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Cingular to Offer Radio Service 76

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the try-try-again dept.
Mika24 writes "Red Herring is reporting that Cingular Wireless will launch a new over-the-air-radio service in conjunction with the TV service they will offer with MobiTV." The music programming will be done by Music Choice and will include rock, urban, country, reggae, jazz, electronica, and classical. From the article: "MobiRadio uses the improving screen capabilities on cell phones to offer album art and information about songs and artists during playback. Cingular said it will expand that capability to let subscribers purchase related ringtones and other content while the music is playing--a set of features made popular by satellite radio providers."
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Cingular to Offer Radio Service More

Cingular to Offer Radio Service

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  • What does Apple think about this? I wonder if future ROKR phones will be raped of the streaming music function...

  • I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThatGeek ( 874983 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @03:43AM (#14041960) Homepage
    I don't get it. At all.

    What's the point of this service? All those guys and gals with ipods won't care; they already have a better tool for playing the music that they like. Few others will have earbuds for their phones, so they'll either have to put the music on speaker phone (often not available on cells) and annoy everyone around them, or hold their phones up to their ear for hours at a time while they listen to the music.

    I can't wait until people start using up their airtime minutes listening to messages like "this music brought to you by [advertiser's name here]".

    Rather than trying to bundle music with phones, why can't they bundle wireless more cheaply? Even just improving connectivity with email would be pretty huge in my mind.
    • This is a plan that looks great on paper, and sounds lousy in reality.

      Cell service providers are all about upping minutes usage, which translates to maximising usage of their infrastructure, which CFO's love. It improves some ratio like hardware amortization cost to utilization.

      Somebody at Cingular put all this together and said "aha! I'm buying a boat next year!" Don't make that downpayment until the results come back, buddy...
    • I agree with you, whats the point, but you forget about the "iPod Phones" that are showing up on Cingular services.

      I was wondering what was going to happen to MusicChoice, since DirecTV just dropped them in favor of XM Music channels as of yesterday.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • IF they keep the price down and IF its "FM Quality", I would use it. Why? I sit at a desk all day programming and I work better with some music in the background. My company frowns on listening to internet radio, as it unneccisarily eats up bandwidth. I'll bring CD's in to listen to but a radio station would be better. I've considered getting Siruis or XM radio just to listen to while at work. If Cingular can give me a simular functionality for a price that is acceptable( $10/month) and since I am alrea
    • Its all about the ringtones, dude! For whatever reason, people are willing to shell out big bucks for a ringtone. Somehow they think it turns their mass marketed ubiquitous cell phone into something that 'shows their individuality'. Its a real shame that there is so much more that could be accomplished with technology today, but things like preserving the business model of ringtone sales is hampering it.
    • I can see this being very useful to have around with you in the car, competing with satellite radio, and potentially offering more channels. Many car kits already include external speakers.

      Sound quality over a cellphone may be rough, but this is made up for by the ability to have the music follow you as you get out of your car :)

      Since Cingular themselves are offering this service, it would be absurd of them to charge for minutes/KB that it uses (I wouldn't put it past them, though). Cingular could offer a

  • Who really wants this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheoGB ( 786170 ) <theo@nOsPam.graham-brown.org.uk> on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @03:44AM (#14041966) Homepage
    My mobile battery is fine now and can deal with day to day stuff but I can't really see it coping much with TV in my hand.

    And on top of that, I'm at a loss to think how often I'd really want to squint at a screen that size. While it's true that I normally have my mobile with me, something like the PSP or similar isn't much larger and seems far more practical.

    That's before I even think about what the cost must be to receive these broadcasts.

  • Lame. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @03:45AM (#14041969)
    This might have been interesting 20 years ago. I don't want to watch crappy choppy videos on my cellphone screen. *Maybe* on my Treo 650, but probably not there either. And I certainly don't want pre-programmed "music choice" crap from some lame network running over Cingular.

    Hell, I don't really even need my Treo. It was just a good deal, so I went for it even though I don't use 95% of the features.

    Let's quit with the iPod+Cell thing already, eh?
  • The reason I have an iPod is so that I can listen to the music I want , when I want. If I wanted to listen to generic ClearChannel music, I can listen to XM. I have been listenint to my own playlists and I don't think I would listen to radio again, even if it is on a cell phone.
    • OK, please explain how I tune my ipod into Radio 5 so I can listen to the news and football?
      • Simple: you don't. For news, you wait until you get home, then you go to cnn.com, msnbc.com, bbc.com, or whatever news site you prefer. Then you can read just the news that interests you, and not what the radio company deems important, and you don't have to listen to any ads. For football, well, football sucks (as do all spectator sports), so that's not even an issue.

