Internet Radio

  Excuse me while I rip out my CD player.   Acura, Kia and the car stereo company Audiovox have partnered with Pandora to make listening to the Internet radio service while driving as automatic as listening to the radio.  Francisca Fanucchi, Pandora’s corporate communications and public relations manager was kind enough to share her thoughts [...]

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Imbee is aiming to be the Pandora for kids as well as the Facebook alternative for kids 8-14. Kids definitely need an alternative to Facebook, and imbee might be the answer.

By now most everyone knows about the terrible earthquake and tsunami that occured in Japan early this morning, and affected western parts of the United States from Hawaii to Alaska. My colleague Todd Ogasawara was up most of the night after the tsunami warning sirens started going off at 10 PM Hawaii time, and I am happy to report that Todd is ok.

We now have a multitude of ways to keep current on breaking world events thanks to the Internet. Perhaps the most significant of the ways is on Twitter, thanks to the ability to post updates to Twitter from smartphones. Earlier this week I wrote about TuneIn Radio, which is a free app for Android and Windows Phones, and I found it came in real handy today to keep up on today’s events.

TuneIn Radio plays audio streams provided on the Internet by more than 30,000 radio stations from all around the world. I was able to listen to a NOAA weather broadcast in Hawaii to hear what the weather service was reporting there, as well as listen to several radio stations in Hawaii. Later, when reports started coming in that waves from the tsunami were seen in San Francisco, I tuned in to talk radio stations in the Bay area to hear reports of what was going on their. On a whim, I even tuned in to radio stations broadcasting from Tokyo, though I don’t understand Japanese, so I did not now what was being said.

When breaking news occurs, local radio stations usually provide better coverage than national news outlets. While CNN was hoping around the west coast and Japan, I was able to listen to continual coverage from Hawaii. I am finding TuneIn Radio to be a great app that I am happy to have on my Nexus S.

Music On The Go (MOG) is a subscription streaming music application that works on Android and iOS phones. For $10 per month you get access to the service’s catalog of 8 million songs. Unlike services like Slacker Radio and Pandora that provide streaming playlists that are based on artists that you select, MOG enables you to select any album or song that you want to listen to, although the service also has radio channels that act the same way as Pandora and Slacker.

Perhaps one of the best features of MOG is that it provides a free three day trial without requiring that you provide any information. The application uses a temporary user id and password generated when the app is installed to log in to the service for the three days. While MOG streams music, you can also download songs and albums to your phone to play while you don’t have an Internet connection. I do find that the streaming works best over Wi-Fi and that on 3G connections there is a noticable delay between tracks as the songs have to download before being played. Downloaded music can remain on your phone as long as you maintain the subscription and you can only play the music with the MOG app.

MOG provides several ways for you to discover new music. New Releases appear as a menu option and it has a pretty extensive list of albums. MOG Charts is a little more limited in selection, though I assume it is a list of the top artists that is being played with MOG. Today’s Picks is another list of albums from different artists that is updated daily.

According to Engadget, MOG does not play in the background on the iPhone 4, though I had no problems playing music with MOG while running other apps on my Nexus One. To date, of the streaming music services that I have seen for mobile phones, MOG has the largest catalog, which justifies the higher monthly cost than Slacker Radio, which costs $5 per month. Slacker and Pandora both have ad supported free options that MOG does not provide.

I personally think that the combination streaming & download services like MOG are perfect for mobile phones because most phones have a limited amount of storage that prohibit downloading a large music collection. If you are interested in trying out MOG you will find it in the iPhone App store and the Android Market.

Stitcher, a free audio news application for the iPhone, has forged new partnerships with a slew of media outlets to substantially add to its offering.

Now, Stitcher subscribers can access content from Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, Fox News Radio, Air America Media, Politico, IGN.com, TechCrunch, Quick and Dirty Tips and AOL Weblogs including Engadget, Switched, The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Joystiq, along with their current favorites Stitcher content.

