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I wish to make a remark on the advent on internet streaming services and what I do for my own music collection.
A number of people on this site and other sites have remarked since the rebranding of MSR back to its heritage-branded stations 2UE, 3EE and 4BH that its similarly overlapping with formats of other stations including WSFM, WS80s, Gold, Smooth, Smooth-Relax, 2CH, Fun, Zoo, Mix-90s, 2Day-easy and other 'classic-hits'/golden oldies formats. In addition, there are streaming services such as Spotify with its customised streaming service.
Now Spotify is offering a streaming service for people listening in cars to internet streams. The streaming service will interperse the customised stream with news and 'surprise songs'. Given that car listeners are a substantial part of a radio station's audience, Spotify may well be a threat to these stations. The threat may against radio stations may well be present with listeners on their mobiles listening to internet streams while commuting on public transport.
If you are driving a popular brand of motor vehicle, it is likely that the car has an infotainment system. The car's infotainment system may well have the capability of streaming internet directly.
However for Toyota-branded cars made from 2017 its infotainment system is capable of mirroring the driver's mobile phone for both Android and iPhone operating systems. This means for Toyota vehicles, your mobile phone will be streaming the internet stream.
For Camrys made between 2017 and 2019, a software update at the Toyota dealer is required.
Lesson: check if your vehicle's infotainment system supports direct streaming of audio from the internet or whether your car's infotainment supports software mirroring of either your Android or iPhone mobile phone.
An alternative to Spotify: build your own collection of lawful music files.
A customisable collection of mp3 files built from your own CD and vinyl collection may well be more customisable especially if the particular music you like is not available on Spotify.
For budgetary reasons, I don't use internet streaming services such as Spotify. This is especially where streaming media may be in the order of megabytes per hour, depending on the bitrate quality. For me it is more economical for me to purchase CDs and vinyl than to pay for an internet plan. As a bonus I have control on the quality of the mp3 bitrate.
Consequently I make private lawful mp3 backups of these songs and/or albums pursuant to s109A of the Copyright Act (Cth) as amended in 2006.
For vinyl recordings, using a computer and ADC connected to the turntable, I remove the clicks, boost equalisation particularly at the high frequency end and remove any tape hiss. Funnily enough those CDs which are supposedly labelled as "digitally remastered" still have tape hiss. You may be surprised that you may hear harmonics of 50Hz (Australia or UK) or 60Hz (US) on either vinyl or CD recordings.
The resulting mp3 backups are stored at 320kbs stereo instead of the usual 144kbs.
Real variety in my playback. My music tastes are wider than a particular station's radio format, whether it's the ABC and commercial media.
I press "shuffle play" on my on mp3 player and if I'm not in the mood to hear a shuffled song, I skip it. Towards the top the hour I switch off the mp3 player and listen to the news.
I still do the 'channel twiddling' including watching concerts on TV to pick up new ideas for music.
Thank you,
Anthony of exciting Belfield