        I don't have an iPod, but if I did I certainly wouldn't miss FM radio. I guess I'm not alone, considering how incredibly popular the iPod
  • ... the iPod does the exact opposite. Plenty of mp3 players have radios, but not iPod -- I'm guessing because people would be less inclined to use iTunes if they were getting their music fix from regular radio. One nice thing about buying from the guys who aren't on top of a market is the buyer is more desparetely accomodated even at the expensive of money making operations like iTunes.
    • I'm no fan of iPods but at a guess the reason they don't include a radio is to keep the design (inside and out) simple, and to make sure the unit is small. I don't think Apple really go in for conspiracies like that.

      My iRiver's radio is good and I'm glad I have it but it's only FM. I would love if they could have included an AM but I'm guessing it's either too much power required or the FM radio's just been flung in because they can.
      • There is no AM radio because the antenna for an AM radio has to be quite big for good reception. As in, bigger than the iRiver.
        • Ah right, cheers. Shame they don't have some sort of fold up version you could plug in so that if you're taking a trip somewhere it would be an option if the iRiver was your main entertainment system.
    • I've heard people claim that Apple doesn't add the FM tuners to the iPod because, in general, the receivers aren't great quality and they don't want the complaints about less than ideal radio reception. It's the only explaination I can see as to why they won't add a 15cent chip to a $400 player....
      • ...then potentially you aren't listening to a 99 cent iTunes song. I think that is the primary reason. And yes I am aware you can have tracks have other than iTunes on the iPod, but the theory is still probably valid from an Apple marketing decision viewpoint.
        • It could also be because not many people really care about FM radio once they're able to load thousands of their favorite songs on a handheld player. There's plenty of competing players with FM radios, but they're nowhere near as popular as the iPod, so I don't think I'm alone in this opinion. (For the record, I don't have an iPod, but if I did I certainly wouldn't care about the lack of FM radio.)

  • over-the-air-radio service (Score:5, Funny)

    by Patrik_AKA_RedX ( 624423 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @03:53AM (#14041992) Journal
    Wireless radio? Who had ever tought that would be possible. Now we'll be able to listen to radio in our cars! Soon these might even be small enough to be carried around. I expect that to happen in the near future, sometime around 1950 or so.
    • Yep, it's all about progress...

      Here's something I'm trying to interest the Japanese electronics firms in this. This would be a great product for Sony. This is a combination cassette player and colostimy bag. It's called "Shitman"! Huh? Sure. Well you'd never see that. You'd never see that.

      -George Carlin
  • Question: Battery drain mostly occurs from the phone sending a signal to the tower, not from receiving. I don't think this would kill batteries like people think, right? Answers: 1. this would be great for listening to talk radio if podcasting weren't an option--which it isn't for many. 2. The first generation may not be perfect, but the 1st ipod was "lame" too. Many people don't have earbuds now, but they will if they like the idea of listening to the radio. 3. Sadly, not everyone has music tastes as cool
    • I have Pocket Tunes Deluxe on my Treo 650 so i can listen to streaming internet radio.
      It goes through the full charge in about 3 hours.

      the battery will last me 2 days with normal daily no web browsing and only checking email every 15min

      so yah, it will eat up the battery.
    • Playback will use a lot of battery, the high quality codecs like aacPlus use a lot of CPU power to decode.
      MP3 and AAC-LC (i.e. normal AAC) are a lot easier to decode and hence use less horsepower. AAC-HE (aka aacPlus) is effectively synthesizing the high end of the spectrum and that takes a lot of horsepower.
  • This sounds a lot like satellite radio, except people will already have the receivers. A big downside with the satellite radios is that you have to buy the receiver. They are now sold at a loss, but you still need to "commit" to a receiver, and, because the receivers are not interchangeable, to a service.

    I think that, plus the novel nature of satellite radio, explains why the satellite guys struggle.

    I would prefer a service like this to an iPod: if you get satellite radio (or perhaps this new service), you

    • Re:Like Satellite Radio (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Personally, the reason I don't use Satellite Radio is I'm already being nickel and dimed to death with monthly ISP bills, cable bills, phone bills, etc... I just draw the line at paying a monthly fee for radio when I can turn on my car radio and receive local stations for free. Although my favorite local station just changed their format and I find there's less quality locally now, it's still not enough to make me want to add yet another monthly luxury fee to my budget when there's a free alternative availa

      • Re:Like Satellite Radio (Score:4, Interesting)

        by putko ( 753330 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @05:09AM (#14042186) Homepage Journal
        I thought satellite radio and its fees were egregious too. So I got my partner one. She really loves it; after a few days of that, she entirely stopped listening to normal radio.

