Monday, April 04, 2005

Another Reason Why Your Cell Will Be A Universal Remote

From C/Net news New service brings radio to phones.

Start-up MSpot hopes to take on the fledgling satellite radio industry with a new service that delivers streaming news, talk and music programming to mobile phones.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based MSpot is set to launch its MSpot Radio service on Monday, initially targeting customers of Sprint's PCS Vision mobile phone service

The service will start out with 13 channels of live and on-demand programming, including feeds from National Public Radio. All programming is delivered as a streaming media feed over the Web, making it accessible by just about any Web-ready phone with an all-you-can-eat data plan. MSpot will charge $5.95 a month for the service.

MSpot CEO Daren Tsui said he expects to compete mainly with the burgeoning satellite radio industry by offering a service that's cheaper than XM or Sirius, doesn't require a special receiver and can penetrate inside buildings, as opposed to fickle satellite signals

MSpot initially will have only eight channels of broadly defined music programming, as opposed to the dozens offered by XM and Sirius, but Tsui said working through the Web means he can add new streams as soon as there's demand.

I don't know how much of a threat this will be to satellite radio, but I do think it makes more sense if a user could select the specific stations they wanted. The menu that both sat radio provide is overkill in my opinion. Give me a couple stations of music and news of my choosing and I'll use it.

What I see next is MSpot offering a music downloading service from the stations you listen to.

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