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Cingular to Offer Radio Service
Mika24 writes "Red Herring is reporting that Cingular Wireless will launch a new over-the-air-radio service in conjunction with the TV service they will offer with MobiTV." The music programming will be done by Music Choice and will include rock, urban, country, reggae, jazz, electronica, and classical. From the article: "MobiRadio uses the improving screen capabilities on cell phones to offer album art and information about songs and artists during playback. Cingular said it will expand that capability to let subscribers purchase related ringtones and other content while the music is playing--a set of features made popular by satellite radio providers."
i already get all the tunes i want for free on my cingular phone - and i mean ALL: everything i have at home already, everything i listen to on internet radio (mostly the kickass stuff over at http://www.somafm.org/), everything in the Virgin Digital library of, what, 2M songs.
oh, right, and all my podcasts
for free
why do these guys think i'm going to be willing to pay AGAIN for music just because the device is different? once you've put the Web on a device (and, ok, a streaming player that's got access to any URL), i'm done
what i'm wondering is: do you think that local storage will be like 80% or 50% of the way you get your stuff to your phone in a year's time?
the orb freeware http://www.orb.com/ STREAMS my stuff to me, local or online somewhere - transcoding it on the fly to adapt to my at-the-moment bitrate and default media player. for Net radio while driving, that's killer. but what about stuff that's at home? i haven't got a huge-ass memory disk for my phone yet...
You'd be surprised what's not on the map in this country. - Mulder
I thought satellite radio and its fees were egregious too. So I got my partner one. She really loves it; after a few days of that, she entirely stopped listening to normal radio.
The key thing is, no commercials, and perfect audio quality (except when there are dropouts). That and more than a hundred channels (although most listen to only 5 or so).
It makes it an entirely different thing from radio. If you are used to having the satellite version in the car, and for whatever reason you forget it, and use normal radio, you feel like a total idiot, and the normal radio, with its ads and bad reception, drives you nuts.
So if you like radio, it is probably worth it. If you don't really like radio, just wait until the costs come down more.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Typical teenager reaction. Yes, child, everyone is trying to tell you what to do, even when they aren't. You poor oppressed thing.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.