HD Radio: iTunes 'Tagging' Feature Announced

Would have been nice to get in the Touch, but I'm not complaining

HD radio is such a silly idea and name! They should have teamed with Sirius/XM.

edit for silly spelling error.

Cool for those that have HD radio.

Rev b

elcid said:

Would have been nice to get in the Touch, but I'm not complaining

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Just might make it into next revision, depending on perceived demand....

Craiger said:

HD radio is such a silly idea and name! They should have teemed with sirius/XM.

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I wish they had done that too. As a Sirius subscriber, I'd use that feature, but HD radio doesn't hold any interest to me.

When I get HD radio in my car, I could possibly using this. So, how in the heck do you link your car to your iTunes account to enable this, I wonder? Is the selection sent back to the HD radio station and then to your account at ? Fascinating.

And you just KNOW that the HD radio station will make a profit for the referral just like web radio stations. This enables the HD stations to better compete with their net counterparts.

What on earth is HD Radio? High Definition? Don't they mean higher bitrate? Is it going to compete against DAB? Why so many questions?

Apple recently is starting to feel less like a company that makes cool stuff I want to buy and more like a company who constantly tries to sell me stuff I don't want(Starbucks songs, the dreaded DMCA ringtones...)

It reminds me of my last two cellphones, where the "main" button immediately directed me to some Cingular website with "great offers". Annoying. I liked the cellphone almost immediately due to the lack of in-your-face buy-me-nows.

Craiger said:

HD radio is such a silly idea and name! They should have teemed with sirius/XM.

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What's silly is paying for the Sirius/XM crap. Maybe if you could choose what stations you wanted and only pay for those then satelite radio would work but as long as it's all or nothing there is no way I would ever get it.

Jerry Spoon said:

I wish they had done that too. As a Sirius subscriber, I'd use that feature, but HD radio doesn't hold any interest to me.

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Sirius subscriber here too and unfortunately I can't stand the awful quality. Whatever audio compression they use totally sucks. HD radio I haven't heard but I might check it out if it's better than the barely better than AM radio Sirius quality.

Wasn't there a product like this that Belkin or Griffin or someone made that worked with regular AM/FM radio and would report what the artist/song that you're listening to was so you could buy it later?

Or did I just dream that?

I have said it for and I will say it again. I want an FM tuner in my iPod and I don't care what form it comes in. The reason why is because that is how I find songs I want to buy to download. How else are you going to find the new music? Now, it would be so much better if you can tag a song you are listening to so you can download that song later. How fricken cool would that be? On top of that, I can listen to morning talk shows.

This sounds really cool.

Years and years ago, there was a company that you'd sign up for, and they'd send you this little device (it wasn't SOny, Sony ripped off this company!). Oh yeah, they called it eTag, I think. It was essentially a timestamp recorder, you'd just hit the button whenever you heard a song you thought was interesting, and when you plugged it into your computer it'd ask you which radio station you were listening to (or if you only had 1 in your list, it wouldn't), and bam there's what you were listening to.

Very simple feature. The problem was that it cost the radio stations money to provide the service (the tag devices were free), and they dumped it after about a year.

Too bad, I loved that.

powderblue17 said:

What's silly is paying for the Sirius/XM crap. Maybe if you could choose what stations you wanted and only pay for those then satelite radio would work but as long as it's all or nothing there is no way I would ever get it.

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As long as the Sirius/XM merger goes though, this is exactly what you will be able to do.

http://www.siriusmerger.com/site/page/a_la_carte/

HD radio is not "high definition," it's just a way radio stations can include more than one channel in their broadcasts. For example, the HD version of one of my local public radio stations is all bluegrass, all day. In general, I've heard very mixed reviews of actual HD content.

As far as I know, it is just digital radio which means you get tons more bandwidth which enables them to fit more channels in the same spectrum (depending on their compression). The same concept as digital TV.

Feel free to correct I am not an expert...

Craiger said:

HD radio is such a silly idea and name! They should have teemed with sirius/XM.

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Absolutely...HD Radio is too little, too late. They were forced to go digital in the face of sat radio. I love how their commercials call HD Radio "the revolution". Sorry guys, you missed the revolution, that was sat radio.

Anyhow, this announcement should benefit the dozens of people who actually have HD Radios.

Craiger said:

HD radio is such a silly idea and name! They should have teemed with sirius/XM.

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Agreed. Satellite (preferably Sirius) is the way to go.

What's a radio?

Seriously though, it would make sense if it beamed the info to your ipod for later download - or immediate download with the wi-fi store. Otherwise, just a waste.

powderblue17 said:

What's silly is paying for the Sirius/XM crap. Maybe if you could choose what stations you wanted and only pay for those then satelite radio would work but as long as it's all or nothing there is no way I would ever get it.

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I agree a la carte pricing would be awesome, but if you don't have sat radio you don't know what you're missing. It's changed how I listen to music, and what I listen to. Totally worth the monthly fee.

powderblue17 said:

What's silly is paying for the Sirius/XM crap. Maybe if you could choose what stations you wanted and only pay for those then satelite radio would work but as long as it's all or nothing there is no way I would ever get it.

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You obviously don't live out in the sticks. FM sucks here... you get X-tian, country, classic rock (pretty much the same 100 songs over and over), crappy hip-hop, and angry talk radio. Oh, and some sports.

If you want to hear anything contemporary, good jazz, blues, etc, satellite radio is the only way to go.

I have a big iTunes collection (6000 + songs), but I love to hear new stuff. XM has great channels that allow me to hear new music, plus I don't have to be constantly fiddling with my iPod / playlists / etc.

We have XM in both cars (30 minute commute each way), and I could never do without it.

Wow!

That is neat-o.

Actually I think this is a great thing that can lead to even more integration with radio...I just wish it were included in iPods!

-=|Mgkwho