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sirius satellite radio posts

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Are you really Sirius? Streaming radio iPhone app expected this week

In what may be one of the great anti-climax stories of all time, it looks like Sirius/XM is finally releasing an iPhone/iPod touch app this week, probably on the 18th.

Subscribers who asked about the app are getting the following email... apparently Sirius support team members are paid! by the exclamation point!
Thank you for contacting SIRIUS regarding whether or not there is a SIRIUS iPhone application available. We are here to help! We appreciate the time you have taken to contact us in regards to this matter! We are happy to inform you that beginning June 18th a SIRIUS Internet Radio application will be available at the Apple iTunes App-Store for the iPhone and the iPod Touch! All Premium SIRIUS Internet Radio subscribers will be able to download the application from the Apple iTunes App-Store for free on their device and access the service at no additional cost! Subscribers who are listening to the Basic Online Service for free must first upgrade to the Premium Online Service for $2.99 per month to access the application on the iPhone or iPod Touch.
It's been a long and tortured road getting here. Competing players were stopped dead by Apple, and the Sirius player has been talked about ever since the iPhone came out. A couple of weeks ago we reported the app would appear 'real soon' and now it looks like this is the week.

No word as yet on how many channels will play on the app, but this is a highly anticipated release. We hope it's fully compatible with iPhone 3.0.

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Is Sirius working on its own iPhone app?

After all the bad news about the NiceMac StarPlayr application for the iPhone, Sirius Buzz, a web site that tracks the goings on in satellite radio, says they have it on good authority that a free player is coming from Sirius/XM directly.

Without citing specific sources, the author of the post says the player is going to be released 'very shortly'. The article implies that Sirius/XM, knowing their own app was coming, nixed the NiceMac solution.

That will be welcome news for the hordes of people who want an iPhone-based solution to listen to Sirius and XM. In particular, a lot of Howard Stern fans want to listen on the go, and an iPhone solution would be just the ticket.

With new car sales falling off a cliff, and the Sirius/XM merger not the financial panacea it was supposed to be, the nation's only satellite radio service could use a little positive buzz. Thousands of subscribers signing up for streaming could be a good thing for the company and subscribers.

Of course, all this could be a baseless rumor, but keep watching this space for more.

Via Sirius Buzz

Filed under: Software, iPhone

XM or Sirius on your Mac without a browser

Rogue Amoeba has just released a public preview of their new desktop player for XM and Sirius called Pulsar. It provides instant access to either service, or both, and since the recent merger of the services they are pretty similar anyway.

The application does not require a browser and can just sit on your desktop pumping out that Sat-Rad love.

There is a free public preview that plays for 20 minutes and then overlays noise on the audio. If you ever bought a product from Rogue Amoeba, they will let you download a fully working app for free. If you haven't, you can get a license key for 15 dollars. The app is not a 1.0 version yet, but seems to work from most reports posted to the web. I tried it myself on both XM and Sirius. At first, it failed with some XML parsing errors, so I shut it down and tried later, and it worked just fine.

It should be noted that there are some other ways to listen besides buying an app or listening through your browser. One promising solution is the donation-ware app called StarLightXM. The software requires a streaming plug-in, so check the documentation. StarLightXM works on both satellite services. I tried a new build which came out yesterday and it worked fine. Beta 6 of the player can be found here.

Of course for any of these solutions to work, you'll need an online subscription to satellite radio. Both services will let you try their online offerings for 3 days for free, and both Sirius and XM have hinted they may be creating their own players, including one for the iPhone, but so far nothing has appeared. The developers who did the StarLightXM desktop app also say they are going to have an XM/Sirius player for the iPhone/iPod touch soon.

Filed under: Multimedia, Rumors, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Launch of Sirius XM iPhone app 'StarPlayr' coming soon?

Subscribers to Sirius XM satellite radio have reasons to be thankful on Thanksgiving Day next week: it appears that an iPhone app called "StarPlayr" will be coming soon.

There's a thread in the SternFanNetwork forums about receiving Sirius XM on the iPhone, and forum member JJRousseau, who is apparently an employee of developer NiceMac, LLC, pointed everyone to the StarPlayr website. StarPlayr currently makes a Mac player and is hard at work on the iPhone app. JJRousseau noted in the forum that "[t]he iPhone is our first priority, but it has taken longer than expected getting licensing worked out for the iPhone Client. As soon as the business side of iPhone version is worked out, you'll be able to purchase StarPlayr for iPhone at the App Store."

The feature set sounds impressive, with Sirius and/or XM content streams, album art, iTunes WiFi purchase links, lyrics, and favorites lists. No release date or pricing has been set for the app at this time.

Thanks to Rymon for the tip!

[via iPhoneSavior]

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