Apple is reportedly readying a big push for HD Radio boomboxes equipped with iTunes Tagging technology at the upcoming MacWorld show.
Introduced back in September, the iTunes Tagging technology allows terrestrial radio stations broadcasting in HD Radio to encode song data in each track. Listeners are then able to "tag" the songs for later purchase on iTunes. CBS Radio, Clear Channel, Cumulus, Cox, Entercom and Greater Media all are in the process of adding iTunes Tagging.
According to iBiquity, "Apple plans to offer participating stations a revenue share for songs referred to and purchased on iTunes,” adding extra incentive for HD Radio broadcasters to adopt iTunes Tagging.
But the question remains: who does this help out more? HD Radio, or Apple?
Sure, a rev-share would be nice, but there's a lot of steps involved before that revenue becomes realized. And the benefit comes from having your own technology embedded into a myriad of devices, not from having your competition embedded into your own proprietary devices.
[iLounge]
This is great for HD radio, but given the limited number of HD stations it won't be a major factor for a long time to come. It would have been far better for Apple to tie into satrad given the wider breath of gendres available at any given time. For instance, if you are into oldies and your local HD station is hard rock it won't benefit you one bit. Satrad is not one station, but perhaps hundreds of unique stations.
HD is not going to do it for Apple expect Sirius next as soon as the merger is done.
Apple needs to have it work all everywhere
@Paul
I would be willing to bet you that there are HD radio stations near every single Apple store. 188 markets if you want to take the HD hype machine as an accurate source. That's really good enough for them.
Don't look for a deal with Sirius, XM or XsiriusM IMHO unless Apple is also willing to allow both the Stiletto and Inno to have plugins and be controlled through iTunes. XM has the deal with Napster for buying music and managing the device and Sirius has a music deal with Yahoo.
Besides that, Sirius and XM are counter to what Apple is doing. You give satellite $12.95 a month that is 13 fewer songs that you will buy and put on your iPod. Also, you can hit record on your Inno and Stiletto and bypass the need to tag it and thus bypass the iTunes Music Store. HD radio is free after the radio is bought and is more in line with what Apple is trying to do, which is to get content on the iPod and further cement it in the lives of iPod owners.
Apple can be THE reason why HD radio survives. 100,000,000+ iPods in the wild.
Seriously, I rather Xm / Sirius don't join up with Apple. Personally, I can't stand how Ipod/ Apple only allow ACC formated songs and not MP3 's. I would much rather see satradio tuners on the Zune.
@mitchman
I have a 30GB iPod that has about 20GB of podcasts on it. Every single one of them is MP3 format. Apple doesn't do WMA files, but you can import them in to iTunes and itwill convert them to whatever format you have selected. MP3's on the iPod work just fine.
You hate the iPod/Apple/iTunes machine but THAT isn't the reason why.
"Seriously, I rather Xm / Sirius don't join up with Apple. Personally, I can't stand how Ipod/ Apple only allow ACC formated songs and not MP3 's. I would much rather see satradio tuners on the Zune."
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what are you talking about? My ipod is full of .mp3's
Personally this could be the clincher as to whether I buy an HD radio or keep my XM radio. It saves me from having to look a song up if I like what I hear, when I can just hit the 'tag' button and have it downloaded later. If this technology is introduced at Macworld, I would expect this to be the 'killer app' for HD and Apple. And being that the content on XM isn't much different than what's being offered on HD nowadays, it's a plus if HD and my iPod operate well together, and HD is free.
@JonE
Sure, the HD stations near you may have some music that closely matches up with a few channels on XM, but you won't get anywhere near the variety of content on HD and sooner rather than later HD radio will be airing commercials. Some people are already reporting that they are hearing commercial blocks on HD.
I just might add one of these to my collection so that I can listen to WOXY.com OTA, but I for one will be keeping both Sirius and XM.
Strube - you fucking maggot, no one is going to buy these shitty HD Radio products!