        The key thing is, no commercials, and perfect audio quality (except when there are dropouts). That and more than a hundred channels (although most listen to only 5 or so).

        It makes it an entirely different thing from radio. If you are used to having the satellite version in the car, and for whatever reason you forget it, and use normal radio, you feel like a total idiot, and the normal radio, with its ads and bad reception, drives you nuts.

        So if you like radio, it is probably worth it. If you don't really like radio, just wait until the costs come down more.

        • just wait until the costs come down more

          Yeah, right. Basic XM service is $12.95 per month. Once they've got you hooked, they'll raise the rates and add fees and surcharges, just like cable TV.
          • Yeah, right. Basic XM service is $12.95 per month. Once they've got you hooked, they'll raise the rates and add fees and surcharges, just like cable TV.

            Anything's possible, I guess, but so far, XM has added channels, dropped the fee for at least one of the premium channels and dropped the fee for Internet XM Radio without raising the price or adding surcharges, so I guess in that respect, they're doing the opposite of what you predict.

            They did, however, raise the price from $9.95 a month to $12.95 a month a
    • once you can listen to cellular-radio music in your car.


      you can do that today. for free.

      http://www.orb.com/ [orb.com] and go to the Custom Channels thing in Setup -> Audio to add any of your Net Radio faves (say, hypothetically, the stuff at http://www.somafm.org/ [somafm.org])

    • Also, with satellite radio, you get things like mixtapes, mashups and other stuff that hasn't been "published"

      The future of broadcasting isn't likely to be in pre-recorded music. Ubiquitous wireless internet and so forth guarantee that that will be a dead-end (although satellite may hold on, owing to a monopoly by the technology on seamless coast-to-coast transmission... I doubt we'll be seeing the ability to drive from say New York to Denver and get a 3G signal 90% of the time anytime soon).

      The salv

    • ``Also, with satellite radio, you get things like mixtapes, mashups and other stuff that hasn't been "published" -- no RIAA involved, just BMI, ASCAP, etc. With iPod, you snuggle up close to the RIAA posse.``

      Practically speaking, I don't have to have RIAA permission to put stuff on my iPod.

      But Sat Radio has to pay a lot or royalties and follow the rules [slashdot.org] set by the RIAA.

      Those mix tapes and mashups? You don't think they include copyrighted sound recordings?!
  • Cingular, thanks for telling me what to listen to, now I don't have to make decisions on my own!
  • So... uh, what's the big deal? It's a radio... a proprietary radio at that... why not just tune in to Alice, KISS, or whatever else you've got in your area. How is this even remotely useful unless I get to choose what songs I want to hear when?

  • Yet Another Pay-Twice Solution (Score:4, Interesting)

    by montale127 ( 307830 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @04:36AM (#14042098)
    i already get all the tunes i want for free on my cingular phone - and i mean ALL: everything i have at home already, everything i listen to on internet radio (mostly the kickass stuff over at http://www.somafm.org/ [somafm.org]), everything in the Virgin Digital library of, what, 2M songs.

    oh, right, and all my podcasts

    for free

    why do these guys think i'm going to be willing to pay AGAIN for music just because the device is different? once you've put the Web on a device (and, ok, a streaming player that's got access to any URL), i'm done

    what i'm wondering is: do you think that local storage will be like 80% or 50% of the way you get your stuff to your phone in a year's time?

    the orb freeware http://www.orb.com/ [orb.com] STREAMS my stuff to me, local or online somewhere - transcoding it on the fly to adapt to my at-the-moment bitrate and default media player. for Net radio while driving, that's killer. but what about stuff that's at home? i haven't got a huge-ass memory disk for my phone yet...

  • FPS (Score:1, Funny)

    by Ecko7889 ( 882690 )
    At 8 fps I can almost make out Janet Jackson's tit.

  • Music Choice? (Score:2, Informative)

    by realinvalidname ( 529939 )

    Isn't Music Choice [musicchoice.com] the service that got dumped by DirecTV (just this week) in favor of XM?

    • That's exactly what I thought. Sounds like a content provider desperate for new clients to fill the hole left by DTV.

      • As long as Music Choice has their near-monopoly among the digital cable providers, they'll do OK.

