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 The NAB (National Association of Broadcasters), in trying to reach a settlement with the music industry, has decided that cellphones are part of the problem. No kidding, the fact that smart phones like the iPhone and Android do not have FM tuners seems to be a part of the negotiations, even though the cellphone industry has nothing to do with music royalties. The argument is, more people will listen to, and more importantly, buy music if they have an FM tuner in their smartphone.
I don’t know about that.
My HTC Android phone does have an FM tuner, it also has a metal detector. I have found both the be novel applications. Even though I work in radio, I have used the FM tuner twice. Technically speaking, I find it to be adequate. In order to receive anything, a pair of headphones or earbuds has to be used, because the headphone wire acts as the antenna.
That being said, I cannot count the number of times I have used Pandora or other online audio applications. Several times a day at least. Why? Because the content it better.
If consumers want FM tuners in their cellphones, they will ask for them. Cellphone manufacture’s will gladly comply, and make them. The real problem is, most people don’t care about radio because most radio programming is boring and uninspired these days. Let me paraphrase that:
HELLO, BROADCASTERS! ARE YOU LISTENING? YOUR PROGRAMMING SUCKS!
Offer a better product and listeners will return. If there were a compelling reason to build FM tuners into cellphones, it would already be done. Forcing the cellphone manufactures to do something they don’t want to do will simply drive up prices.
The NAB has led the radio industry astray for years now, we really should stop listening to them.
 I was fooling around with my HTC Android phone yesterday and discovered something that has a definite use for radio remotes. An Application called Hertz will record .wav files, which can then be transfered via e-mail or ftp to the studio and played back on the air. The program is pretty slick, it allows sample rates from 8 to 44.1 khz.
I made a sample recording, the microphone in the HTC phone is okay, a better microphone would sound better. After it was done, I emailed it to myself and listened on the laptop. The email took about 4 minutes for a 20 seconds of a 32 kHz .wav file. One could cut that down by choosing a lower sample rate. I have found that 32 kHz it the minimal acceptable sample rate for analog FM. Anything lower than that sounds choppy.
In another potential use, a news reporter could use this to record audio to save and transfer to a computer using a USB cable. The recording time limit depends on the size of the SIM card and the sample rate. Additionally, my HTC Android phone will detect and use WiFi networks, where available, for data services. Using a WiFi network will avoid those 3G data charges and also increase download/upload speeds.
My Verizon plan has unlimited data transfer, so it really doesn’t matter what sample rate I use, your mileage may vary.
Couple the Hertz app with the VNC app mentioned previously, and a person could do all sorts of things remotely with a radio station. The Hertz app is available for free download from the Android app store.
With the advent of computer file storage and automation came the unmanned operation. Unfortunately, what often happens with unmanned operations is somehow the engineer becomes responsible for station operation and ends up getting all the phone calls when anything goes wrong:
- Traffic forgot to transfer the Sunday log and the station is off the air at 12 am Sunday morning. Call the engineer.
- Part time DJ didn’t read the directions on merging logs, call the engineer.
- Widows has encountered a problem and needs to reboot, call the engineer.
- The server has locked up, call the engineer.
- Silence sensor, engineer’s phone number
I got sick of driving to the radio station when things got out of whack with the AudioVault, so I installed VNC on all the machines. From that point, I could log on from home and see what the problem was. It was great, when traffic goobered up the log transfer, I called the traffic director at home and had her go in a fix it. Untrained operators, called the program director. Unfortunately, I don’t have Bill Gate’s phone number, so the windows issues are still on me.
All of this was great as long as my laptop was around. Being married, however, I had to occasionally listen to my wife, who insisted that we not take the laptop to diner or the movies with us. There were those occasional times when it would have been nice.
 With the purchase of the Android phone, however, I no longer have to worry about that. Android VNC is a free app that allows an Android phone to connect to any VNC server application. The user can save all the VNC connection information in the phone. It has several mouse options including touch pad, touch pad mouse, mouse track ball, etc. It connects to most VNC servers: incl TightVNC, RealVNC on Win and Linux, x11vnc, and Apple Remote Desktop on OS/X. 0.4.3. Special commands such as ctl-alt-del are available through the menu. It is also fully zoomable. All in all, I can do almost anything with the Android phone that I can do on the laptop. My wife is thrilled.
It is a time saver.
 On this blogging thing, I decided that I was a little be behind the curve, so I have created a mobile edition of Engineering Radio. If you have a smart phone such as iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or any web enabled cellphone, the mobile web browser should automatically redirect to the mobile edition.
