DigitalNick » Commentary

Will AT&T’s new Pricing Kill Slacker & Pandora on the iPhone?

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:05:03 +0000

AT&T announced yesterday that starting Monday June 7, 2010 they will no longer be offering unlimited data plans. They will have two plans, 200 MB for $15 a month and 2GB for $25 a month. While these seem restrictive AT&T claims that 98% of their users don’t exceed 2GB so they will now be getting a $5 discount, right?

Will Slacker & Pandora users be hurt by the new plans?

If by one estimate Slacker and Pandora use about 50MB per hour of transmission, then the $15 plan would blow through your allotment in 4 hours of 3G listening. The 2GB plan would give you would give you about 40 hours of listening via 3G. Not bad unless you spend a LOT of time listening in your car where you can’t get wifi access.

9 Hours a Week.

Allowing 4 hours for data, email and other online activities, can you live with just 9 hours a week of turly mobile Internet Radio?

Will Apple announce a video portal?

DN — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:29:58 +0000

So with YouTube announcing online movie rentals you have to wonder what will Apple do?

What if Apple were to open a video portal to take advantage of the iPhone & new touch abilities to instantly upload video.

Apple has the muscle to take on YouTube. It also has the hardware in the market to pull it off. It also gives them a jumpstart into social media.

Something to think about

Is Recording Internet Streams Legal?

DN — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:39:16 +0000

Many folks (well, some) remember when you would copy your favorite FM station, LP’s or even CD’s to a mixed tape. This was considered “fair use”. Things have gotten much more complicated.

With the Advent of Pandora, LastFM, Slacker and the hundreds of

Wifi dropout hurts mobile internet radio

DN — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:42:39 +0000

Listening to Slacker, Pandora or other Internet radio stations is one of the true joys of owning an iPod touch. The experience can however be ruined by poor network connectivity. How well does listening to Internet radio via a wifi connectipm work in your home?\n

Flytunes adds Ad's to Interface

DN — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:21:37 +0000

Flytunes has finally added ad’s to their iPhone/iPod touch interface. They are not obtrusive and are actually kind of hard to read on these little screens. Still surprising little advertising on the stations themselves. What do you think of the Flytunes interface?

eRockster pushes bands to join, but should they?

DN — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:08:01 +0000

Who is eRockster?

eRockster, the Internet Radio site that lets you do so much stuff it’s sometimes confusing, also is pushing unsigned artists to sign up and get distribution. Consider eRockster is owned by Clearchannel, the mega conglomerate that owns the majority (?) of the radio stations in the US. The folks at eRockster tell me they have freedom to do pretty much as they please. Hmmm. As a former employee of a mega corporation (I once worked for a Phone company) I