FlyTunes: Streaming Music Channels on Your iPhone

Apple is close to releasing the SDK for the iPhone/iPod Touch, but with native applications potentially months away, more and more developers are finding ways to improve mobile Safari web applications without the need to jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch.

One of the current application gaps is the ability to play internet radio on your device. Fortunately, FlyTunes fills that gap by offering the ability to stream high quality music channels direct to you iPhone/iPod Touch.

Taking advantage of the ability to drag and drop applications onto the home screen (requires firmware 1.1.3), FlyTunes operates like an individual application which launches in Safari and provides many genre based music channels to choose from:

• Country (Classic Country, Real Country)
• Dance (Dance Hits, Disco Ball, Chilled, Dance Hits LBR, Party)
• Decades (50s & 60s, 60s & 70s, 90s, The Mix, 80s, The Beatles, 70s)
• Eclectic (Lounge LBR, Classical Guitar, Bluegrass, Love Songs, The Office, Classical, Soundtracks)
• Jazz (Smooth Jazz, Modern Jazz, Uptempo Jazz)
• News (BBC, NPR)
• R&B (Blues, Urban Adult, Gospel, True R&B)
• Rock (High Voltage, Live!, Top Rock, Today’s Rock, Alternative Rock, Classic Rock)
• Sports (ESPN)
• Talk (Talk & Comedy)
• Top 40 (The Hitz, Jamz, Todays Hits, Hip Hop, Classic Rap)
• World (Bombay Beats, World Hits, Salsa)

The music streams through Quicktime in an MP3 format. Over a Wi-Fi connection on my iPod touch, the quality is much better than I expected. I didn’t get the opportunity to try this on an iPhone over EDGE – please give this a go and report back in the comments below. Overall, I found the service to be very responsive, with the pages being light in content, there was no delay switching between genres or starting the music stream.

Navigation is simple. To switch between genres, tap on either the left or right arrows and the stations of your chosen genre will appear. To start listening to a station simply tap on the station name. Once streaming, the user has options to return the genre selection, add the station to their favorites, or email a friend about the current station.

All said and done, FlyTunes is a great addition to the iPhone/iPod Touch platform with a lot of potential. While light on features at this time and limited to only a handful of streaming stations, there is a lot of opportunity for FlyTunes to offer a much broader selection of stations, including public radio from around the globe (I’d love to see more BBC and NPR) as well as album art. Since it’s leveraging the Quicktime engine, it may well be possible to extend the app with video content.

FlyTunes, available free, is currently limiting the number of new users to balance uptake on their servers. The sign-up process is relatively simple. From the sign-up page, provide your email address, answer a few questions and wait to receive an email with a URL to launch on your iPhone/iPod Touch. The rest of the profile setup is actually completed on your device. As you complete setup, be sure an add FlyTunes as an icon on your home screen.

share permalink ping 8 Comments