I find it works very well with the android phone and the iPhone. I put one Google ad at the top of each story to defray costs, once again.
Let me know if you have problems, we aim to please.
On a slightly related note, I am also experimenting with a customizable android app that will convert radio station web streams into mobile content. If a radio station is already doing song titles using RDS, that output can be adapted and applied to the android app. I could then market it to individual radio stations, in my spare time.
Ahh, since I posted about my android, a few readers have emailed me and would like to know. If you have tried to stream audio using a smartphone web browser, you have found out that it simply doesn’t work. The web browser is unable to decode the radio station stream because most of them are in AAC, AAC+, HeAACv1 or some other codec. At this point, most people give up on the idea and move on. I, on the other hand, determined that it should be doable.
First, I attempted to down load a few apps, but they either crashed or didn’t do what I wanted or weren’t in the right language, or something.
Clear Channel has something called iHeartRadio, which is a clearing house for mobile users that want to listen to Clear Channel radio streams on their iPhones. I don’t know, once you have heard one Kiss-FM station, you’ve heard them all as far as I am concerned. Most other Clear Channel programming is boring and uninspired.
What I finally ended up doing was going to Moodio and reading up on a few things. Here is a good step by step way to use Moodio to listen to radio station web streams on any mobile device.
- Be aware that not all data plans are the same. ATT, Sprint, and others now cap data transfer and charge extra if a subscriber goes over. Know your plan.
- On a regular computer, go to Moodio (http://www.yourmuze.fm/)
- Set up a user account
- Select from there list, the stations you want to listen to. They have many US stations as well as many from Europe. If the station you are looking for is not there, you can request that it be added.
- Select the default data rate. Since I have unlimited data, I chose the highest rate for the best sounding audio. Others may want lower data rates so as not to exceed data caps.
- Point your mobile device web browser to www.m.yourmuze.fm
- Log into your account
- The stations on your listen list will be displayed.
That is a lot of steps to take. Somebody has to be very into radio or a radio station to do something like that. A forward thinking radio station or group will be writing or paying somebody to write mobile streaming apps for their stream(s). A forward thinking radio station or group would then feature links to these apps prominently on their web pages. Very prominently if they are in a PPM market. Ahem, very prominently if they are in a PPM market.
That is what a forward thinking radio station would be doing…
I finally broke down and purchased a smart phone. Instead of the ubiquitous iPhone however, I opted for a HTC Incredible Android phone. Not that I have any distaste for Apple, Inc. Rather, it is more because of the lack of ATT coverage in areas where I travel and the new data plans from ATT.
The phone is great, I enjoy the functions, the GPS navigation tool, gmail, news, and all the other apps. It fills many roles while I am out gallivanting around earning a living.
I have tried Pandora in the past on my computer. I found it to be okay, not great. I guess my main issue was it seemed a little boring just listening to music. It was good music, and when I interacted with the programming, voting a song up or down, the music selections got better. But it was distracting to interact while I was trying work on the computer and in the end, I turned the volume down an it became background noise.
In the car, I figured, things would be different. I could listen to Pandora the same way I listened to my car radio. Lots of music would be great and not distracting at all.
Except… I found it to be… boring. The music was great but the whole thing lacks personality. I suppose we are blessed around here with several radio stations that play new music. With Pandora there was almost no new music, even if I created a new music radio station. Further, it seemed like something was missing: human interaction. I enjoy hearing the deeeejay talking about some band factoid or some such. Just listening to music endlessly left me wanting something more. Perhaps that is just me.
Whilst on the road to various places, I like to listen to WEQX in Manchester, VT; WDST, Woodstock, NY; WKZE, Salisbury, CT; WXPK, White Plains, NY. All of those stations have personality and play great music. They also stream audio, which means I can listen to them on my phone.
So Pandora gets a meh, the phone gets a thumbs up.
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Axiom
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
~1st amendment to the United States Constitution
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
~Benjamin Franklin
...radio was discovered, and not invented, and that these frequencies and principles were always in existence long before man was aware of them. Therefore, no one owns them. They are there as free as sunlight, which is a higher frequency form of the same energy.
~Alan Weiner
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers
~Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Article 19
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The NAB (National Association of Broadcasters), in trying to reach a settlement with the music industry, has decided that cellphones are part of the problem. No kidding, the fact that smart phones like the iPhone and Android do not have FM tuners seems to be a part of the negotiations, even though the cellphone industry has nothing to do with music royalties. The argument is, more people will listen to, and more importantly, buy music if they have an FM tuner in their smartphone.
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