Subscribers can “stitch” their favorite programs into custom, on-demand channels. Stitcher content gets updated automatically without users needing to connect to a computer or take the time to synch it up.

Although it’s currently only available for the iPhone, Stitcher plans to launch a version for the BlackBerry Curve 8310, Bold and Storm.

Photo courtesy of Pandora

The Pandora music web service lets you create individual stations based on music by artists you like. Its music correlation engine tries to play music by songs, artists or composers you might like based on one you tell it you actually like. It then lets you vote whether or not its guess was good or bad to refine your channel. This activity was, however, a desk-bound one until Pandora released apps to let you discover music you like while on the move. However, this was only available to iPhone and Windows Mobile smartphone users until now. If you have a BlackBerry, you can now join the custom radio station crowd by downloading the free…

Pandora for BlackBerry

You can download it by pointing your BlackBerry’s browser to..

www.pandora.com

CNET News is reporting that the Senate has passed the Webcaster Settlement Act, the legislation that lays the groundwork for Web radio stations to negotiate reduced royalty rates for the songs they stream over the Internet.

The bill had already passed the House on Saturday; now President Bush is expected to sign it. “I’m relieved, optimistic, and grateful to our listeners,” said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, the Web radio station that’s been at the center of the fight since it began.

The report said that webcasters have long complained that the royalty rate to stream music is too high for Web radio stations to generate any profit. “Representatives from Internet radio and the music industry have been in negotiations for more than a year. Recently, the two sides have gotten closer to an agreement and both say they are confident a deal is within reach.”

Since the parties are seeking a statutory license, which lets them play songs without having to seek permission each time, Congress had to get involved. Here’s hoping Pandora and other Web radio sites stay alive and deliver mobile music to the masses for years to come.

Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin told analysts Tuesday that regular radio “sucks” as an investment while the company he heads deserves more respect because of its growth prospects, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“The reason that radio sucks today, and the reason that most of you don’t want to invest in it, is principally because the growth stopped,” he said at a Merrill Lynch conference. He pointed out that Clear Channel Communications is the “only radio company in the country generating more revenue than Sirius XM,” and hastened to add that they’re not growing, unlike Sirius.

Sirius is available via some carriers such as Sprint through monthly-fee-based streaming radio channels on compatible cell phones. It’s also available in standalone devices like the Stiletto 2 (pictured) as well as the car/home receivers that the company first became known for. Sirius shares fell 10% yesterday to close at $1.14, a five-year low.

AOL is preparing the relaunch of its broad-reaching online radio directory SHOUTcast.com, MediaPost reports, as customers gravitate more and more toward Internet radio listening.

The report said that AOL plans to relaunch the network next week with improved search functionality, streamlined services, and new user feedback options, as well as increased advertiser revenue possibilities.

The new SHOUTcast will be “widely accessible and integrated with its sister product Winamp and its global directory of radio stations available on the web,” through a variety of media players including iTunes and Windows Media Player, mobile media browser-Kinoma Play, on set-top boxes, and mobile devices including Sony Mylo, Sony PSP and Chumby.

SHOUTcast.com has been around for almost a decade, and today hosts about 25,000 stations that serve approximately 500,000 to 600,000 listeners each day.

The News Market reports that Logitech unveiled the Squeezebox Boom all-in-one network music player, featuring an integrated amplifier, high-performance speaker drivers, and a simplified setup process.

This unit lets music fans listen to their digital libraries, Internet radio, or Sirius satellite radio in any room in the house without having to set up a media extender, music streaming router, or other complicated system. “Just plug the new Logitech network music player into a power outlet—there are no additional wires to connect. Then, using your existing home network, you can listen to the music you love from the personal collection on your computer,” the company said in a statement.

Gadgets like these have great potential to pull today’s digital music sources away from the PC and the home office and into the rest of the house, though doubts about Internet radio royalty payments loom over the industry. Still, gotta love the Duran Duran reference.