«
"Internet radio, which can draw on vast troves of music from around the world and customize them to a listener's personal tastes, is growing. While ratings for traditional radio broadcasters have been lackluster, Internet radio listenership in the U.S. has risen to 29 million a week, up from 20 million three years ago, according to Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research. "Even so, the nascent industry has yet to capture the biggest prize — portability... Now, start-ups and giants are jockeying for position in mobile Internet radio, in a race that could rearrange the business model of music and broadcasting... "Last month,... Pandora Media Inc., one of the biggest players with seven million registered users, announced it is working with Sprint Nextel Corp. to make its service available on mobile phones. Pandora says it is also working on its own player as well. [previous RAIN coverage here.] "One of the field's newest aspirants, Slacker says its hand-held will be out by summer's end. Slacker is also pushing hard into automobiles. The company says it is close to introducing a car kit that will play Slacker-selected tunes in any vehicle. Chief Operating Officer Jim Cady says he is in early talks with unidentified auto makers about building Slacker technology into car dashboards... "...Internet radio 'will sweep into the car, and the traditional station is going to have to think about how they reprogram to compete,' says Jonathan Jacoby, an analyst at Banc of America Securities... ''We've had conversations with a huge number of car companies [and] car audio manufacturers that are all very eager to start making this more a part of the dashboard,' says [Pandora founder Tim] Westergren... "[Slacker's] planned car kit reflects a technical advantage. While most other Internet radio providers are reliant on WiFi, Slacker's portable devices will use both WiFi and satellite technology... "Slacker says the first hand-held devices, which will start at $149, will refresh automatically when they're in WiFi zones,... "Rather than paying statutory license fees, Slacker cut deals directly with record labels. Like satellite-radio broadcasters, Slacker will turn over an undisclosed percentage of revenue in royalties, rather than paying per song and per play."» fonte: McBRIDE, SArah, «Internet Radio Races To Break Free of the PC»,, WSJ, 18/06/07
http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/061807/index.shtml,
O comentário de Kurt Hanson: «It surprises me — I guess pleasantly — that this is such a big story that it warrants being the lead story in the Wall Street Journal today. The thing is Internet radio is already mobile! Any consumer with a Palm OS device or a Windows Mobile device can download a music player than can handle the streaming MP3 format. Once they do, they've got access to thousands of Internet radio stations. And a $5 adapter from RadioShack will feed the signal from your mobile device into your car stereo system. So, basically, mobile Internet radio is here already! From now on, it's just a matter of improving and fine-tuning the details. -- KH»
0 comentarios