Internet Radio

Stitcher, a free audio news application for the iPhone, has forged new partnerships with a slew of media outlets to substantially add to its offering.

Now, Stitcher subscribers can access content from Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, Fox News Radio, Air America Media, Politico, IGN.com, TechCrunch, Quick and Dirty Tips and AOL Weblogs including Engadget, Switched, The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Joystiq, along with their current favorites Stitcher content.

Subscribers can "stitch" their favorite programs into custom, on-demand channels. Stitcher content gets updated automatically without users needing to connect to a computer or take the time to synch it up.

Although it's currently only available for the iPhone, Stitcher plans to launch a version for the BlackBerry Curve 8310, Bold and Storm.

Photo courtesy of Pandora

The Pandora music web service lets you create individual stations based on music by artists you like. Its music correlation engine tries to play music by songs, artists or composers you might like based on one you tell it you actually like. It then lets you vote whether or not its guess was good or bad to refine your channel. This activity was, however, a desk-bound one until Pandora released apps to let you discover music you like while on the move. However, this was only available to iPhone and Windows Mobile smartphone users until now. If you have a BlackBerry, you can now join the custom radio station crowd by downloading the free...

Pandora for BlackBerry

You can download it by pointing your BlackBerry's browser to..

www.pandora.com

CNET News is reporting that the Senate has passed the Webcaster Settlement Act, the legislation that lays the groundwork for Web radio stations to negotiate reduced royalty rates for the songs they stream over the Internet.

The bill had already passed the House on Saturday; now President Bush is expected to sign it. "I'm relieved, optimistic, and grateful to our listeners," said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, the Web radio station that's been at the center of the fight since it began.

The report said that webcasters have long complained that the royalty rate to stream music is too high for Web radio stations to generate any profit. "Representatives from Internet radio and the music industry have been in negotiations for more than a year. Recently, the two sides have gotten closer to an agreement and both say they are confident a deal is within reach."

Since the parties are seeking a statutory license, which lets them play songs without having to seek permission each time, Congress had to get involved. Here's hoping Pandora and other Web radio sites stay alive and deliver mobile music to the masses for years to come.

Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin told analysts Tuesday that regular radio "sucks" as an investment while the company he heads deserves more respect because of its growth prospects, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

"The reason that radio sucks today, and the reason that most of you don't want to invest in it, is principally because the growth stopped," he said at a Merrill Lynch conference. He pointed out that Clear Channel Communications is the "only radio company in the country generating more revenue than Sirius XM," and hastened to add that they're not growing, unlike Sirius.

Sirius is available via some carriers such as Sprint through monthly-fee-based streaming radio channels on compatible cell phones. It's also available in standalone devices like the Stiletto 2 (pictured) as well as the car/home receivers that the company first became known for. Sirius shares fell 10% yesterday to close at $1.14, a five-year low.

AOL is preparing the relaunch of its broad-reaching online radio directory SHOUTcast.com, MediaPost reports, as customers gravitate more and more toward Internet radio listening.

The report said that AOL plans to relaunch the network next week with improved search functionality, streamlined services, and new user feedback options, as well as increased advertiser revenue possibilities.

The new SHOUTcast will be "widely accessible and integrated with its sister product Winamp and its global directory of radio stations available on the web," through a variety of media players including iTunes and Windows Media Player, mobile media browser-Kinoma Play, on set-top boxes, and mobile devices including Sony Mylo, Sony PSP and Chumby.

SHOUTcast.com has been around for almost a decade, and today hosts about 25,000 stations that serve approximately 500,000 to 600,000 listeners each day.

The News Market reports that Logitech unveiled the Squeezebox Boom all-in-one network music player, featuring an integrated amplifier, high-performance speaker drivers, and a simplified setup process.

This unit lets music fans listen to their digital libraries, Internet radio, or Sirius satellite radio in any room in the house without having to set up a media extender, music streaming router, or other complicated system. "Just plug the new Logitech network music player into a power outlet—there are no additional wires to connect. Then, using your existing home network, you can listen to the music you love from the personal collection on your computer," the company said in a statement.

Gadgets like these have great potential to pull today's digital music sources away from the PC and the home office and into the rest of the house, though doubts about Internet radio royalty payments loom over the industry. Still, gotta love the Duran Duran reference.

Pandora, one of the nation's most popular Internet radio services, may be on the verge of collapse, according to its founder in a Washington Post report. We've reported on it in the past, but to recap, Pandora's Music Genome Project lets users create custom radio stations based on music they know they already like. This service has spawned a host of mobile initiatives, including versions for AT&T and Sprint phones as well as an iPhone app.

But due to royalty disputes with the major record labels—which have been going on for quite some time now—the end may be near. "We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora, in the article. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."

At the heart of the problem: Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies, the report said. "Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures." The sides are still very far apart, according to the report.

(Image credit: Thor Swift/Washington Post)

Sirius may be satellite radio, not Internet radio like Pandora—but it's still available over the Internet (in a way) on mobile via Sprint Power Vision and some other offerings, not to mention dedicated gadgets.

Either way, in the past, "Sirius has been criticized for adding lots of new subscribers unprofitably due to expensive content deals and promotions," Silicon Alley Insider blogger Michael Learmonth writes. "Now they've stopped and, well, the numbers show it."

In the past quarter, Sirius added just short of 280,000 subscribers, which pales in comparison to the 561,000 they added at this same time last year.

"But here's the very bad news: the vast majority of new subscribers— 89%—were people who just happened to buy a new car in the quarter with Sirius pre-installed," the report said. Now *that's* a problem, because usually car makers throw in a free year's worth of service, which most of these customers will probably not bother renewing.

If you want to do more with your mobile phone than just make phone calls and check e-mail, there's plenty of content and applications out there to choose from. But, unless you're tech-savvy or have an iPhone, actually consuming it by streaming or downloading, can be tricky.

Enter Lexy, a start-up from the guys who created the Egreetings Network way back in the early days of the consumer-oriented World Wide Web. Going on the belief that simple is better and, according to co-founder Tony Levitan, "the phone will become a receiver of all things audio," Levitan and Fred Campbell wanted to make it as easy as possible for users to get mobile access to their favorite audio content.

And, what could be easier than by making a phone call?

Essentially, Lexy is a free podcast service that can be accessed on any cell phone by calling Lexy (415-692-4933), or you can listen online on a PC.

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Last.fm just revised its Web site, giving Internet radio listeners a smoother interface and new features aimed at making it easier to find music, according to MediaPost.

The new features include letting users add artists and songs to their online libraries with one click, along with posting music recommendations for other listeners. Music charts in member profiles will also be updated immediately to reflect new song plays from its catalog of 5 million tracks, the report said.

Post-CBS acquisition, the company also released a Last.fm client for the iPhone, and they formed a partnership with Logitech to give listeners access to the service via their home music systems. "The site redesign is only the latest in a series of steps to build out the U.K.-based social music service since CBS acquired it for $280 million last year," the report said. Last.fm also recently unveiled a royalty program for unsigned and independent artists.