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Toss out your real radio–Spotify Radio will play music you actually like

Spotify has added a Pandora-like radio station to its music-streaming app. To be clear, Spotify always had Spotify Radio–it’s just that it was junk.

Previously with Spotify Radio, you’d click the little-used tab and be presented with a confusion of options. You had to pick a genre, and you could also choose set the decades you’d like the music to come from.

The trouble was, nobody but bad commercial radio stations chooses music like that, and the results were predictably awful.

The new Spotify Radio is more like Pandora or Last FM. You pick a track and hit play. Spotify will somehow come up with a playlist based on that song, and you can skip any tracks you don’t like, as often as you like.

And it works. I picked one of the pre-chosen “stations” based on my “Top Artists” (you can also choose “Top Tracks,” “Popular” or even–still here–Genre). Based on Nicholas Jaar (whose Space Is Only Noise If You Can See has been an obsession for the last two weeks), Spotify consistently returned equally downbeat, writer-friendly tracks. I even discovered some new artists.

The big advantage Spotify has is that it knows the listening habits of all ten million of its customers. That’s not a bad data pool to draw upon when making recommendations. Spotify doesn’t say just how it picks tracks for you, but I’d guess it has at least something to do with this data.

Who cares? After all, Spotify lets you pick any of its 15 million tracks directly. But what about those times when you have one track in your head? Now you can build a whole playlist around it, automatically. Yes, that’s something you can get from Pandora, too. If you live in the U.S.

To try out the new Spotify Radio, you’ll need to go grab the pre-release beta version of the app (Mac and Windows).

Discover the new Spotify Radio [Spotify Blog]

We’re still waiting for some official word on Sirius XM’s seemingly imminent Android-based Lynx radio, but the company has now announced another first. That would be the Edge Dock and Play Radio pictured above, which is the company’s first radio to support the so-called “Xtra Channels” that are a part of Sirius XM 2.0. As for the radio itself, it can of course be used either at home in a dock or in your car, and it’ll give you ten pre-sets for your favorite radio stations, along with a fairly large (non-touchscreen) color display that shows the usual song and station information. Those interested can grab this one right now for $140 — press release is after the break.

Sirius XM rolls out Edge satellite radio with expanded channel lineup originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It might look blessedly cable free, but things could get messy, fast

Cyclist? Incorrigible gadget freak? Do you still — miraculously — have space on your handlebars to clamp one more widget? Then I have just the thing for you, you bearded freak, only you’re going to have to make some friends if you want to use it: The HIOD One cycling communicator.

The HIOD One is a Bluetooth communication setup for up to five cyclists, and it looks to be a real pain to use. The communication part looks great: you can talk to one person at a time, up to 400 meters (1,300 feet) away via Bluetooth (Bluetooth 4.0, presumably). You can also use it to listen to music, and to talk on the phone.

But then we get to the practicalities. First, and most sensibly, is the bar-mounted head unit with a high-contrast OLED display. This is the control center. Then, there’s a wireless voice unit, clipped to wrist or chest or even helmet. And by wireless I mean wireless until you plug in the mic and the earphone, which you’ll need to actually use it.

For some, this will kill the deal right away. A lot of people don’t like to ride with headphones for reasons of safety. For me, a single earpiece drives me crazy with its asymmetry.

If you manage your cables properly, though, this is a nice hi-tech alternative to walkie-talkies. On the other hand, for anything but ultra-lightly equipped road racing, you might as well just buy some cheap walkie talkies, right?

The HIOD will eventually go on sale when the company has managed to find some dealers to sell it.

HIOD One product page [HIOD Sports via Andrew Liszewski]

See Also:

• Airdrives: Bike Headphones That Won't Kill You

See that faint silhouette lurking on the horizon? That’d be a wave of white space internet, and it’s inching ever closer to the US. On Wednesday, the FCC confirmed that it will begin testing a new database that will enable gadgets to operate on white space airwaves, nearly a year after first ratifying its “super WiFi” initiative. The Spectrum Bridge database, as outlined last year, will map out all channels that aren’t being used by radio or TV services, thereby preventing broadband devices from interfering with broadcasts. The system will be tested over a 45-day period beginning on September 19th and ending on November 2nd, in order to make sure that it correctly distinguishes available channels from those currently in use. Cable operators and wireless mic users are invited to register with the database to test its accuracy, but this trial period could easily be extended if the Commission determines that further tests are in order. And, though there’s still no indication that unlicensed broadband devices will be hitting the market anytime soon, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski seems confident that this white space spectrum could drastically change the industry. “Unleashing white spaces spectrum will enable a new wave of wireless innovation,” Genachowski explained. “It has the potential to exceed the billions of dollars in economic benefit from WiFi, the last significant release of unlicensed spectrum, and drive private investment and job creation.” You can read the FCC’s full public notice, after the break.

Continue reading FCC to test white space database at its own pace

FCC to test white space database at its own pace originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tivoli Audio announces PAL+ and Model 10+ clock radios, we go ears-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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