If you’ve been paying attention, you know I like the idea of subscription-based content services – specifically, movie rentals and all-you-can-eat music. And here we were with another rumor that Apple could be moving in this direction. According to updated AT&T iPhone data plan documentation:
Consider that just 20 minutes of iTunes radio takes 20MB of data.
So is someone at AT&T confused about iTunes WiFi store purchases, will Apple allow Internet radio streaming (as seen in iTunes) to the iPhone, or does Apple have an entirely new service in the works? The blogosphere feeds on speculation, so I may as well also point out an updated desktop iTunes client (v7.5) is due any day…
If Apple was smart, it would make a revenue sharing deal with Sirius and get satellite radio available in iPods and the iPhone. I have Sirius and it made me forget about regular radio altogether. Could you imagine the proliferation of satellite radio considering the sales figures of iPods? I’m quite sure Sirius would bite on the deal.
Weren’t there rumors of a Sirius/iPod tie-up a few years ago? Maybe they held meetings or something. Hmmm.
I think iTunes Wifi Radio is a big chance. Apple needs to get in on the satellite radio though, they should put that on their next iPods and totally one up the Zune.
What’s on XM or Sirius that you can’t find on internet radio? Except maybe Howard Stern or some of the talk programming. But for music programming, net radio has XM and Sirius beat!
More on this here:
http://weblogs.redeyechicago.com/iphoneblog/2007/11/coming-soon-to-.html
Hm, but why would HD Radio need to use the data plan? I’m not buying it.