Beats Music is out & in the app store. We kick the tires
We had Rhapsody, Pandora, Rdio, Slacker, Songza and Spotify. Then last year Google Play All Access and iTunes Radio joined the scene. Today producers and headphones impresarios Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are bringing us Beats Music. Like Spotify and similar platforms, Beats offers up on-demand music for unlimited listening. In part the service hopes […]
Unclaimed Tom Waits CD: am I old or is it Spotify?
I teach history courses at a big university in California. Classes started three weeks ago. One of mine takes place in one of the largest lecture halls on campus. I walked into the room, which holds almost 200 people, and there on the corner of a front desk sat two CDs, one by Tom Waits, […]
College Radio Survivor: 2014 Starts Well, With New College Radio LPFMs on the Horizon
In this week’s College Radio Survivor, I look at two new potential LPFM stations on college campuses and recap some college radio news from the past few weeks. On Wednesday the FCC started granting new LPFM applications and in the mix of the first 107 grantees, there was one potential college radio station: York Technical […]
It’s official: Winamp and Shoutcast acquired by Radionomy Group
It’s finally for real: Winamp and Shoutcast live on. Though there have been reports that the online radio platform Radionomy purchased them from AOL, Radionomy just made the official announcement today. This comes some 26 days after Dec. 20, 2013, which was the date AOL said the services would be shut down and taken offline. […]
LPFM Watch: FCC Grants 107 LPFM Applications, More Oppositions Filed
This week there were some interesting developments on the LPFM front. Most notably, the FCC began to grant LPFM applications yesterday and by day’s end there were 107 non-profit groups that were one step closer to getting on the air with a new licensed radio station. These singleton applicants faced no competition for their frequencies, […]
Those NSA radio snoop chips, are they FCC Part 15?
Reading today’s New York Times story about National Security Agency USB hack gadgets that radio computer data back home, I immediately thought to myself: are these authorized by the Federal Communications Commission as Part 15 unlicensed broadcast/radiation devices? Or even, gulp, licensed? The Times reports that the NSA gadgets get plugged into foreign host computers […]
FCC Begins to Grant LPFM Applications
I’m glued to REC Networks‘ LPFM application status twitter feed, as it has been lighting up over the past few hours with messages about newly granted LPFM applications. The first granted license was for Center Pole, Inc. in Montana. So far I’ve been excited to spot a college (York Technical College in Rock Hill, South […]
FCC Asks Turner to Fork over $200K for Misuse of Emergency Tones
Turner Broadcasting System has been issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (PDF) due to complaints about the repeated misuse of Emergency Alert tones over its network. The FCC found that Turner is liable for a forfeiture amount of $200,000. This is on the heels of a warning and notice in November, 2013, which […]
Podcast Survivor: With PodcastOne Norm Pattiz wants to grow “the ultimate form of democratic delivery for radio”
I had the chance to speak with Norm Pattiz, a modern commercial radio pioneer who threw his hat into the podcasting ring last year with the PodcastOne network. Whether you’re a fan of commercial radio or not, Pattiz brings to podcasting decades of experience along with a good measure of vision and boldness that shouldn’t […]
Cambodian gov’t nixes “Beehive” radio expansion
When last we left Cambodian dissident Mam Sonando back in March, he was on the verge of being released from prison, following a twenty year sentence for “leading an insurrection” which was then dropped to a minor charge. Not long after his liberation, Sonando applied a license to expand the reach of his “Beehive” radio station […]