One thing odd has occurred lately in my music-listening life. Two weeks in the past I acquired the brand new fifth-generation iPod Nano. Since then, my once-rigid playlist of non-public requirements has all of a sudden been infiltrated by each day doses of NPR, school radio and the occasional traditional rock riff. Sure, Apple has pushed me again into FM radio.
I bear in mind effectively buying my first MP3 participant a decade ago–it was a five-song, 32 MB-capacity Rio Diamond. This participant hooked me on the on-demand programming of moveable MP3 gamers. And with out an FM tuner (a characteristic that has been absent from each one in every of my MP3 gamers over time), this participant catalyzed a decade-long hiatus on most of my FM radio listening.
The newest Nano is the primary Apple MP3 participant to ever embrace an FM tuner (even if most non-Apple MP3 gamers constructed prior to now decade have a radio tuner). And it seems this machine is a superb reintroduction to the FM world. It has a TiVo-like buffering system that routinely backs up quarter-hour of programming, permitting you to pause stay radio for lavatory breaks or telephone calls (though you possibly can’t save the feed.) It is usually terribly simple to make use of, though some customers could not respect its lack of ability to work with out headphones plugged in (the participant makes use of them as a slide-in antenna).
In fact, that is solely shocking as a result of it comes from Apple–a firm that has carried out a bang-up job of defending iPod devotees from the terrors of the FM dial. And not using a radio tuner, the iPod performs no advertisements, no obnoxious DJs, and solely songs that, by advantage of you loading them onto your participant, you might be prone to love (or a minimum of have beloved at one level). The shortage of a radio tuner fairly merely matches with the Apple mentality. For an organization that thrives on iron-fisted management, radio waves should have appeared chaotic and uncontrollable. Their sound high quality is commonly ruined by static. Their programming is typically offensive to style. In these regards, terrestrial radio is inferior to satellite tv for pc radio, Web radio and nearly another methodology of listening to music.
However there’s one thing inimitable and uncooked about radio. The best way it fades into static as you drive out of a metropolis or go too deep right into a subway tunnel. The unyielding perkiness present in over-caffeinated morning-show hosts. The exceedingly apparent playlists compiled by traditional rock stations. The best way school radio DJs (of whom I used to be as soon as one) punctuate each different phrase with an “uhhh” or “you understand.” This nostalgia is just bolstered by the truth that, for many people, the radio was our first introduction to music. For others, establishing a crystal radio equipment was a DIY ceremony of passage. Positive, it is middle-of-the-road stuff, nevertheless it’s additionally a definite form of enjoyable that may’t be replicated by self-programmed playlists–or even the area of interest programming of satellite tv for pc radio
Radio has one other necessary factor going for it. In an period of mounting month-to-month payments, radio is among the final really free types of media. Radios themselves are very low-cost, and so they require no subscriptions or charges of any type.
Will the brand new Nano’s radio present a big enhance in Arbitron rankings? Possibly not, however I would not be stunned if it helps introduce a brand new generation–and reintroduce an previous one–to FM radio’s distinctive listening format.
