Who doesn’t like free? That’s what Spotify is counting on with the announcement today that its mobile smartphone and tablet apps will let users stream their favorite artists and playlists for free. The catch with smartphones is that you can’t select particular songs. Instead, Spotify is channeling the iPod Shuffle, letting you randomly “shuffle play” […]
Tag Archives | iPhone
Score some great radio deals and help out Radio Survivor
I spied some very interesting radio deals at Amazon as part of both its “Countdown to Black Friday” and today’s “Lightning Deals.” Any Amazon purchase you make through one of our links helps us keep the lights on, at no extra cost for you. You don’t even have to buy the item we link to–any […]
Checkin’ My Vibe – First impressions review of Slacker for iOS 7
Typically I’m a little more cautious when upgrading my mobile device OS. I usually wait a couple of weeks for the early adopters to upgrade and find the bugs and hassles, and maybe even wait for the first patches to fix those bugs before taking the plunge. But today I had two reasons to upgrade […]
Slacker launches “My Vibe” to deliver curated playlists for your mood
Ever want some music go with what you’re doing, but can’t quite figure out where to start? Maybe you’re studying, doing housework or having a nice dinner, and you don’t want to pick just one artist or album, but you don’t have a whole playlist ready to go. Today Slacker Radio releases “My Vibe” which […]
Sprint to add FM radio to smartphones – too little, too late?
The biggest radio news to come out of CES this week was Sprint’s announcement that it struck a deal to integrate FM radio tuners in some of its smartphones. Radio listening will be available through the forthcoming NextRadio tuner app on Android and Windows devices, which Sprint says will offer, “a wide range of interactive […]
Retro-Fi iPhone app makes Wall of Voodoo actually sound like Mexican Radio
I’m not sure exactly why, but the recently released Retro-Fi app by Romanian company Onyx Apps makes music on your iPhone sound like it’s on an old AM radio. Don’t get me wrong, I have a soft spot in my heart for music on AM radio, at least partly fueled by memories of listening to […]
Pandora CFO says mobile data caps not a problem
When AT&T first announced new monthly data caps for iPhone users in 2010 I suggested that it could stunt the growth of mobile internet radio. Some eighteen months later I do have to admit that doesn’t seem to have happened. I made some rough calculations based upon the typical bandwidth consumed by streaming internet stations […]
Farewell to Steve Jobs, a True Child of Silicon Valley
I grew up in Sunnyvale, California, in the heart of “Silicon Valley,” and my entire life has been shaped by the ever-advancing technologies being invented in my childhood backyard. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why the death of Steve Jobs yesterday has hit me in ways that I wouldn’t expect. It was a source […]
Could smartphone data cap plans hurt Internet radio?
The National Association of Broadcasters is sending around an interesting think piece about Internet/mobile radio. The report was published by the Station Resource Group, a consortium of public media services. It’s titled “The Mobile Internet: A Replacement for Radio?” and is pretty circumspect about the question—pondering the various differences between broadcast and Internet audio streams. This paragraph […]
My Jungle Boogie moment
It was 1975. I was 20 years old. I had just left home. I worked and went to college in Manhattan, and lived with my girlfriend in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Kool and the Gang‘s hit tune “Jungle Boogie” jumped to one of the most requested songs on the radio. Transcriptions of the lyrics to this […]