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People with CarPlay are mostly just listening to AM/FM radio

To me using a flash drive is the equivalent of using a cassette or CD in the past, which I did a lot of.
I've got about a thousand sound files on that flash drive, including three- or four-song clips from (unnamed) streaming sources. And I've included many classic jingles from NYC stations, which give me a little jolt of "home" when shuffle lands on them. So it's like driving around with my own private station, with my own private playlist. It can go for a couple days without repeating, so it's more than just a mix tape. And nobody else need ever hear it (except my wife when she's a passenger). No fuss, no muss, no commercials, no need for performance royalties.
 
I've got about a thousand sound files on that flash drive, including three- or four-song clips from (unnamed) streaming sources. And I've included many classic jingles from NYC stations, which give me a little jolt of "home" when shuffle lands on them. So it's like driving around with my own private station, with my own private playlist. It can go for a couple days without repeating, so it's more than just a mix tape. And nobody else need ever hear it (except my wife when she's a passenger). No fuss, no muss, no commercials, no need for performance royalties.
Hey, at least it's not an 8 track. Close by today's standards, but not that old.
 
I've got about a thousand sound files on that flash drive, including three- or four-song clips from (unnamed) streaming sources. And I've included many classic jingles from NYC stations, which give me a little jolt of "home" when shuffle lands on them. So it's like driving around with my own private station, with my own private playlist. It can go for a couple days without repeating, so it's more than just a mix tape. And nobody else need ever hear it (except my wife when she's a passenger). No fuss, no muss, no commercials, no need for performance royalties.
Apologies to your wife.
 
Apologies to your wife.
I'll convey your sentiments. Fortunately, the jingles are short and she also enjoys most of the music on the flash. (And for the songs she doesn't, there's the FF button, or "jump to next track", or whatever that "double-arrow" is called.) My point, and there was one, is there are other options, even if you don't have the latest greatest software toys from the Silicon Valley duopoly. You too, oh great radio professional and/or geek, can also figure one out that works for you, even in the absence of CarPlay or AndroidAuto.
 
This talk about using a thumb drive (basically a bunch of flash memory) to play thousands of songs in your car (or wherever) reminds me of when CD walkmen began to be popular, and CD players in cars were the big deal, and I kept thinking -- there's got to be a way for a completely solid state playing device, with no moving parts whatsoever, to play music. Especially to play this new, digitally encoded music. With no moving parts it would never wear out.

Because I had learned that yes, CD players can wear out, because the lasers have a lifetime. We all knew cassette machines ate tapes. LPs would wear and styluses needed replacing. CDs were supposed to overcome most of that. But the three or four dead CD players in my junk bin are evidence that CD players do have a lifetime.

Then we had an experimental music on hard drive system at work, and I thought it was cool. It was a little clunky, but it worked. But hard drives are mechanisms, and they also can wear out. MOHD was the standard about 2 years after that.

It was a few years after we worked on that clunky MOHD concept when the first portable MP3 players became available. In a way, the MP3 is still the perfect, portable music delivery mechanism. No signal required to capture a stream. No moving parts. All it needs is a battery. Today, with most people, it's probably MP3s or WAVs on their phone. Even an old, outdated smart phone can store a ton of music for portable play.

The advances in tech really have been amazing. My old LPs and cassettes still play -- most of them. I never play them much, though (stereo got ruined over the years), and CDs still play, but the MP3 revolutionized how music is delivered to the consumer. And AFAIK even streaming sites use MP3's, or WAVs.

Sorry for the sidetrack.
 
Steve Jobs solved that with the iPod.
Yeah, but there were other MP3 players out before the IPod came out. What ITunes did was make it easier to purchase singles in the form of a sound file. Before that, you either converted your own off CD or used filesharing, like Napster, or services like MP3.com.
 
Yeah, but there were other MP3 players out before the IPod came out. What ITunes did was make it easier to purchase singles in the form of a sound file. Before that, you either converted your own off CD or used filesharing, like Napster, or services like MP3.com.
Steve's real genius on this was cutting deals with all the major labels to allow Apple to legally sell their records as downloadable files, and to treat most every album as a collection of individual singles. And divert (IIRC) 29% off the top of every sale to AAPL's bottom line.

Dealing with music companies is like trying to herd cats. (Very much like the cable industry.)
 
Steve's real genius on this was cutting deals with all the major labels to allow Apple to legally sell their records as downloadable files, and to treat most every album as a collection of individual singles. And divert (IIRC) 29% off the top of every sale to AAPL's bottom line.

Dealing with music companies is like trying to herd cats. (Very much like the cable industry.)
And.... In the process of cutting those deals with Apple, the record companies killed the album, which eventually killed a lot of revenue. But that's another story. :cool:
 
Steve's real genius on this was cutting deals with all the major labels to allow Apple to legally sell their records as downloadable files, and to treat most every album as a collection of individual singles. And divert (IIRC) 29% off the top of every sale to AAPL's bottom line.

Steve's other real genius:

Recognizing that nobody wants to carry multiple devices and realizing that the phone was going to be the indispensable one.

When cellphone companies were busy trying to figure out how to integrate music players into their products, Steve figured out how to make the music player he already was building make phone calls.
 
Steve's other real genius:

Recognizing that nobody wants to carry multiple devices and realizing that the phone was going to be the indispensable one.

When cellphone companies were busy trying to figure out how to integrate music players into their products, Steve figured out how to make the music player he already was building make phone calls.
That was probably in their development roadmap back when the iPod was conceived. But the technology wouldn't be there for another half dozen years, so start slow with a family of pocket-size music players. Then, once the world was comfortable carrying around an Apple device for their music, enhance it into a very portable computer that, oh by the way, also made/received phone calls, and connected via WiFi or cellular to the Web. And let 3rd party developers expand its functionality through their apps, which could only be sold on Apple's app store, in exchange for 30% of revenues.
 
And let 3rd party developers expand its functionality through their apps, which could only be sold on Apple's app store, in exchange for 30% of revenues.

The embrace of outside developers is a uniquely Apple thing. Every year, they hold a developers convention where they introduce new products to developers first. This is in contract to iBiquity and now xPeri, owners of the HD Radio parent, and refuse to allow any changes or improvements to their copyright for any amount of money. It's a closed system. So yes, Apple gets a share of apps that are sold on their platform for their devices. That has made a lot of those developers very rich. HD Radio on the other hand has not been a big success. Sometimes it's better to share revenues and technology rather than retain 100% of a closed system.
 
The embrace of outside developers is a uniquely Apple thing. Every year, they hold a developers convention where they introduce new products to developers first. This is in contract to iBiquity and now xPeri, owners of the HD Radio parent, and refuse to allow any changes or improvements to their copyright for any amount of money. It's a closed system. So yes, Apple gets a share of apps that are sold on their platform for their devices. That has made a lot of those developers very rich. HD Radio on the other hand has not been a big success. Sometimes it's better to share revenues and technology rather than retain 100% of a closed system.
I agree with you, almost completely. (The "almost" part is the 30% cut, which many developers feels is excessive. Though the only dog I have in that fight is the handful of AAPL shares in my IRA.)
 
The "almost" part is the 30% cut, which many developers feels is excessive.

They should consider that their 70% cut is based completely on it's use with a product they don't own or have any right to. There are other app stores. So there is competition.
 
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