degree of frolic, especially the older ones, who quietly glowered at the spectacle. To be fair, it wasn’t as if the dancing was obtrusive. The revelers took pains not to bump into anybody, and mostly just sort of narrowly shimmied against passenger poles with their hips and knees. But the music was loud. The bus driver did nothing to object to the celebration. And nobody else on board was going to tell the celebrants to put a sock in it, least of all my wimpy white self.

So the party went on. Through the hot evening we trekked—us working stiffs and the Jungle Boogie Dancers. The bus rocked back and forth and up and down, as usual. A couple of objects hit its caboose. Politically incorrect thoughts crossed my mind. “Is this The Jungle?” I wondered. Or: “Am I in The Jungle?” Then: “Is this the beginning of the End of Civilization?” and “Will it be fun?”

In retrospect, I’d like to say that the whole thing felt like a Spike Lee movie. But Mr. Lee was about four years younger than me at the time, and wouldn’t release his first film of influence, She’s Gotta Have It, for another decade, so I don’t have that cinematic cliche to fall back on.

Eventually the kids’ stop came. They secured their gear, nimbly leaped from the bus, and ran off into the evening. We survivors of this experience exhaled with relief, grimacing and gesticulating towards each other. I glanced at the bus driver, who grimly shook his head, but not too obviously, perhaps for fear that if he showed disapproval, someone would ask why he hadn’t done something about the scene.

An elderly woman looked at me—as usual the only pale face around. She offered a sympathetic laugh. Thirty-six years later I still remember her smile.

What brought this memory on? I’m sitting here on a San Francisco to Berkeley BART train and the young lady in front of me is having a little solo sit-down dance party with her iPhone. She’s got the volume pumped up so loud that I can hear the tune through her little ear buds. Yup, it’s Jungle Boogie. She’s gracefully shifting back and forth on her seat with her eyes closed, moving and grooving to the pulsating sound of the Disco beat.

Now I’m wondering which techno-musical world I like better. Is it the nice, neat hermetically sealed one that I live in today, with serene moving trains carrying scores of jacked in travelers, each sequestered in her own audition room? Or is it the scary, ecstatic landscape that I remember from 1975, with its roving bands of audio box marauders, spreading anxiety and joy across commuting trails?

I can’t decide. I don’t even understand how we collectively decide to move from one ubiquitous device to the next: first transistor radios, then cassette machines, then boom boxes, next CDs, iPods, and iPhones. Do we choose them, or do they choose us?

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.

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.

iPhone 4 with Pandora playing in the background

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.

Soon you can listen to This American Life and tweet about it at the same time. How will you get anything else done?

As an iPhone user I can say with full knowledge that one of the things that holds the device back when it comes to listening to online radio is the lack of multitasking. While the iPod app allows you to play your audio files in the background while surfing the web or using other apps, you can only use third-party apps one at a time. Since listening to online radio, Pandora, last.fm or Slacker requires a third-party app, there’s no reading facebook or playing video games.

This restriction is sort of tolerable on a small mobile device like the iPhone, but it’s far more annoying on the iPad. Imagine if your laptop or netbook wouldn’t let you listen to streaming stations while word processing or web browsing. In fact, for work I use a Palm Pre which does permit multi-tasking. I do occasionally listen to Pandora on the Pre while answering emails, even though it kills the battery more quickly.

Wired’s Gadget Lab has a sneak preview of a beta of the forthcoming iPhone OS version 4. Top on the feature list is real multitasking. When the new OS drops later this summer iPad and iPhone 3GS users finally will be able to run their favorite streaming audio app in the background while using other apps. You might even be able to run two audio apps at the same time to test your bandwidth and tolerance for cacophony.

Unfortunately multitasking will not be available for first generation iPhones or the 3G. I guess our puny little processors can’t handle it.