        Of course, nothing precludes (XM|Sirius) from displacing Music Choice there as well (except I have a niggling suspicion that Comcast owns a major piece of Music Choice, though nothing on either's site that I've seen indicates this). The sat providers can justify paying carriage fees to cable/sat TV providers as a marketing expense; the hope would be to get somebody hooked on Sirius 19//Buzzsaw [sirius.com] and decide to g

        • Music Choice is a partership of MS, cable and record companies.

          From a Music Choice press release [musicchoice.com]:

          Music Choice is a partnership among subsidiaries of Microsoft Corporation, Motorola, Inc., Sony Corporation of America, EMI Music and several leading U.S. cable providers: Adelphia Cable Communications, Comcast Cable Communications, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable.

        • ...I have a niggling suspicion that Comcast owns a major piece of Music Choice...

          Suspicion validated! From a Music Choice press release [musicchoice.com]:

          Headquartered in Horsham, PA, Music Choice is a partnership among subsidiaries of Microsoft Corporation, Motorola, Inc., Sony Corporation of America, EMI Music and several leading U.S. cable providers: Adelphia Cable Communications, Comcast Cable Communications, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable.

          Egads, the seven horsemen of the apocalypse plus the antichrist?

          -h-
  • FM radio reception is built in to most phones available for sale here now (England). It uses (gasp) the radio waves that are already going through me and my phone already, and works well for me as I wear a hands-free stereo earphone set a lot of the time anyway. It seems to have a very small effect on my battery life, too. I can even choose commerical or non-commercial stations.

    This new service sounds awful - a handful of genres, using the cellular network to send the music meaning battery life is going t

  • In some places, Cingular is at capacity on their towers already. The core function of their network - placing phone calls - is sometimes impossible owing to the circuit congestion at peak times. Why add another useless service?

    If they're going to HSDPA - completely - then the issue is less importand, but that change years off. Thankfully, nobody will use this service, so the effect isn't all that great. But I wish they'd concentrate on the core functions of the network before adding stupid features.
  • I was THIS close to spending $3 on a portable AM/FM radio I can carry around in my pocket, but thanks to Cingular's new phone+radio combo plan, now I can spend 50 times the money to listen to the same thing AND pay extra per month for it too!

    Wow! I never knew radio could be so much fun! /sarscasm

    This reminds me of the old joke about a consultant charging you to use your own watch to tell you want time it is. Except Cingular is taking broadcast radio you can get for free and charging you for it.

    TV on phone
  • The IPod + satellite radio = Cellular radio

    Ok so I like the idea of a portable player that can plug into my car stereo or my home stereo. It plays all the songs I like. Great so I get an Ipod. But I don't have the time to listen to new music (through some other means other than my IPod), write down the artist name, go online and download the song to my ipod. I just don't have the time and therefore my IPod's playlist is not that great. So I looked into satellite radio, but found out that it will not work
    • I am currently an XM subscriber, but I'm about to ditch them after 1 year of service (got the thing for Christmas last year).

      I agree, this sounds basically like the cellular companies are turning your cell phone into a "satellite" radio. This should compete directly against them - IF they can broadcast with equal coverage like satellite does. If cellular radio can actually stream specific content to specific customers that could bury satellite radio.

      The reason I'm ditching XM though, is first of all, beca

  • The technology to do this has been commercialized for at least 4 years.

    XSVoice [xsvoice.com] has been streaming audio from the NET to cell phones since late 2000.

    The audio quality is not great (read as 5 cent phone speaker), but with an earbud it is quite tolerable.

    Also, the selection of streams is quite a bit more diverse.

    Disclaimer - I am not an employee, just knowledgeable about the technology.

  • You just wait. Radio will change EVERYTHING! If you thought the record companies had it bad now with the pirates, wait untill we can hear our songs free over the air! It'll be pandemonium!
  • from Cingular. I have had several mobile providers and I am having more problems getting a signal with Cingular than with any other provider. I wish they'd improve the network before they add useless extra features.

    Go phone, good reception, prompt voicemail, caller ID. No convergence with other devices. Simplicity made the iPod popular. I want a phone with the same philiosphy.
    • No kidding... I'm stuck with Cingular in LA and it's a disaster. Chances of completing a whole local call without being cut off or garbled into oblivion... maybe 30%. THESE people want to eat more of their already insufficient bandwidth to broadcast commercial crap to my phone... and they want me to pay extra for it? Maybe they're taking a lesson from Microsoft - 1. Add lots of features no one wants 2. Hope customers don't notice that they don't work 3. Profit!
  • Sprint has had seventeen Sirius music channels broadcasting to vision-capable phones for months now. So where's the post about Sprint's already-here music?

    Guess it got lost behind ROKR posts.

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