FlyTunes to Bring Internet Radio to Your iPhone
Mark Hendrickson
32 comments »
A new service called FlyTunes and announced today at CES in Las Vegas will make it easy to play internet radio on your iPhone or other cellular/wifi-enabled device.
The free, ad-supported service won’t be released until January 21st (you’ll be able to get it here as a download…not sure how that’s supposed to work for the iPhone; looks like it will need to be hacked). But it’s already being touted as a challenge to satellite radio, which costs a significant amount of money, requires special hardware, and provides a more limited range of channels than can be found on the net.
FlyTunes will serve up audio content from the thousands of internet radio stations on the web and tailor its selection to your preferences (you can tag favorite songs or songs that you never want to hear again). The service will pre-cache a default of 30 minutes of content from a particular station, with more caching available when you think you might lose cell service while traveling. The company claims that caching 30 minutes of music will only take just over a minute, although this speed strikes me as only possible for 3G-enabled phones, not EDGE-enabled phones like the iPhone. This caching will also allow you to rewind and fast forward through a station.
Since the service will be free, FlyTunes plans on delivering targeted advertising along the lines of Google AdSense. It’s unclear whether the company intends to display ads visually or deliver audibly, or both. In whichever case, it has characterized its advertising possibilities as providing a viable business model for internet radio.
Now if only Rhapsody and other streaming music services would work with the iPhone as well, I would be much closer to never needing to purchase music tracks ever again.
Update: We’ve embedded a video demonstration of FlyTunes below. Looks like it’s actually Safari-based and won’t require any hacking. The demo doesn’t show how well music loads over EDGE, just Wi-Fi, so it’s yet to be seen how practical it is on the go.
nice find mark! i hate that apple didn’t put fm tuner on their ipod - hate it.
Unless they get rid of the ATT lock, this is still worthless IMO.
Or just record the internet radio stations you want to listen to on your iPhone with StationRipper (non-DRM, straight MP3’s). Not “live” but as it can download a few thousand songs a day (splitting them up to track/band named MP3 files) should work…
I “time-shift” internet radio stations to my iPod this way all the time, works great. And all the download time/bandwidth is used at HOME, not on my cell
Finally a FM Tuner, better yet Internet Radio…this looks like a great service on a great device. Just wait until there are all the advertising on it and it slows it down. I bet Apple will come out and create its own FlyTunes.
Actually, if you own an ipod touch(and possibly the iphone) you can jailbreak it, and get iRadio. I’ve only had minor issues with it but since both devices use wifi, I’m able to receive streaming net radio content for free. It’s a bit of a battery muncher but all in all a good solution if you sometimes need music or talk radio to put me to sleep.
Is there site down? The link is bringing up a sponsored listings page.
Dan - URL was incorrect but fixed now. It’s a .fm, not a .com.
The radio station WFMU already streams straight to iPhone. (iphone.wfmu.org) It is powered by TVersity and does not require hacking the iPhone. I don’t know the the tech side of it, but believe it uses QT somehow. The downside is I can’t figure out how to keep using Safari while streaming the station.
Thanks TC I just wrote about it on my blog (most popular ipod touch blog).
There are other services that provide radio stations for iphone and ipod touch but not many.
Visit me sometimes.
Hope my traffic won’t slam this post a lot
Orb also provides Internet Radio to iPhone and it’s already out there.
Rhapsody on the iPhone will be a killer app. Streaming any song to your phone where you can have it anytime, anywhere (including in the car where many people consume music) seems to be very close to a reality. Once that goes mainstream the music industry (and the radio industry) will look a lot different.
@10 Orb has the problem that ddd333 identifies in comment 8. You can’t stream and use safari for anything else at the same time. That is why you need to go the 3rd party application route (at least for now).
FYI, based on the CEO listed in the press release, FlyTunes appears to be the same company (and basically same idea) as Broadclip (http://www.broadclip.com/).
Good Find Paul Joyce @12
why do you think the iPhone will have to be hacked to use this service? Looks like it is designed specifically FOR the iPhone.
With the AT&T service as slow as it is…will probably take about 15 minutes to cache 30 minutes of music!
Bring on the Verizon network!
Ironically, FlyTunes cannot be used while flying…
From the screenshot it’s pretty clear that this is running on a jailbroken iPhone, otherwise it wouldn’t say it’s on cingular. And most of the apps that are currently available for jailbroken iPhones will be easily migrated once the official SDK is released in February. But, Apple will also introduce new apps of the own, at least three, and one is likely to be internet radio. It will actually probably be included in the iTunes WiFi app along with video, ringtone, and game downloads.
hey is this not the original idea of Pandora, bring the radio or music type in your cellphone?
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
You could get 30 mins while in wi-fi.
We’ll all be like Jack Bauer: You have 30 minutes to get to the next free hot spot!
Allen.
The RadioSherpa widget needs to get on the iphone.
If you look at the site little bit better
if you click on link “what is it?” it specifically says no hardware or hacking needed.
IpodTouchTricks - I went back and looked at the “what is it?” demo again but I don’t see where it says no hacking needed.
There are a number of miscues in flytunes messaging that will be fixed when we get back from CES.
FlyTunes is a web app - works with plain vanilla safari - no jailbreak or hacks needed.
@Mark: can you do me a favor and change my “first post” name to IPTricks please?
Thank you.
just fo the record its not a app it is accesed by safari then it enquees it to your ipod for about 30 minutes of play even unconnected. So there is no Jailbreaking needed.
CANT WAIT
for streaming music on ur ipod touch and most likely iphone u can go to seeqpod.com
Here’s flytunes latest demo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOem3kHDImc
Just received my Flytunes login a few moments ago. I’ve been listening to Smooth Jazz and Real Country stations, so far. I really love it! I’ve tested it with both WiFi and Edge. I’m no audiophile, but I can’t tell the difference. And, there was no break in the music when I switched back and forth.
I can confirm there’s no jailbreaking or hacking required. I’m running iPhone 1.1.3 on AT&T in USA with no jailbreak.
I rented a car for three weeks which had Sirius. I like Flytunes every bit as much. Better because it’s free. And, yes, there are ads.
ya, i just got mine today too. i like how they sort all stations into catagories. anyone been able to make a custom radio station yet?
I just got mine today too…and it worked for a bit on ESPN but no music station….it is off for updating…for another hour or so
this software does NOT require you to HACK your phone. In other words, it is a web based radio application that does NOT VOID YOUR WARRANTY.
FlyTunes is the best phone app, since sliced bread. Who wants to pay for XM satellite software, hardware, subscription, etc? FlyTunes is FREE!