A Sirius Apple iPod Would Be Seriously Cool
The iPod is the best player for digital music. And satellite radio kicks butt in terms of content. Put the two together and what do you get? A music revolution.
Historically, radio and recorded music have always been separate entities. If you ever wanted to buy a song you heard on the radio you wrote it down, and then shelped out to by the 8-track, record, or CD. If you were really cheap, or didn’t have a lot of cash on hand you could also record from the radio. And if you ever wanted to hear a song on the radio it usually involved staying on hold forever (if you could get through) and trying to convince the DJ to play your song, dammit.
These days savvy buyers with enough cash go to the iTunes Music Store where (gasp) you can buy just one song. iTunes even has a feature that allows you to view radio stations playlists in your areas obviating the need for you to ever write anything down. Very cool.
This link between offline radio and the store is a preview of how things could work in the future if Sirius/XO and Apple team up.
Imagine satellite radio as this fantastic faucet of sound that you can listen in on. But if you want to pause it, you can’t. And if you want to easily time shift it, a la Tivo, you can’t.
The iPod can solve all that. With the iPod satellite radio has a beautiful UI, and a ton of hard drive space that it can tap into. With a little bit of software and hardware magic we could have a TivoPod. It would tune into satellite radio and let you time shift recordings.
That is all well and good, but lets take the possibilities a step further. We’ve all heard of the hoopla surrounding iTunes enabled cellphones. You know, where you’ll be able to download songs on a painfully slow cellphone connection. Fun. A satellite iPod could circumvent the whole network issue, allowing you to say, hit a button while listening to your iPod that says buy this song and the song would download, via the satellite connection directly to your iPod. Or, at the very least, you could have the song show up in your iTunes the next time you launch it. Now we are talking!
Another possibility is that satellite becomes the medium by which the iTunes Music store could be streamed as a subscription service. Imagine being able to browse the whole store on your iPod, and having it streamed to you directly. All for a monthly fee. This would benefit both Apple and the Sirius immensely.
For sure satellite radio is not for everyone. Some consumers just want to listen to the CDs or iTunes Music Store purchases they buy. But there is no better medium than radio for listeners to dip into and hear new stuff. And typically hearing it leads to buying it.
Think the iPod is big? Just wait.
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Comments
Satellite radio doesn’t exist in many places though. So it’d be a function that is useless in many countries. In the UK we have terrestrial DAB radio. I’d love my iPod to have that, but because it’s not a global technology, it just isn’t going to happen. Same with satellite I suspect.
Love the idea but I’m thinking that Satellite Radio is under massive threat by subscription services from Yahoo and Napster which allow huge amounts of music to be loaded and played randomly just like a radio station.
Sat Radio does have cool portable hardware too though and honestly I’d love to see XMRadio and Sirius Radio merge.
A combo XM/Sirius iPod would be REALLY cool! I’d love to see Apple be the first company to offer hardware capable of receiving BOTH satellite radio services. This would further legitimize BOTH XM and Sirius and provide consumers with the option of subscribing to one or both of the services.
Why the hell would anybody pay for radio? I live in Minneapolis and I only listen to a couple local stations anyway, much less have a need for stations all across the country. Most of the music that I want to listen to is already on my iPod. Think about it, does anybody know of someone that consistantly uses the Radio section of iTunes? Probably not.
Remember that Jobs is dead on by saying that people want to own their music not rent it (like services Napster, Real, etc). This directly applies to satalite radio because it would, in essence, be another variation of the “renting” music philosophy. People want to play a particular song or CD over and over and have control over when they want to listen to it, not every blue moon. This is probably why the new iPod Shuffles have both repeat playlist and shuffle options.
I look at it this way:
iPod - $400 - $500
iPod accessories - $100 minimum
average iTunes Store downloads - $50 - $100 annually, (I’d assume)
XM/Sirius subscription - worthless additional charge.
I might be “cool” to have this feature on your iPod, but it’s unnessisary for the majority.
Well the future will surely hold such options as discussed in your article, why wait???? There is just as cool an option right now. “Radiolover” + iPod = Heaven
http://www.bitcartel.com/radiolover/
There are lots of little programs like “radio shark” and other gadgets that will let you turn streaming web content into nice little content to zip over to your iPod for on the go listening.
The web has a growing amount of good listening content, some even at 128kbps Get yourself at program, and start listening!
http://www.novaplanet.com
http://www.KCRW.com
I think a sirius and apple merger is a great idea. Just imagine the amazing content of sirius, and the capabilites of ipod. This monumental partnership is the furture of protable entertainment. (Howard Stern)