Radio 2.0

Several years ago I simply gave up on the radio. I decided it wasn't for me. Music on the radio felt stale and I couldn't stand the commercials.

So I decided to listen to my personal music collection as a substitute for radio. It began with a big honking server that stored my Mp3 collection. Even though we love our Sonos and mp3 server, it's not a system to discover new music. It's just a fancy home networked ipod in many ways.

Music discovery for me nowadays is practically 100% online. Places like Hype Machine, Project Playlist, various mp3 blogs, Last.fm give me more than i could imagine.

But I can't get any of that internet radio goodness in the car or on my home audio system. For our cars, we are satellite radio subscribers. Lauren has XM radio. I have SIRIUS in my car. It's better than terrestrial radio but in many ways it's still lame.

The big problem with broadcast radio (satellite or terrestrial) is that it's broadcast. It's one-way. You can't share it with friends. You can't comment on it. You can't keep history. You can't create a playlist. You can't personalize it. And broadcast will never give you the range of internet radio content. Even satellite radio, with all of their channels, has a limited playlist per channel.

The broadcast radio industry is trying to catch up. HD is smart. And they recently agreed on an iTunes-based tagging service. Linking broadcast with the web is a good idea. It's certainly better than my current method of tagging the radio :)

HD radio and satellite radio feel like a band-aid. it's just an interim step while we wait for the inevitable. We want a full internet radio experience in our cars, on our mobile phones and on our home entertainment systems.

That's what I want. Give me Radio 2.0

Comments

[Philip Jacob]

You should check out http://www.prx.org/ for great independent radio pieces.

[Mike Doeff]

Have you checked out Pandora on Sonos? There is a 30-day free trial. If you want to keep it it's something like 5 bucks a month. I've also had pretty good luck with custom Rhapsody radio channels (also available on Sonos if you're a Rhapsody subscriber) where you plug in 10 artists and it plays similar music. Now if we can only get last.fm on Sonos...

[Jeremy Griffin]

I agree with you completely about the need for a true radio 2.0 Currently I end up using about 5-6 different sites to accomplish all the things I want radio 2.0 to do. I use yottamusic.com to access my rhapsody subscription, and pandora.com to find new music. I even stream my pandora stations through my Sprint phone to listen in the car. Hype Machine is working great to keep me up on music buzz and last.fm is great to keep track of what my friends like. Another music service that could be easily integrated is upcoming concert information, http://www.ontour.net/ is my favorite current site for this type of info. If you find any other great music services let us know.

[Erik Schwartz]

Music radio is dead. News and talk radio is alive and kicking.