Out of the Box

Sirius and XM have convinced the Department of Justice that its merger won’t create a monopoly in the radio, or more broadly, music playback, space. While the FCC is expected to follow suit with the DoJ, there is a rush of parties that are looking to add terms and conditions to the merger. Censorship on satellite radio? What would be the point of a premium alternative to terrestrial?

It’s certainly true that there are far more options available for high-quality digital music playback since the time that XM started broadcasting from space. The iPod is frequently brought up as a competitor, but I’ve never really thought of it as a major one. First, the iPod accelerated its move into the vehicle rather late in its rise to popularity and many of the solutions are primitive or awkward.

I’suspect that I, like many MP3 player owners, have music on their players to which they’ve never listened. Mostly, though, particularly for Apple’s ecosystem that has never been as aggressive about music discovery as, say, Rhapsody, iPods are about playing back what you have, not what you don’t. And keeping them fresh requires round-trips between the house and car. So, what satellites really buy the companies better than any competing technology today (save terrestrial radio, which was around at its launch) is direct and unfettered access to the vehicle

Wireless technologies such as 4G and WiMAX have the potential to present a credible no-hassle alternative to satellite radio, but the cost structures don’t support the infrastructure required to deliver it for the foreseeable future. One could argue that they didn’t for XM or Sirius, either. But with a reduced customer acquisition marketing burden, their expenses should become more manageable. In the meantime, the Slacker Portable satellite add-on looks like it will be promising alternative when it arrives.

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Time-shifting terrestrial radio has been around for a while. with standalone products from PoGo Electronics, purveyors of fine windup remote controls, the unfortunately capitalized radio SHARK Mac and PC accessory from Griffin, and the new MP3 player filling station from PopCatcher, taking another stab after the TraxCatcher never came to market.

But now a new wave of Internet radio time-shifters are coming to market. There’s the imminent Slacker Portable and the definitely not portable iShift Internet Media Receiver (check out the introductory video with the pornotronica soundtrack), which  packs an 80 GB hard drive. Who needs to record 1,300 hours of Internet radio? in any case, this living room-sized component will be able to sideload its storehouse to the iPod and other MP3 players and uses an Internet recording service from Timeless Radio which looks competitive with the iRoamer service launched a few years back by Aussie firm Torian Wireless.

The MP3 filling station concept, whether it uses FM, Internet radio or some other source, stands to simplify the process of loading up a portable music player.

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