Filed under: iTS, Rumors, iTunes, iPhone
iTunes Radio?
Engadget has come across something of interest on AT&T's website. AT&T has just added an international data plan (to ease the $3000 phone bills one would imagine), but they use iTunes Radio as an example of usage. AT&T claims that 20 minutes of listening to iTunes Radio uses up 20MB of your data plan. Very interesting considering that iTunes Radio doesn't exist. Might this be a new feature in the rumored iTunes 7.5?Update: Before 15 more people point out the Radio option in the desktop iTunes, yes I am aware of that. Nowhere is that functionality called 'iTunes Radio,' though, and it doesn't interact with the iPhone.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Michael Schmitt said 3:17PM on 11-02-2007
I'm guessing that with Leopard's "Back To My Mac" feature, one can use the iPhone to sync to the computer's playlist through the internet and you can stream your music to your phone. At that point, the 16 GB is almost a moot point when it comes to storage for audio since you can now stream your entire iTunes playlist to it, and faster connections would allow movies to start streaming. This could be the idea behind a possible "iTunes Radio" It is possibly the best way of virtually bringing your entire library with you. Now, get this to hook up with iPhoto and you have your music, video, and pictures both at home and on the road interconnectiviy via the internet. At 128 kbps/sec, that's roughly 1 MB/minute, so the 20 minutes, 20 MB thing isn't that far off.
But this is just a guess by me so far.
Reply
Gregory Andrew said 3:17PM on 11-02-2007
iTunes radio does exist. It has for many previous versions of iTunes as well. What are you talking about
Reply
bijan said 3:56PM on 11-02-2007
Scott, the radio (internet streaming) is after Audiobooks and before Ringtones in the Library section of iTunes (at least 7.4.2) I have been using that feature for years.
Reply
Jamie said 3:26PM on 11-02-2007
iTunes has had radio in it for some time. Maybe it's for the portable iTunes store?
Reply
luminousnerd said 3:24PM on 11-02-2007
What are you talking about? Of course iTunes radio exists!!
Reply
Marky said 3:25PM on 11-02-2007
What's that thing in iTunes labeled 'radio' that's been there since v1?
Do you know what iTunes is? Just checking but it's fairly obvious!
Reply
Dov said 3:24PM on 11-02-2007
What does AT&T care about iTunes 7.5 - I would assume iTunes Radio to be an iPhone app. The desktop already has "iTunes radio" and has for a long time with streaming stations. Maybe they're planning on bringing streaming to the iPhone over EDGE.
Reply
Jon said 3:25PM on 11-02-2007
@ #2
They are talking about iTunes radio for the iPhone I believe. AT&T has nothing to do with iTunes on a computer.
If so, I hope this does mean that iTunes radio is coming to iPhone.
Reply
charles said 3:28PM on 11-02-2007
I've had a hunch--and I have absolutely nothing to back it up--that, once Leopard was released, we'd see an iPhone update shortly after. Mostly, this would take advantage of things like the task list in Mail.
However, between this post and the impending 7.5, I wonder if 1.2 will be out, say, next week?
Reply
Karl said 3:36PM on 11-02-2007
iTunes has Radio, but does the iPhone?
If that's what this is referencing, why does AT&T care? I think this is either a mistake or referencing something we don't know, NOT referencing the radio we currently know.
Reply
Brad said 3:37PM on 11-02-2007
iTunes radio -> the usage of the cellular RADIO for the iTunes store. That's what it means.
Reply
Sparks said 3:49PM on 11-02-2007
Except that the iTunes store on iPhone doesn't work over GPRS; it will just toss up a 'no connection available' if you try to start it without a WiFi connection. WiFi would also have nothing to do with an AT&T cellular data plan.
Reply
thethirdmoose said 4:09PM on 11-02-2007
Wow... if it really is 1 MB/min, that is a 16 kbps bandwidth.
How do you like your static in the morning?
Reply
Bill Mac said 4:23PM on 11-02-2007
Hmmm... I've looked all over my portable radio but I just can't seem to find a button called "iTunes" ... Are you sure you know what you're talking about?
:)
Reply
Scot said 4:24PM on 11-02-2007
I don't know if anybody else has noticed but there is a 'Radio' menu option on the iPod (at least the new Nanos). It's available under Settings>Main Menu>Radio. Doesn't do anything when I turn it on, but it's there, maybe it has something to do with AT&T's mention of iTunes Radio (not the internet streaming kind as available in iTunes)
Reply
Paul said 4:34PM on 11-02-2007
I find it interesting that no one really commented on the fact that Apple added many radio stations to iTunes in the 7.4 revision.
I also find it interesting that many of these new stations are coming from http://pri.kts-af.net. When you type that into your browser it says: Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server. Apache/1.3.33 Server at tunes.apple.com Port 80
I also find it interesting that http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306608 mentions listening to internet radio and podcasts at Starbucks.
All of this tells me that Apple is going to have a WiFi radio app on the iPhone and the iPod touch in an upcoming revision to the iPhone/iPod touch software. :-)
Reply
Bryan said 4:28PM on 11-02-2007
@thethirdmoose:
it would actually be about 166 kilobIts per second, not 16 kilobYtes per second.
Reply
sam said 4:56PM on 11-02-2007
Let's not forget the references to a "mobile radio" app in some plists in the iphone:
http://www.iphoneology.com/2007/07/30/iphone-firmware-hints-at-new-apps-widgets/
Reply
cynyc said 7:35PM on 11-02-2007
So eager to pick up the rumor and thereby missing the real story...
Engadget reported (where's tuaw?) that AT&T introduced two new international roaming plans for the iPhone.
The great news (Engadget missed that one, too) is that these new plans can be added and dropped on a month-to-month basis unlike before, where one had to sign up for a whole year.
Reply
parsnip said 10:09PM on 11-02-2007
ok... some quick math: a 32k mp3 stream for 60 seconds is 1.92 Megs a minute (32 * 60). At 20 minutes that's 38.4 Megs (20 * 1.92).
This almost 40 Megs or twice the amount of bandwith they mention. Doesn't sound like streaming radio to me.
Reply