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Music From The Heavens - For A Fee
Judg3 writes: "There's an article over at Wired about how Sirius Radio [Warning: features rude Java - timothy] just launched the first of three satellites that plan to provide coast-to-coast digital radio to the tune (heh) of only 9.95$/month. Why pay for their digital radio when we have the free analog stuff? Well, according to Sirius, and their competitors XM Satellite Radio, people will pay the extra dough for the niche channels out there, somewhat like Cable TV these days. I dont know about you, but I'm looking forward to the '80s Glam-Rock Channel' and the 'Who 24/7 Channel'" I see this relegated to supplying soothing in-store Muzak(tm)-type background music -- won't free and micropayment-driven Internet delivery make this redundant for ordinary listeners? Still, I'd like to see a political-satire channel, or a stand-up comic channel, or a lot of other obscurities.
An unnamed correspondent adds: "Stereophile reports:'The Sirius 1, built by Space Systems/Loral, will be placed in an inclined elliptical orbit with high angles of elevation to the ground. The company says this type of orbit will improve reception in urban areas.'" Just as interesting, the article mentions a tabletop radio manufactured by Thomson, to be branded in the U.S. as RCA: "The AM/FM/IM (Internet Modulation) radio connects through an Ethernet connection on the tabletop product, allowing listeners to find thousands of different channels of entertainment." Nice to see Stereophile enter the MP3 age intact, too.
Unfortunately, what most people want to hear has nothing to do with what needs to be heard. Look how long it took for violence in schools to become a topic. It wasn't new at all. It wasn't new to my generation, it wasn't new to the one before it and it certainly isn't new to the current generation. Until now, nobody wanted to hear it. And, unfortunately, most people don't -- until it's quite late.
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seumas.com
Fine. I can live with your point of view.
However, will I pay $9.95 a month for this like you would? Probably not.
Question: Does this mean that advertisements will be excluded? It would be crappy to pay $9.95 and be forced to hear advertisements too. My take on the whole thing is that people will get spanked both ways. I suppose it is this kind of thing that that makes me state that I don't need any kind of fancy-dancy juiced up digital radio...
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Usability Vortal
How to Download YouTube Videos
Maybe these folks will have a great product, but if their product is anything like thier web site, they are going to be a great company to avoid like the plague. No place to send in questions, no comment forms, sitty design with loads of slow loading graphics and no actual content.
Not only that, if you cor to their home page without flash all you get is a blue screen of death. Cretins.
With Napster, Gnutella, Freenet, and the like, who needs any radio? Get the right player for your car and you're all set too. No channel hunting, just music that you want. All pull, no push, thank you very much.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Now *that* would be worth paying for . . . DJ's instead of those "personalities" . . . The entire broadcast spectrum in the morning, regardless of type of music, has been taken over by the "morning moron" format. . . . Dozen's of stations competign to find who can most proficiencly display their lack of intelligence . . .
:)
:)
So I want stations with DJ's, not "personalities"--just shut up and spin the records. (ok, I just dated myself
Currently, I have radio channels on digital cable. The classic country station is better than the one that fidhnryeotk has, cutting off right before new country rather than the arbitrary 1979 (missing some of the best Merle Haggard, among others).
hmm, I'm ranting
hawk
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=8^
Ahh, yes, it's all the mega-corps.
..
People are choosing wrong, they don't *really* want what they're buying, or choosing. Turn control over to us, and we'll give them what they want, instead of what they think they want.
Oh, and for good measure, we'll forcibly relabel their nationalities. Goodthink all around.
Nobody listens to us because we don't get the access. Give us the access (on your nickel, not ours), and we'd be just as popular.
\end{sarcasm}
The anglo-american notion of free speech is *not* the right to be heard, nor the right to the means to spread your message (although the constitution of the U.S.S.R. did guarantee these, along with religious freedom). It's the right to *not be silenced*. Getting people to listen is your problem, and noone elses.
If you can show that the megacorps or government came and stole your publications (whoops, that was student radicals, not th government), or if you can show that they jammed your airtime, we'll get concerned. Until then, we'll assume that you're just not popular because noone agrees with you .
hawk, an Americn
>Putting your toothbrush under your absolute
;) ]
>control has no ill effect on society;
[ed note: you're making strong assumptions about his dental hygiene. How do you know he's not one of those people that society would be *much* better off if forced to use his toothbrush every day???
