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There seems to be a fair bit of negative feeling about this app, but I'd reccomend giving it a go.

I started using Meroca about a week ago, and while it's not perfect it's not bad.

I never listen to whole albums anyway, so I prefer the randomness of the music I get. I have my whole mp3 collection in Winamp set on shuffe - it's refreshing to just get hit with something I've not heard before. And I've run across a couple of fantastic bands that I'd never of otherwise heard of (ie Death Cab for Cutie, terrible name, great music)

The quality is really pretty good, you have a choice of OGG (yay) or WMA (boo) streams at decent bitrates. Theres a little crispiness on heavy cymbal work, but it's way better than my favourite 'regular' station Xfm

The client's a bit clunky tho - seems to eat a lot of resource trying to manage 15000+ mp3s, but maybe I've just got too many ;)

Reading through the website addresses a lot of the RIAA worries - they say they've got $5m in venture capital behind them, and they're looking to move to a subscription model, which makes sense as there is no way this could be supported by GoogleAds and Amazon referrals.

Theres some brains there too - the guy behind the gnutella2 protocol, Michael Stokes, is on their tech staff, so I reckon that can't be bad.

I think they may have stumbled across a workable compromise between the p2p freeloading and the RIAA's draconian methods - as long as they choose a nice low price point for the subscriptions.

(caution: anecdotal evidence!)

From what I've found with my friends, one of the big draws for DAB is being able to recieve otherwise local stations nationwide.

For example, London's Xfm (a traditional analogue station) also broadcasts nationwide on DAB. A number of people I know around the country like listening to this station. Of course, they can pick it up on Digital Satellite, Cable TV or the Internet ... but that's not much use in the car or elsewhere away from the TV/computer. Portable and in-car DAB radios let them enjoy these stations wherever they like.

Living in London myself, there's a large number of stations on standard FM, so I'm pretty much spoilt for choice. But for elsewhere (e.g. Oxford - the city that radio forgot ... Fox FM... *shudder*) DAB's handy.

The writers/directors (ricky gervais and stephen merchant) do a great show on xfm , sat afternoons 1 to 3 (GMT).

David Brent is such a significant character that it could be easy for Ricky Gervais easy to find himself typecast in the future - we'll have to see how well avoids the trap.

Incidentally, he and Stephen Merchant (Office collaborator) have a radio show on London's XFM that can be very funny (they broadcast on the net also).

That's the nature of broadcast. A chunk of spectrum costs a certain amount, they need to attract a large number of listeners to justify that cost, so they target their programming to the lowest common denominator.

In theory, digital will allow more channels in the same range of spectrum, so it may become economically viable to target more niche audiences. Your niche may (or may not) be included.

In the UK, digital radio (using a different technology to that in the article I believe) provides a largeish number of channels: the downside being that audiophile bores believe the bitrate per channel is unacceptably low.

I'm seriously considering buying a DAB radio in order to get XFM outside London.

We were all listening to rock bands wearing spandex and tears for fears songs.

How things have changed

The track is a mix of Come On Eileen and Bring Tha Noize - there's a crap mp3 of it hanging around on Audiogalaxy.

There's some interesting stuff here too.

Recently Radio 2 got more listeners than radio 1..

However, the station of choice has to be XFM.

Commercial, yes, but they do play some good stuff..

Radio 2 has got a lot better because of the likes of Johnathon (w)Ross and '50's throwback' Mark Lamar who are both very funny.