Radio on the iPod
| Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | --Sean |
Aren't you tired of all of those MP3's that you've been listening to on your iPod? I mean, where's the variety? You've only got a couple thousand songs that you illicitly acquired from the Internet (thanks, Internet), and that's got to get old fast. Now, radio, that's the stuff! Endless excitement as you try to guess which of the five popular mainstream singles they plan to play next. You would just go back to carrying around a radio-enabled boombox over your shoulder, but it lacks a certain design ethic and general expensiveness that you've grown accustomed to.
Luckily, Yahoo! Music brings radio to your iPod Touch (or iPhone) with their new Y! Music App, which hooks you up to your favorite LAUNCHcast and CBS Radio stations in an elegant, rounded-cornered package. One of the features I found most interesting was the clever skip counter, which notifies you right on top of the skip button about how many more times you can use it in the next hour -- apparently there are some DMCA rules about how you're allowed to listen to radio that I had not heard about, but this seems like a nice way to deal with it. Otherwise, it's got all of the station-related social and geographic features that you could want -- the ability to share stations with friends or find which stations are located near you, for instance -- plus a nice purple background. Fulfill all of those musical needs where listening to songs on your iPod before just wouldn't cut it.