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.

It won't be a major surprise to people who have been following the ups and downs of this story, but on an earnings conference call this morning satellite radio provider Sirius/XM confirmed that it will provide streaming to iPhones and iPod touch devices.

CEO Mel Kamarzin said "by streaming its music, sports and talk channels to users of the iPhone and iPod Touch, Sirius can give its existing subscribers another way to access content and let new customers sign up without buying new radios"

The announcement today makes it clear what happened to the much awaited StarPlayr application that was about to be released and then was killed by the developers, likely on advice from Sirius/XM that the player would not be allowed.

Sirius now has 19 million subscribers, which is 10 percent higher than a year ago. Nevertheless, Sirius took a 4th quarter loss of $245.5 million dollars.

Sirius almost went bankrupt, until Liberty Media bailed them out last month with a $530 million investment.

Thanks to Justin and others who tipped us to this story

Last November, as visions of cranberries and turkey danced in our heads, the first tidbits about a forthcoming Sirius/XM app for the iPhone began to emerge on the Howard Stern fan forums. In January, the satellite radio player's name and details were confirmed -- StarPlayr was on the way from NiceMac.

Two weeks ago, word arrived from NiceMac that the app was neither approved nor rejected by Apple... perhaps keeping it out of the way of an official Sirius app rumored last week. No independent developer wants to be in this no-app's-land between approval on the store and a branded app around the corner, so you can probably guess what happens next.

Early this morning, a blog post on the starplayr.com site confirmed what many of us expected: NiceMac is abandoning development of the StarPlayr app, not only on the iPhone but on Windows Mobile as well. Refunds for WinMo licensees will be available on a first-come, first-served basis until NiceMac runs out of cash.

It's a sad and frustrating outcome, not only for the hardworking team behind StarPlayr but also for the eager fans who were ready to lay down their cash for the app. Without some sort of advance roadmap for internal/partner projects from Apple, or a published list of 'no-go zones' for third party developers to stay clear of the official-app juggernaut, this is going to happen again. I understand that competitive pressures may force Apple to keep licensing and development deals under wraps -- chances are, the team answering emails in Developer Relations has no idea what's in the works up in the executive offices -- but there's got to be a way to avoid this deep chill on innovation and investment from third-party devs.

Update: As some commenters have pointed out, the back-end infrastructure of StarPlayr is being shut down, which will disable the WinMo version of the app. This points strongly towards Sirius/XM, and not Apple, as the Big Bad in this scenario.

Thanks Jim

Streaming radio apps for the iPhone/iPod touch are exploding in 2009. TUAW favorite Pandora was updated to 2.0 a couple of weeks ago, but it's hardly the only game in town. Back at Macworld, Chris Pirillo showed me StarPlayr for the iPhone, which lets Sirius and XM Radio subscribers access stations via the iPhone. The app isn't available right now, but it'll hopefully be in the App Store soon.

Chris demoed the app extensively on his own site and having seen it in person, it is really impressive. Even with the crappy 3G signal we had on our trip to Cupertino, the stations streamed in at nice quality and there was an option to buy a track or album directly from iTunes. XM and Sirius both offer some great stations for talk radio and sports fans, and to me, that's where these types of streaming apps really shine.

Pandora and Last.fm aren't the only streaming radio services around, AOL's SHOUTcast Radio [iTunes link] app debuted in the App Store a few weeks ago and it'll stream your favorite SHOUTcast stations in up to 128k streams (go to Settings on your iPhone, select SHOUTcast and select "allow high-bit streams"), favorite radio stations, search for artists (though the currently-playing artists is a bit delayed) and peruse the extensive SHOUTcast index.

More below...

Aaron let us know that AOL Radio Featuring XM is now available for Mac testers, as of August 25, 2005.

"Have you wanted to be able to listen to the radio stations available on AOL? How about those new XM Satellite Radio streams? Well, now you can! We are happy to present AOL Radio Featuring XM, providing more than 150 AOL Radio stations plus more than 20 popular, commercial free XM stations. Please review the FAQs and Known Issues, and then visit the Test Instructions to begin testing."

The service itself is still in Beta, even for Windows users. Although I am already a proud and very happy XM subscriber, I would be interested in test-driving AOL's implementation. Unfortunately, it won't let me.

I have an AIM account, which allows me to log-in to the beta site, but I am unable to access the AOL Radio tester page. Instead, I am presented with

"This area can not be accessed by your account. This usually happens because:

• Membership or Special permissions are required.
• Availability is limited by geographic region.

If you believe that your account should be able to access this area, please contact Customer Service to report the problem. If you would like to make another selection, click on your browser's back button to return to the previous page."

Since I don't really feel like registering a new AOL account only to have to jump through hoops to cancel it when I am done testing (although my own NY State AG just made it a lot easier), I thought I'd leave the testing to you. If any of our readers are AOL subscribers and you'd like to take AOL Radio for a spin, please report back with your experiences! If you whip up a full-scale review, with screenshots and all that jazz, you might even gain fame and fortune if we're inspired enough to feature your review right here on this site. Leave your comments below or use the contact form to point us to your review.