American broadcasters turn up the volume on misguided campaign to enable FM tuners in smartphones

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 108
    No, that won't save FM radio from the competition.
  • Reply 42 of 108
    Yes Mr. FM DJ, I do want you to talk some more over the same 12 songs you play in an endless loop.
  • Reply 43 of 108
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post



    No, that won't save FM radio from the competition.



    Small private stations are at a disadvantage because unlike the larger stations they can't  afford to stream online. The tremendous bandwidth required to stream to thousands of listeners is cost prohibitive for small stations. Unfortunately the small stations are often the better ones.

  • Reply 44 of 108
    nick29nick29 Posts: 111member
    I agree with this, though I primarily listen to AM. I don't think it'll happen because Apps are better suited for corporations to control consumer behavior while force feeding them ads, period.
  • Reply 45 of 108
    mstone wrote: »

    Small private stations are at a disadvantage because unlike the larger stations they can't  afford to stream online. The tremendous bandwidth required to stream to thousands of listeners is cost prohibitive for small stations.

    If they're small, is that much bandwidth used?
    https://mixlr.com/priceplans/
  • Reply 46 of 108
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post





    If they're small, is that much bandwidth used?

    https://mixlr.com/priceplans/



    Wow that is pretty cheap. I  really don't understand how they can do it for $200 a year. I've priced a lot of bandwidth for corporate use and for unlimited bandwidth at Gbps speeds is thousands per month.

  • Reply 47 of 108
    adonissmuadonissmu Posts: 1,776member

    Nope. Do not want. FM radio can stay dead. They are all owned by the same company anyway. They just want to push advertising to me. No thanks. Maybe if I was like 40 I would want FM radio back but no ma'am.

  • Reply 48 of 108
    dr millmossdr millmoss Posts: 5,403member

    It says "misguided" in the headline but the article fails to say why it is misguided.

     

    Politics masquerading as an argument, methinks.

  • Reply 49 of 108
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    mstone wrote: »
    FM is basically line of sight. With such a tiny antenna inside a phone, you would not be able to pick up most stations with the quality you would want, especially for music, except the ones with 5000+ watt transmitters, and then you'll be listening to non-stop ads.

    how does my tiny ipod do it so well?
  • Reply 50 of 108
    inklinginkling Posts: 774member
    One reason Apple hasn't used the FM radio part of that Broadcom chip is because it sells music and would rather people not get that music free.

    With the move to digital FM, some countries, particularly in Europe, may start insisting on the feature to help their state radio networks. The idea might make sense if those digital FM stations also streamed data that smartphones could tap, including local weather and breaking news.

    In the U.S. NPR might benefit as some listener return to listening to and supporting their local radio station rather than getting broadcasts as podcasts.

    I wouldn't mind seeing the feature added, although I doubt I'd use it for anything but getting news in some disaster scenario. And disaster coverage might be the best argument for adding radio, particularly disasters that take down cellular coverage.
  • Reply 51 of 108
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    zoetmb wrote: »
    On the commercial dial, there's virtually no classical, jazz, true free-form rock, true oldies, etc., because those demographics don't appeal to advertisers

    if you spend time in the sub-91 range youll find a lot of cities have classical, jazz, and NPR stations. the public jazz station here in new orleans is one of the best in the world.
  • Reply 52 of 108
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    adonissmu wrote: »
    Nope. Do not want. FM radio can stay dead. They are all owned by the same company anyway. They just want to push advertising to me. No thanks. Maybe if I was like 40 I would want FM radio back but no ma'am.

    youre referring to pop commercial radio. theres a lot of good free radio that has nothing to do w/ that.

    want.
  • Reply 53 of 108
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Inkling View Post



    One reason Apple hasn't used the FM radio part of that Broadcom chip is because it sells music and would rather people not get that music free.

     

    I used to think that too, but with apps like iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify, etc. there are already a ton of other sources that people can be using to listen to musice that Apple gets no money from.  So why not start allowing app makers to access the FM radio part of the chip and write apps that apple could possibly make money off of (paid apps, iAds, etc).

  • Reply 54 of 108
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by chadbag View Post

     

    This should be marked "EDITORIAL" since it offers AI opinion ("misguided campaign")

     

    I listen to the radio all the time in my car.  How else am I going to win stuff?


     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post

     

    It says "misguided" in the headline but the article fails to say why it is misguided.

     

    Politics masquerading as an argument, methinks.


     

    There is an entire paragraph in the article dedicated to why the campaign is "misguided." Radio folks think that's as simple as carriers waving a magic wand to enable all of these unused FM chips, but in reality that's almost universally impossible. I swear, people on this site don't read anything.

  • Reply 55 of 108
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Inkling View Post



    One reason Apple hasn't used the FM radio part of that Broadcom chip is because it sells music and would rather people not get that music free.

     

     

    What the heck are you talking about? Apple used FM support as a selling point for the iPod, which is a device designed specifically to play music that Apple sells.

  • Reply 56 of 108
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,229member

    MLB uses the lack of AM/FM in cell phones to coerce baseball fans to pay for streaming service.

  • Reply 57 of 108
    FM sounds ghastly compared to radio delivered over the Internet.

    I'm so glad TuneIn Radio added CarPlay support today, now radio will actually sound good in the car. And watch support too.
  • Reply 58 of 108
    desuserigndesuserign Posts: 1,316member
    FM sounds ghastly compared to radio delivered over the Internet.

    That's a ridiculous assertion!
    It really depends on the quality of the FM signal/reception versus the bitrate of the internet stream. There are plenty of low bitrate streams out there that sound terrible.
  • Reply 59 of 108
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,229member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by darwiniandude View Post



    FM sounds ghastly compared to radio delivered over the Internet.

    Not as a rule

  • Reply 60 of 108
    desuserign wrote: »
    That's a ridiculous assertion!
    It really depends on the quality of the FM signal/reception versus the bitrate of the internet stream. There are plenty of low bitrate streams out there that sound terrible.

    I am obviously talking about higher bitrate streams - FM, at least here in Australia, is significantly and noticeably worse compared to the same stations via an app like TuneIn Radio. This is very noticeable to me in the car or at home through my Adam A7a monitors. Likewise, iTunes Radio and Spotify both sound far worse than high bitrate MP3's, in my opinion a bigger difference than between lossy MP3 formats of decent bitrate and lossless WAV or CD audio.

    It could well be in the broadcast stages that FM is more heavily compressed (dynamic range wise) but I don't know about that.
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