However, it is not a small piece of work to enable this technology; and for many stations means considerable work on their transmission chain (something that RadioDNS services avoid, incidentally).

If you take the time to search around, you would see that Radio stations that become Affiliates with Apple do recieve commission for songs that are bought that were played on their station and tagged by someone while listening to that station. All you have to do is sign up for the program and make sure your information and metadata are in line with iTunes so they sync. I’m not being rude, I just wish people would simply do a quick Google search before speaking bad about any company, yes I do love Apple products but that in no way influences my opinion. Have a good day, and feel free to check out the PDF from Apple describing this whole process and everything about the Affiliate program!

http://images.apple.com/itunes/tagging/pdf/itunes_tagging.pdf

“currently available only in the US on radio stations that support iTunes Tagging”

What an odd addition. I mean, hooray for putting in an FM radio with actual functionality and all, and it looks like a great selling point in theory, but unless the radio stations get a cut from sales of the tagged songs, they’re probably not going to bust their bahookies putting in the technology that supports it. Speaking from a US perspective, if you go outside any major city and into a sub-100 market and you’ll see little to no use of RDS, let alone HD or any sort of song tagging. But maybe Apple assume they can make enough sales from the New Yorks and LAs and Chicagos rather than the Schenectadys and the hills and hollers. I wonder, though. Other than maybe a few more listeners, what’s in it for the stations?

They would have been far better embedding that iphone application that can automatically detect what song is playing, than relying on already cash-strapped stations to invest in something new. Particularly in this economy.

I know you yawn at the frequency display, but I’ve seen Arbitron research that suggests more people use frequency to ID a station in a diary than anything else. =)

In contrast the DLS “Livetext” is being dynamically updated by production staff throughout the programme, as well as taking the same track playing information that you can find at the incredibly useful http://trackplaying.appspot.com

Perhaps it is a technical constraint of the National RDS encoders, or a USP for DAB?

Perhaps time someone had a rethink over this discrepancy given the inevitable ubiqity this new iPod will gain following Christmas 2009?

(These are my personal views and not those of my employer)

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh