on my way home from Athens tonight, I saw the future of radio – and it was beautiful.
first of all, let me just say that the iPhone is one amazing piece of equipment (when it works!), and everyone should have one. at some point here, I will do a “Top 10 iPhone Apps” post.. but the apps that I enjoyed the most tonight were those by Last.fm and Pandora.
both of these apps allow you to listen to streaming internet radio straight from your iPhone. since with an iPhone you can access the internet anywhere, I was able to listen from my iPhone while cruising down the highway. and, since I installed an iPod jack into my car stereo, I can listen to streaming internet radio through my car speakers.
the Last.fm app was cool because it recorded all my listens on my cfretts Last.fm account, but the quality was a bit lacking, although completely listenable (similar to normal radio quality). then I checked out the Pandora app, on my frettsy Pandora account, and was blown away by the sound quality. beautiful!
the awesome thing about these apps is that you can uber-target them. you can listen to artists in a certain genre, or that sound like a particular band – no more searching the radio stations in the hopes of finding something even decent! you can skip songs you don’t like, and “like” or “dislike” them to give the app a better idea of what to play. you can even bookmark songs to go back and download when you get home!
this is the future of radio, and although it’s long overdue, it’s coming soon. traditional stations… start preparing.
