iTunes Tagging coming to HD Radio this holiday season

[AppleInsider]

Apple Inc. is teaming up with HD Radio to offer listeners a new feature that will allow them to "tag" songs they hear on the FM dial for a later purchase via the iTunes Store.

Dubbed "iTunes Tagging," the complimentary service will work with a new breed of HD Radios receivers that will come equipped with a special Tag button. Polk's I-Sonic Entertainment System 2 and JBL's iHD will be the first products to support the feature later this holiday season, with several additional systems are expected to follow early next year.

"When a song plays on your HD Radio that you like, a simple push of a button will tag it and later give you the chance to preview, purchase, and enjoy it with iTunes and your iPod," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod Product Marketing.

Initially, iTunes Tagging will be implemented by several major broadcasters across hundreds of stations, according to Bob Struble, chief executive of HD Radio creator iBiquity Digital. He said additional stations and broadcast groups are expected to join soon, with a formal announcement of participating groups planned for later this month at the NAB Radio convention (September 26 - 28).

Among the big name broadcasters already throwing their weight behind the iTunes feature is Clear Channel Radio, which has promised that all of its FM stations broadcasting in HD digital radio will be available on the new HD Radio receivers. It's also urging all radio broadcasters to fully support the new capability.

For those who don't know, HD Radio is a brand name iBiquity's method of digital transmission of AM and FM radio stations. HD Radio systems are unique in that they allow stations to broadcast high quality audio and a variety of text-based services, as well as additional FM channels, without changing to new frequency bands. ("HD" in HD-Radio stands for "Hybrid Digital" not "High Definition" in more popular usage.)

HD Digital Radio Alliance, the coalition of radio broadcasters formed to promote the radio technology, said it is "tremendously excited" about the new iTunes feature and plans "a multi-million dollar advertising campaign focusing on the JBL and Polk" receivers later this year.

Thus far, there's no information on how JBL's iHD will interface with iTunes. However, Polk says the display screen on its upcoming I-Sonic Entertainment System 2 will indicate which HD digital radio stations and broadcasts have songs enabled for the service. Information about tagged songs will be saved to the system's memory and transfered to an iPod when docked. When the iPod is then connected to a Mac or PC, iTunes will automatically present the song information from the tags in a new "Tagged" play-list.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[psziel]

been wanting to get a HD radio, now i will have a real reason!

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple Inc. is teaming up with HD Radio to offer listeners a new feature that will allow them to "tag" songs they hear on the FM dial for a later purchase via the iTunes Store.

Dubbed "iTunes Tagging," the complimentary service will work with a new breed of HD Radios receivers that will come equipped with a special Tag button. Polk's I-Sonic Entertainment System 2 and JBL's iHD will be the first products to support the feature later this holiday season, with several additional systems are expected to follow early next year.

"When a song plays on your HD Radio that you like, a simple push of a button will tag it and later give you the chance to preview, purchase, and enjoy it with iTunes and your iPod," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod Product Marketing.

Initially, iTunes Tagging will be implemented by several major broadcasters across hundreds of stations, according to Bob Struble, chief executive of HD Radio creator iBiquity Digital. He said additional stations and broadcast groups are expected to join soon, with a formal announcement of participating groups planned for later this month at the NAB Radio convention (September 26 - 28).

Among the big name broadcasters already throwing their weight behind the iTunes feature is Clear Channel Radio, which has promised that all of its FM stations broadcasting in HD digital radio will be available on the new HD Radio receivers. It's also urging all radio broadcasters to fully support the new capability.

For those who don't know, HD Radio is a brand name iBiquity's method of digital transmission of AM and FM radio stations. HD Radio systems are unique in that they allow stations to broadcast high quality audio and a variety of text-based services, as well as additional FM channels, without changing to new frequency bands. ("HD" in HD-Radio stands for "Hybrid Digital" not "High Definition" in more popular usage.)

HD Digital Radio Alliance, the coalition of radio broadcasters formed to promote the radio technology, said it is "tremendously excited" about the new iTunes feature and plans "a multi-million dollar advertising campaign focusing on the JBL and Polk" receivers later this year.

Thus far, there's no information on how JBL's iHD will interface with iTunes. However, Polk says the display screen on its upcoming I-Sonic Entertainment System 2 will indicate which HD digital radio stations and broadcasts have songs enabled for the service. Information about tagged songs will be saved to the system's memory and transfered to an iPod when docked. When the iPod is then connected to a Mac or PC, iTunes will automatically present the song information from the tags in a new "Tagged" play-list.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[pmjoe]

I'd like to hope this is some kind of open standard and not iTunes Store specific.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by pmjoe

I'd like to hope this is some kind of open standard and not iTunes Store specific.

I'm not that open minded about it. I would prefer it to be tied to the iPod, and iTunes. Since the machine has an iPod dock, nothing else will work.

If the button is actually labeled "iTunes" as the articles I've read lead us to believe, than that will say it all.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by pmjoe

I'd like to hope this is some kind of open standard and not iTunes Store specific.

It could be done, but I think it requires the cooperation of businesses in a few different industries, and a standardized way of recording and moving the data. Recording the track name & artist should be easy enough, but then you have to take it to the computer somehow and have your store software read that data and take you to the appropriate page.

I just don't see it being popular without some easy end-to-end integration. Otherwise, just writing down the song name and artist would seem easier to a lot of people.

[SpamSandwich]

If I recall correctly, a couple of years ago someone else was shopping around this exact same concept. I don't know if it was Sony... hmm... pretty sure it was Sony.

[ak1808]

A new way for radio stations to make money?
Would only be fair: They spread the word about a song, if people buy it, they should get comissions.

That's a great thing!

[F1Turbo]

Now if only I had any radio stations near me that were worth listening to, I'd be set.

[jonro]

I've been hoping, for at least a couple of years, that they would do this type of thing for XM (satellite) radio. I often hear a song in the car and would like to "save" it in a list that I could check out for possible future purchase. On occasion, I've tried to access the playlist information from xmradio.com, but it never seems to be updated properly.

[lfmorrison]

Originally Posted by pmjoe

I'd like to hope this is some kind of open standard and not iTunes Store specific.

From the information publicly available on iBiquity's website, it appears that the song information being broadcast to an HD receiver is in the industry-standard ID3 format.

http://ibiquity.com/broadcasters/qua..._data_services

The HD receivers then just need a mechanism for extracting the title and artist information from those ID3 fields for any songs that should be "tagged", and storing them until it has a chance to synchronize the list in iTunes.

If that's all there is to it, then I don't see any technical issue that would prevent a device manufacturer from using that same broadcast service to synchronize with a different player and/or online music store.

[ajmas]

How about making the tag:

artist - title

That way it would work anywhere

[BlackSummerNight]

Some cellphones can tag music, save it, let your preview it, and even buy it already. But the price is the carriers price, which we know is a ripoff.