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Motorola Unveils iRadio
sayanchak writes "Motorola is introducing iRadio in its 2nd edition of the ROKR cell phone. An article in Reuters says that iRadio will be a subscription music service that will go on sale this year. This will put Motorola in competition with other such services like XM Satellite Radio Holdings and Sirius Satellite Radio." From the article: "The iRadio service will cost about $7 (4 pounds) a month but the price may vary depending on which wireless phone service the subscriber uses, according to Motorola. U.S. service providers including Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless are planning mobile music download services for this year. Sprint Nextel has already launched music download and streaming services. Motorola did not reveal any service provider partnerships but said it hopes to sell the service in conjunction with wireless operators, which could sell subscribers a wireless download of a song that they discovered through iRadio."
Really, is anyone else bothered that more and more media is going from free to subscription? Think about it, tv used to be free, now virtually evenyone has cable/satellite subscriptions. Radio used to be free, still is, but now everyone is jumping to satellite radio and their attached subscriptions. Taping shows on your vcr is still free, however now everyone and their dog runs Tivo, sending a monthly check to them for the priviledge. Personally when you're raising a family and making a budget I don't see how all of these subscriptions are neccessary. Of course we have to have our monthy cell phone bills...
fak3r.com
On the heels of mostly failing to sell a phone with iTunes bolted on, they are now trying to jump into a market (subscription-based music downloads) where nobody is making money.
I've got a Motorola phone right now, and for the most part I'm miserable with it. Sure, it has a lot of spiffy features, but it kind of sucks as a phone. Not only is it of limited reliability, but they made all kinds of goofy interface decisions.
For example, I need to be "in a call" for about two seconds before I can turn on the speakerphone feature. It's impossible to answer it on the speaker, or place a call over it. Instead I must talk to the person with the phone to my ear for a couple seconds, say "hang on", press a button on the face of the phone just so, wait another half second, ask the person on the other end to say something to indicate that it worked, try pushing the button again if it didn't, rinse, repeat.
How stupid is that? The whole point of a speakerphone is to avoid fucking around with it. If I take a call when I'm on the road, it's actually safer to just keep listening through the earpiece.
A minor annoyance, yes... but one of many with this piece of crap.
The Japanese market went ga-ga for cameras, text-messaging, ring-tones, etc., but from what I've seen, most Americans want a phone that works easilly and reliably as a phone more than anything else. Someday, a phone maker will become clueful about this fact, and they will sell them like hotcakes. I know I'll be in line for one.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
eCommerce eMail eDonkey eWords eBay eBusiness eCard eWallet
Wonder what the next popular letter will be.
As far as I'm aware, eBay and eDonkey are the only mixed-case trademarks which appear as they did in your examples. E-mail and e-business are almost never spelled like that. Also, everybody gets that "e" stands for "electronic."
"i" kinda-sorta stands for "Internet", but not really.
Besides the new hottness is already established.
It's "g"
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I fail to see how this is superior to a Treo 650 with free shoutcast streaming audio.
You'll have to once the providers wise up to this and block common streaming audio ports.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Let's see, the two main players in this industry aren't making any money. Let's start another venture of the same sort.
What the hell are the people at Motorola thinking?
Oh, let me guess. The stupid executives have convinced each other than the pay-for-radio scheme is mainly impeded by the lack of compatible hardware, and not the fact that people don't want to pay for crappy audio programs that they can improve upon themselves via their own playlists. So since motorola controls a platform/distribution medium, they might as well jump on the pay radio bandwagon because that's all that's holding people back? Yea right. Fools. I wonder.. does wearing a necktie all day choke the blood to peoples' brains?
Never mind. It doesn't matter. I guess it should come as no surprise. The bigger these corporations are, the more bone-headed their ideas seem to be, and the more unreceptive they are towards anything innovative or creative.
You'd think at this point, with Google's success, some of these other companies would have figured out that treating employees very well, paying them very well, and not outsourcing everything to third world countries, might, just might result in some innovative and marketable ideas... I guess it's going to make more time, and more King Kong movies before these companies get a clue.
Or perhaps Motorola got rid of the lamest thing about the ROKR- the 100 song limit- by dropping Apple and iTunes.
Dropping the Apple imposed limits for the E2 allows the phone to carry 70 hours of music.
-works for MOT (but not in handsets)