>however, putting the means of production
>under the control of a few divides society into a
>minority of powerful owners and a minority of
>alienated workers.
Yes, we've seen the amazing successes of central planning . . .
And how did the means of production land in the hands of those who control it? Gee, it might not have *anything* to do with them having created those means, or caused the production of those means by combining what already existed?
And, certainly, they would create just as many means if they knew the fruits of their own labor would be taken from them in the name of labor . . .
hawk
At which point, you open a burrito shop on teh next corner.
Now, if you are prevented from doing this, even though you offer the prevailing rate to rent the premises, this is a serious problem. However, we've now left the realm of capitalism, and are discussing fascism
hawk, the economist
>it's not the djs that suck, it's the commercials.
>Think about, what is the reason, 80% of the
>time, you change the station?
In order?
a) new country
b) babbling idiot of an "on-air personality". (including all of those patronizing imbeciles on syndicated programming). DJ's are fine.
c) commercials.
It's sure not like country, though.
:)
It seems to be a mix of about 10% country themes/melodic pattern, 100% pop-style shrieking, overinstrumentalization, and the like, and -10% any form of intelligence
Stations are increasingly identifying themselves as either "New Country" or "Real Country."
hawk
he's written a new book since then.
you can buy it here, or someplace else
And for you greenies in the crowd...
(complete with programming realism)
"RALPH NADER--"RICH MEDIA, POOR DEMOCRACY is more than a prolonged wake-up call; it shames those who do nothing and motivates~ validation-form-field.description_0001: ~ those who are trying to build a more democ ratic media that reflects the all-important noncommercial values which forge a just society."
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+&x
I can already get close to seven hours of digital quality music on a single CD with the help of MPTrip portable CD player. And that's music that I want to hear - not stuff that's broadcasted at me. And those numbers will only grow, to the point where I can get literally hundreds of hours of the music I like to hear crammed on a DVD disc in MP[34] format and never have to worry about radio again. That stuff is just around the corner, literally. Sirius Radio bears many ominous similiarities to the last satellite-based debacle we had; they both seemed like a great idea when they were concieved 5-10 years ago, but technology has simply outpaced them as time was spent turning that conception into reality.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
This kind of thing would have been useful a decade ago. At this point, multicast technology is maturing to the point where we'll soon be able to have nearly infinite digital media capability without the ugly overhead of having to transmit a separate stream to each listener/viewer. At that point, everyone is a potential broadcaster, and the only difference between NBC and Joe Sixpak with a video camera is that the former has a bigger advertising budget.
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Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Man, and people have conspiracy theories over the OnStar service that some vehicals come with. "Now Big Brother will not only know where you are, but what you're listening to!". Oh man.
I would assume that you aren't forced into the service if you buy those cars and that it is considered a negotiable 'option' that you can refuse and, thus, not be charged for? Oh well, who cares -- apparently the service will only be available in yuppy cars. And only yuppies will fall for this gimmick in such droves as to make this a successful endeavor whatsoever. The same high-fashion wannabe yupsters who whip out that cell-phone at every chance will now have a new toy to impress the ladies and their friends. "I may have a teeny weeny, but I have digital radio!"
Of course, if you already have a car, you can purchase the Sirius receiver system for about $150. Hm. Suddenly, this service doesn't sound so cheap as $9.95/mo.
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seumas.com
Dude, you are totally hepped up on goofballs.
....reads post again....
This is doomed to repeat the failure of the Web.
¿Estanislao, como se dice "troll"?
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+&x
It's one of those parallel worlds novels, in which many different versions of the world exist, some better and some worse than ours. In one of the better ones, the radios display the name of the song and artist (yeah, yeah, computer CD and MP3 players can do this now). So what does this have to do with this article? Well, according to the web site, the proposed radios will have this feature.
I listened to about half of the samples they have (the RealAudio ones) and there didn't seem to be much on them that you wouldn't get through analog radio anyway. (Lack of commercials aside.)
If anything like this ever becomes popular, I hope it's because it tries new ideas and doesn't just keep playing the same big label stuff repeatedly but through a different medium.
