Rediscover the serendipity of radio

As vehicles for bringing music to the masses, radio and records were born within a few years of each other, shortly after the end of World War I. From the start, there was a tension between the joy of being able to hear whatever music we wanted and the passion to discover new sounds that radio stations magically delivered through the air.

Today's new music gadgetry has done little to ease that tension. The iPod, other MP3 players and a slew of new technologies just now coming on the market have shifted the balance of power away from radio as tastemaker and toward consumers' ability to select, hoard and arrange our own music. But try out a shelf full of new gadgets and you'll still search for a way to mold your own soundscape while also exposing yourself to new music.

In recent weeks, I've spent time with three new toys that purport to create new kinds of listening:

• The XM Radio XM2go is a wearable, Walkman-style satellite radio that can also record up to five hours of music off the radio.

• The Motorola iRadio is a cellphone that turns your car radio into a cross between an iPod and an Internet radio, letting you download hundreds of channels of music at home, then tune in as you drive.

• The Boston Acoustics Recepter Radio HD is one of the first digital radios, a tabletop unit that opens the door to the second and third channels that broadcast stations are starting to encode into their over-the-air signals.

If this makes you want to grab your old transistor, lock the door and listen to AM radio through your pillow forevermore, I have bad news: One day soon, you will be forced to change. Just as Congress will require us to give up our old analog TVs within a few years, radio, too, is going digital. Today's radios will become obsolete; they may still pull in broadcast signals, but the sound quality and choice of programming will seem outdated.

This is a huge boon for the electronics industry but unsettling to consumers and the content industry. The music business, already so panicky that it's suing its own customers in a vain attempt to stuff the downloading genie back in the bottle, frets that the new gadgets will turn radio into a service that pumps music into your house for you to keep without anyone getting paid.

Young people are voting to control their own music. Bridge Ratings interviewed 2,000 Americans ages 12 to 24 and found that 85 percent prefer their MP3 player to broadcast radio. The same group picked Internet radio over traditional radio, 54 percent to 30 percent. This is an enormous cultural shift from the 1970s, when a young generation was turned on to revolutionary music by a new technology — FM.

But wait: In this fast-spinning world, some researchers already see "iPod fatigue," the creeping sense among many young people that the 500 songs on their iPods feel stale and predictable. Simply because listeners know what's on their players, they suspect that better sounds are hiding somewhere out there.

That's the hook these three gadgets use to enter your life. Now that we've collectively had our fun playing downloading deejay, we realize we're missing out on the serendipity and education radio always has provided.

Reaching beyond dashboard

Satellite radio's 100 channels of music attract millions of listeners, but the folks at XM and Sirius, feeling pressure to compete against the iPod, are reaching beyond the car dashboard and into the portable market. XM got there first, with three models of portable receivers.

The one I sampled, the Pioneer AirWare ($120-$300), is larger than an iPod, closer to the size of the early 1980s Walkman. The reception isn't as steady as car or home-satellite radios, but the programming is so much more varied and attractive than broadcast fare that an occasional signal dropout seems like a small price to pay.

But neither I nor my teenage daughter found much use for the unit's big innovation, the chance to time-shift your favorite shows or tunes for later listening. XM feels like a utility, constantly pumping out a broad variety of music. We didn't feel the need to save programming when we could simply tune in live. (Exception: Some of XM's best programs are scheduled events, and being able to save those for later listening adds value.) When we did come across a song we wanted to save, by the time we got the controls going, we'd miss the first 10 or 15 seconds of the tune. We'll take just the radio, thanks.

Marriage of devices

Motorola's iRadio is an early attempt to marry the cellphone, car radio and MP3 player. Based on the theory that before long the cellphone will be your primary provider of all portable electronic services, Motorola has gone charging into the content business, teaming with record labels and news companies to set up 480 channels of music and talk.

With an iRadio-compatible phone, an adapter for your car radio, and installation, you would spend about $200 upfront and a monthly payment set at $7 compared with a $13 fee for satellite radio. Then you'd take your iRadio home each night, sync it up with your computer, and it would be ready to be used on foot or in the car, providing about 18 hours of entertainment. (The cellphone wirelessly transmits iRadio to your car audio, providing digital quality sound.)

"This is the device formerly known as the cellphone," Motorola's Paul Alfieri said. "Why carry a second device? The cellphone's already on you. This is digital music that someone else programs for you, so you have the element of surprise plus the power of an iPod."

Although Motorola is hiring some radio programmers at iRadio's Tempe, Ariz., headquarters, the device's programming is heavily defined by the recording industry, with channels devoted to genres or a single artist.

A channel might be called "Essential Guitarists," but it would play artists from only one record company. The programming is in some ways deeper than satellite radio's — there's an all-LeAnn Rimes channel, for example, and many channels follow the model of DVD bonus material, with interviews, B-sides, back stories and so on. The talk channels are similar to those on satellite radio, drawing from brand-name providers such as CNN, NPR and Accu-Weather.

The chief selling point of iRadio for the record industry is that the content is, as Alfieri puts it, "a pure promotional vehicle to the content company." Motorola doesn't employ disc jockeys as filters or tastemakers; it lets record companies make the choices. (The benefit to the consumer is that there are no commercials — except that the entire channel is, in a sense, a commercial.)

Unlike XM2go, iRadio doesn't let you keep music: If you like what you hear, you hold down a button on your radio and the song is added to your wish list. The next time you sync up your iRadio, you're offered a chance to buy the song.

Side-channel experiments

Radio companies are chasing new audiences while fighting to retain old listeners. To encourage innovation and compete with new technologies, traditional radio is experimenting with the side channels that most broadcast stations will soon operate. But programming available so far is dull and canned. With digital audiences still way too small to justify spending money on DJs, many stations fill their side channels with uninterrupted music. Even after the radios become more common, most stations intend to run their second channels as jukeboxes, with little or no personalities, local news or other community connections.

Digital channels do promise to restore some musical variety to free radio. For all the innovation, however, radio has not yet found a way back to the 1960s and '70s, when it provided popular fare for a mass audience on AM and more esoteric programming for minority interests on FM. Until radio finds a way to create a new form of that model, it will continue to lose out to consumers' desire to explore the infinite sounds of the digital world.