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song and artist information on RDS

B

bobdavcav

Hi all,
This is going to be a bit of a complicated question, so hear me out here.
I had an iPod Nano several years ago, and it could tag songs off the radio. These would be added to a playlist the next time I synced to iTunes, and I could buy them right from the player without going to the iTunes store. I made heavy use of this feature, the only limiting factor being that I did not have a credit card at the time, and so had to wait for iTunes gift cards in order to purchase the songs I wanted. We now have new vehicles that display song and artist info on stations that provide this through RDS. However, it sounds like most stations in my market do display this, and when we had a car that displayed this information in my previous market, many did as well. So, why was it only the iHeart stations I could reliably tag songs off of? In many cases, the tag option wouldn't appear, while in others the option would appear, but the song wouldn't come up when synced with iTunes. If all but maybe one or two FM stations in my market displayed this information, why was it only a handful that this would actually work on? Is there something specific the stations needed to do that made this work?
 
bobdavcav said:
If all but maybe one or two FM stations in my market displayed this information, why was it only a handful that this would actually work on? Is there something specific the stations needed to do that made this work?
Click to expand...
Simple answer? Back when you had a now-discontinued iPod, there was an agreement between certain stations and Apple, where one could tag a song that would be made available for download in the iTunes store. Fact forward fifteen years, and iTunes has migrated to more streaming and less downloading. iTunes tagging from radio RDS or PAD data has faded into obscurity, along with your iPod. In other words, a lot less stations are participating in tagging.
 
bobdavcav said:
We now have new vehicles that display song and artist info on stations that provide this through RDS. However, it sounds like most stations in my market do display this, and when we had a car that displayed this information in my previous market, many did as well. So, why was it only the iHeart stations I could reliably tag songs off of?
Click to expand...
The system did not operate on the artist name and song title. In order for this to work, a broadcaster had to put an Apple-proprietary identifier into their automation for the exact track to buy, and send that out in the HD Radio Program Associated Data (PAD). This was done do prevent consumer disappointment. If a station played "My Generation" by the Who, there are a dozen or so recordings, including several live recordings, the original mono single, a stereo re-record and even an instrumental.

This piece from Radio World has some of the technical details. It lists a variety of broadcasters who agreed to do song tagging, but I suspect it was only an experiment for many of the groups listed, or was shelved as a cost-cutting measure during the 2008-09 recession.

As far as I can tell, only Clear Channel (now iHeart) deployed this quickly across their stations. Emmis is the only other group who I know did used the tech, but Emmis took three years.

The fundamental problem with market adoption: the tagging system was launched in 2007. The iPhone also launched in 2007. You know one thing an iPhone could do? Buy music from iTunes. No need for a special radio tuner, and some of the tuners that existed for this were quite pricey!
 
So, was this mainly an HD thing? Right after I graduated high school, I bought an HD tuner that plugged into my phone. By this time, I had figured out how to use the wish list feature on iTunes, and found when tagging certain songs, the version I wanted wasn't what came up, so mainly switched to searching for what I wanted from the same phone and adding it there anyway. I did, however, tag one song from a station with that tuner, and it was off a station that never worked with the analog only iPod.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
That is my understanding, but I'm far from certain.
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As I recall, Clear Channel implemented iTunes tagging including RDS, but only in a couple markets. Ultimately this was a receiver limitation, not transmission. Most tagging was done using the HD Radio PAD artist/title information.
 
In my case, it wasn't a receiver limitation, except for the fact that the radio in question didn't have HD capability. I lived in the Seattle market at the time, and only had access to HD radio for about nine months from June 2012 to March 2013. I bought the iPod in question in September 2010 with money I had earned from my first job that summer. That was shortly after the linked article was written. In my market, it was Clear Channel that worked the most reliably, with CBS also having it, but not always working. The only Clear Channel music station that didn't have it was 106.1, and it would appear there before I got rid of the iPod. If I were to guess when that happened, it was when they moved studios in 2011. If Alpha had it, it was only on KINK, which would have been and still is, the only Alpha station in HD. I took said iPod down to Portland where I now live at least once, and I can't remember whether I tried it or not. I remember trying it in Los Angeles when I took the iPod there in April 2011 and iHeart had it on all stations except 92.3, but none of the other stations I tried had it, including CBS and Citadel. When I got the HD in 2012, the one song I used that radio to tag and eventually purchase was tagged off of 92.5, then in the process of being sold from Sandusky to Hubbard. Actually I don't think that had been announced yet. The other companies I couldn't test because I was never in any of their markets. I'm not sure what was with KPWR at the time, but that would have been interesting to see if I could get a clear enough signal.
 
bobdavcav said:
In my case, it wasn't a receiver limitation, except for the fact that the radio in question didn't have HD capability. I lived in the Seattle market at the time, and only had access to HD radio for about nine months from June 2012 to March 2013. I bought the iPod in question in September 2010 with money I had earned from my first job that summer. That was shortly after the linked article was written. In my market, it was Clear Channel that worked the most reliably, with CBS also having it, but not always working. The only Clear Channel music station that didn't have it was 106.1, and it would appear there before I got rid of the iPod. If I were to guess when that happened, it was when they moved studios in 2011. If Alpha had it, it was only on KINK, which would have been and still is, the only Alpha station in HD. I took said iPod down to Portland where I now live at least once, and I can't remember whether I tried it or not. I remember trying it in Los Angeles when I took the iPod there in April 2011 and iHeart had it on all stations except 92.3, but none of the other stations I tried had it, including CBS and Citadel. When I got the HD in 2012, the one song I used that radio to tag and eventually purchase was tagged off of 92.5, then in the process of being sold from Sandusky to Hubbard. Actually I don't think that had been announced yet. The other companies I couldn't test because I was never in any of their markets. I'm not sure what was with KPWR at the time, but that would have been interesting to see if I could get a clear enough signal.
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KINK has only recently been HD! Apparently, the only reason they are now was to give an origination point for the former(leased)We96.3, after that station was sold and Alpha needed to feed a translator from somewhere. This way, they can use KINK-HD2 and We's programing survives as "We102.9" on a translator.
 
I think the HD dates back to when they got the 102.7 now 102.9 for the sports simulcast, but you may be right that it doesn't go back any farther. That would imply though that tagging never happened with Alpha. It does seem odd to me that so many had it on HD only, I would have thought that more would have it as part of their analog signal as well.
 
I believe the RDS service that allowed song tagging was called Radio Text Plus. I programmed the RDS on the small market stations I used to work for in Illinois, but we never configured the encoders we used for Radio Text Plus. The encoders we used were the Inovonics 730 and 732, as the 730 was discontinued when we added a translator for our AM station.
 
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