Apple recently announced the end for two more of its iPod music player models, the iPod Shuffle and the iPod Nano. The cancellation of the latter also eliminates Apple’s first, and only, radio receiver. While the iPod Touch remains in production, it’s really just an iPhone without a cellular phone function. Nice as it is, […]
Podcasts are really just on-demand audio. However, the medium debuted in the period before nearly-ubiquitous wireless data and wifi. That’s the historical reason why it still relies heavily on downloading, rather than simply streaming programs from the internet like video platforms, such as YouTube, Hulu and Netflix. Of course, it’s also because audio files are […]
The big news in public radio today is that New York Public Radio, home to WNYC, WQXR and New Jersey Public Radio, received a $10 million grant from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation. This comes on top of two previous grants that together totaled $11 million. This news is significant not just because it is […]
This was the year podcasting crested puberty and had its teenage growth spurt. Two statistics make this point clear. Apple reported the milestone of one billion podcast subscriptions through iTunes in July. A recent Pew Research Center poll says that 27% of internet users download or listen to podcasts. That percentage was just 6% in […]
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” […]
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 […]
Stitcher is a smartphone app that lets you aggregate radio shows and podcasts, stored on your phone for on demand listening or streaming from the web. The three year-old service is now launching the first Stitcher Awards across 20 different categories, like best comedy, best social commentary and most original show. All the voting happens […]
Remember that HD Radio enabled smartphone set to debut at the National Association of Broadcasters show last week? There was hoopla–mostly in the industry–leading up to the show. And, then, radio silence. I looked for news reports all last week and didn’t find a thing. Only a NAB email newsletter sent this week brought any […]
Middle-tier radio owner Emmis Communications has announced that it will demonstrate an HD Radio equipped smartphone at a press event this coming Monday at the 2012 NAB Show. The prototype phone was developed in conjunction with Intel and iBiquity, which owns the HD Radio system, but few other details are available, including what operating system […]
I very reluctantly just retired my Palm Pre smartphone due to abysmal battery life and a series of hardware issues. In its place is now a HTC EVO, which sports faster 4G connectivity on Sprint and the Android OS instead of Palm’s WebOS. So far I like WebOS better, though there are more apps for […]
