Listening To Music From Denver In My Car In Nashville

Jimmy Carter in his homebase Nashville

That's a long headline ... but the jump in technology is just as large. Everyone knows you can listen to all kinds of things on the Internet. Lots of companies have been pushing that venue for years. Well, I just got a new iPhone 3G.

The Palm and the standard phones just were not getting me on the web that was my #1 need. I had to have a way to go online with high speed with a good viewing screen. It was nice to have the iPod features of being able to download an episode of "Entourage" or watch via 'Tunes the "NBC Nightly News." Another desire was to have an Apple product since most of the time they simply WORK without drama.

Well, I am using a Verizon second phone for calls. This shiny toy has a crappy camera so my love affair with it was limited UNTIL I downloaded the AOL/CBS Radio feature via the iTunes store a FREE application. This is where is big stuff lives.

Holy cow! I could now listen to WQKY/Tampa or the Wolf in Denver on the iPhone's small speaker. I listened to Sean Hannity in Philly on a Talk station, L.A. traffic on KFWB and the weather in Oakland on KCBS/SF - all LIVE, not a podcast. The delay seems to be approx 90 seconds. But basically LIVE ... how cool is that?

What a game changer this is if this spreads. You have unlimited streaming time on a cell provider (for now anyway) and you listen to the station you want. It's better than XM for me anyway. I still have XM, but I never bought the portable XM player. But the fantastic thing was hearing some of the country's great radio stations in my car or at my daughter's volleyball practice.

It's just a signal of where things are going. A signal ... Remember one day the person with the cell phone was cool, then it seemed like the next day everyone had one. Who predicted the widespread use of text messaging? That everyone would have cell phones and they would knock off the home landline business? Who predicted the demise of the VHS and virtually all tape formats for home entertainment? The widespread use of satellite TV with over 400 channels?

The music business and radio are in a change mode ... in content and hardware.

Change is rarely predicted and equally rarely planned for. It's just the way of the world. You can make a hula-hoop or Frisbee, but a few gamblers are the only ones who actually predict a sensation. Many more examples of wrong ideas.

Elvis was a sensation and so were the Beatles. but radio didn't always get to the dance especially in those two races. Elvis needed Ed Sullivan and TV to blow up, and the Beatles put out several singles pre-Ed Sullivan that didn't do much of anything. The power of TV put the Liverpool lads on the map.

This iPhone technology will be the future at some point. Portablility of free music and information will work. Whether the iPhone is it or something else, the idea is fantastic. Right now it is just cool ... and I'm not sure everyone knows about this!

Great idea to put Brad and Carrie together on the CMA show. Or it sounds like a great idea....

The financial crisis is damn scary. Even if you're rich, you have to be more than a little concerned. How all this gets into the concert business and recorded entertainment business is going to be seen very quickly here in the 4th quarter. Stand by. This ride feels bumpy.

I hope I don't have to park my iPhone....