Portable Internet Radio to take on XM?

TheDude writes "A friend who works for a design company attended the Australian EDN awards last night and was impressed with one of the winners, in the wireless category, which was won by Grey Innovation for their Infusion device . It's a Linux based portable internet radio that streams Internet Radio over WiFi. Is this the future of Radio? Given the big push by XM and Sirus , the potential of Podcasting and now the "inFusion", in which direction is mass-audio-broadcast heading? And why isn't anyone really pushing Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB), like they have in the UK ?"

Not gonna happen

[Anonymous User 2000]

Wifi Radio wont catch on until it's truly portable, i.e. you can listen to it in your car like satellite radio, and that wont happen until WiFi is everywhere and that wont happen until cities start funding WiFi municipally and that wont happen. At least not if Verizon, et al. have their way.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

well, here's how "alternative" radio works

[swschrad]

I used to trade cassettes by mail with a friend for years. did my own collections on cassette for the car -- in fact, with access to broadcast studios and music libraries, in high school I was doing that for the bus trips on debate. currently, I have CDs in the car and my iPod for exercise and work.

now, that's the original alternative radio format, and you control it yourself, all of it, every bit. with shuffle and random play options on most everything except linear tape products, it's truly random (most-played on the 'pod is about the same as top rock radio.)

radio when it works has always been a locally-focussed medium... the jukebox aspect is the filler for the local chatter, news, information, sports, and the like. radio when it doesn't comes off the big bird and you get two drop-in spots at the half hour and can donut the top of the hour.

the point is, none of those guys do what you are used to. it once upon a time was a sure thing to expose you to new venues, music types, and new songs and artists, when you could have beach boys bumped up against patsy cline and followed with the frank chacksfield orchestra and nilsson.

three new songs a week on any top-chart station is all the new you get, and it's all of a sameness.

radio has to get back to local to save itself, and I mean without all the invective of screech radio. until then, I format it myself, which I have done since before I strained the ether with my college radio hour.

Re:Not gonna happen

[Goldfinger7400]

WiFi radio won't catch on until internet radio stops sucking. It's nice to have a big selection of music, but having the stream pause inexplicably every now and then due to connection hiccups, or having the average quality be pretty average isn't going to win people over from hi quality, readily available and professional satellite stations.

May You Live in Interesting Times indeed

[imperious_rex]

Given yesterday's Slashdot item about radio [slashdot.org], the next few years will be an interesting time indeed for the world of radio. Under dual assault from satellite and online, terrestial radio is truly going to take a beating, and it will take more than upgrading to HD radio and offering localalized programming and news bites to staunch the bleeding. If terrestrial radio is to survive, it will have to exercise significantly greater imagination and (pardon the word) innovation than what most radio execs have exhibited so far...

Short answer: YES...

[msimm]

I've been keenly interested in music all my life, I've played in bands, collected music, got to know the musicians and now (for the second time) am getting ready to launch a internet radio station myself.

I follow the music and technology closely (systems administrator by trade) and have followed both XM and Sirius with a good deal of interest. But there's the catch: the reason I've followed them with such great interest is because the right alternative hasn't been available. And thats (aside from the desktop) internet radio.

Why is internet radio the right format? Because its a totally open system. Look at programs like Off The Hook for example. Thats the kind of programming that couldn't exist in a closed system, but on the internet the field is wide open.

Why on earth we'd want anything less then that is beyond me. We've already had our closed system, its called the public airwaves. Everyone knows Clear Channel perfected it, but they aren't to blame the system was flawed from the start. Anyone can have a website and thats all it takes to run a broadcast.

I don't know anything about this product, but I do know I'm a firm believer that internet radio is the answer to a question a lot of us have been asking ourselves for as long as we've been listening to music.

Props to XM and Sirius for broadening the horizon, but I can't see their (still limited) approach as much more then a stop-gap measure until WIFI broadband becomes ubiquitous enough that people can tune into their favorite radio station or flip on something they've never even heard before.

If I sound a little giddy its because my favorite syles of music aren't available at your local Virgin Mega Store, in fact since the arts and music explosion on the internet I can't even find most of my favorite bands down at the local alternative record store and I live in a major metropolitan city.

Even with all the existing media outlets combined they don't even begin to scratch the surface of whats available. And theres a lot of good stuff out there.

Sorry for going overboard. I feel passionate about it. This is a very exciting time in general and as a art and music lover doubly so. The beauty of the internet is that it's so totally open and I've been doing this for a long time now and I still find myself saying "wow".

Don't ever put this genie back in the bottle.

Re:XM is quite horrendous

[jejones]

You're really lucky if you manage to catch a top 40 song (in the hard rock genre) on any of their stations

You're persuading me to give XM serious thought. Avoiding Top 40 isn't a bug, it's a feature.

For example...the problem with "oldies" stations is that they're not oldies stations; they're oldies Top 40 stations. The only thing that keeps them from being as wretched as modern Top N stations is that they select their material from a time when radio was less specialized, so that they achieve some variety despite themselves. Even so, you'll never hear Quicksilver Messenger Service, or Pearls Before Swine on most oldies stations. Heck, you won't even hear the Nazz's "Hello, It's Me" as opposed to Todd Rundgren's solo version.

When In Roam

[Doc Ruby]

Until radio Internet access forms an uninterrupted coverage area, Internet radio will be relocatable, not truly "mobile". Like the difference between a "luggable" KayPro PC and a Palm Pilot, only convenient mobility will be palatable to the masses (not just geeks, early adopters, and scattered specialists). That limitation means not only that cost will remain prohibitive until industrial scales are marketable, but that the network won't really be populated enough to really be social - except as an echo chamber of the same hackers and antisocial worker drones we've already got on Slashdot ;). That might have been better for Usenet, before AOL piped into the Internet, but the path to riches and humanization runs right through the washed masses.

WiFi (and its descendants) will be just the place to settle down, or breathe free. But hotspots will be spotty for some time, as our society's P2P buildout continues inexorably, but unplanned. The way this environment will reach a basic mobility platform includes interspot coverage by barely-adequate 3G "phone" networks, with roaming among them and hotspots, interchangeably. Motorola has announced a WLAN/GSM roamer due by Q32005. BT promises a WiFi/GSM "phone" [vnunet.com] by Q42005, and is launching a Bluetooth/GSM project. These vendors are trying to both extend cell/PCS service to enterprise WLANs (SCCAN [sccan.org]), and roam VoWLAN connections to cell/PCS networks (UMA [umatechnology.org]). And the IEEE already has a new "WiFi" descendant, WMM [nwfusion.com], that promises better roaming and QoS over the WLANs, for seamless telephony interop.

The upshot for devices like this cute little inFusion Internet radio is popularity well beyond shoppers at ThinkGeek. Which bigger global market means cheaper devices, easier to use, and more jobs for geeks. But it also means a bigger audience for content, within which niche producers can find supporting consumer scale for even the least popular content. So the leveled multimedia playing field can support people who tie other people together across the globe. Let's get it on!

Sure...

[msimm]

Because the airwaves can only accommodate a finite number of broadcasts, even if we bother to increase this (satellite radio anyone?) we are still limited and in the case of XM or Sirius who do I talk to if I want my broadcast to be available? How well will that scale as more people take interest in broadcasting?

Right now Shoutcast.com alone is listing 8,751 stations. Thats just *one* portal.

I define 'closed' as being limited by available resources. You provide college radio as an alternative, but thats just one alternative station per regional market: shoutcast lists 1000's. Do you see the difference?