===
I like music as much as the next guy but I'm always disappointed by the lack of non-music radio programming. Radio is good for a much wider range of content. When you have to spend a lot of time in the car wouldn't it be great if you could get real brain food from your radio instead of a thousand channels of mindless thump-thump-thump and the same endless repetition over and over of skimmed news headlines and sickeningly predictable political sound bites.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The one advantage Radio has over your CD collection is that it can introduce you to new music. If there was a local rock/goth/industrial music station, I'd listen to it, purely to hear music I might like that I've never heard of before.
My Journal
So there's another company trying to compete with DMX, MusicChoice, Muzak and SkyRadio. Their one hook is that they're trying to be the first to get portable and mobile receivers made, which will go thr way of the dodo, quadraphonics, 8-track and AM stereo if the receivers are designed only to hook to their system.
Satellite and cable narrowcast "radio" stations have been around for some years now. And yes, while DMX and Sky are available to digital cable and home sattelite customers at home, their core revenue source is commercial subscribers: shops, restaurants, offices, buildings and so forth, which pay a higher fee.
There's certainly a niche for this sort of thing for mobile delivery. But it's going to be short-lived. Once wireless broadband rolls out in larger metropolitan areas in a couple of years, you'll be able to listen to your favorite high-bandwidth streaming audio services--or even access the MP3 jukebox you have at home, for that matter. Of course, there will have to be a way to make up for the lost visual ad revenue for some streaming stations, but that will probably come from ISPs paying a blanket charge covering all of their subscribers, just as cable and satellite TV companies pay fees to providers of the "basic cable" channels.
Well, you could join us...
...I'm feeling a bit masochistic tonight.
Well hell, with an offer like that I don't know how I could refuse. 2 questions though,
1) do you live in the Seattle area?
2) do you mind having your feet slobbered on?
I'm a bit of a switch, so if you feel sadistic on other nights that's perfectly fine.
Feel free to email me.
--Shoeboy
Political attire channel? About power ties, Armani suits, etc? Seems like it could get rather dull.
All right, I'm ready to rumble about the ills of socialism. Your entire point seems to be that you're tired about who owns the means of production. I've got news for you, buddy, under socialism, communism, stateism, anarchism, whateverism, you still have the same thing. There is still the elite managers who decide what gets produced, with even less responsiveness on what gets produced. I don't like whatever food a particular resturaunt serves, I vote with my wallet and don't go there, I go to the place across the street that serves better food. If enough people don't like a place, then that place will either change itself to make it more likable, or it will go out of business, it's that simple. There is very little in a true capitalistic state stopping you from going out and competing against anyone to get business.
See above, if I don't like their programming, I don't subscribe to their service, and/or, I pony up the few million dollars and launch my own competing service.
I will agree that capitalism has it's problems, but it has fewer problems than socialism and stateism when changing the human condition to reach the unnatainable state of happiness for everybody.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
every red-blooded male in my hometown has mounted a goose above his fireplace.
WOW!! You must have pretty big mantles on your fireplaces to allow you to climb up there and hump a goose. That's got to cost a fortune. Why on top of the fireplace anyway, isn't the bedroom a bit more comfy?
--Shoeboy
Part of me thinks that this is a great idea. Hell, some form of competition to the tradtional forms of transmission and media usually is. I'm just not convinced it will offer anything I will care to pay for. I have my CD's and MP3's. What else do I need? If I want non-stop Industrial music, I'll pop a bunch of discs into my changer or fire up a decent playlist in my MP3 player.
I would think the lure of targetted demographics would be enough to land some advertisers and, by removing any subscription free, they would find that they could gain a pretty hefty base of listeners.
Then again, look at all the idiots who actually pay for Cable because they feel it's such a necessity that they'll croak without it.
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seumas.com
I've got three quarts of motor oil, six feet of rubber tubing, a yak, and a crate full of cock rings just ready and rarin' to go!
Wow! I need to buy an airline ticket to wherever it is that you are. Do you mind if I bring my pet goose?
--Shoeboy
I don't get it.
5, 17, 23
Think about it.
Do you get it now?
If not, you need to think harder.
--Shoeboy
Ok, you have a fowl sense of humor and can improvise as well as I can. I'm impressed. I'm going home now. Goodnight.
--Shoeboy