A Radio Version of Tivo? Hey PopCatcher, Catch This.

The Catcher of Pop

The one thing that everyone complains about in regards to FM radio is the overabundance of commercials. Actually, people have gripes with much more than just that, but for blogatory purposes, we'll just focus on the commercials themselves. Imagine radio without those pesky clips of jammed sounds: uninterrupted streams of music, more room for DJs to blab, and countless other possibilities. The radio audience would increase without question, as people would have more of an incentive to tune in. But what if a commercial-free land of fantasy could be taken to the next extreme? The next step would involve being able to download the tracks from the radio as they are played, allowing you to carry around all of the latest jams on your MP3 player fresh from the voice-box and free of all those ads and DJ speak. Will there ever be such a glorious solution?

According to a company hailing from Sweden, the answer has arrived in the form of brand-new technology. Their product, the PopCatcher MusicDock MD-601 (elegant yet simple, right?), promises to be the consumer's radio-combing best friend, as it offers a type of tool that has been previously unfounded in the world of radio. As detailed on the website, the PopCatcher receives radio signals and, through its one-of-a-kind technology, distinguishes excess programming - DJ talk and commercials - from the songs on the station at hand. The MusicDock then separates the songs and converts them into individual MP3 files at 192 kbps, and loads them onto a portable MP3 player that is only compatible with the MusicDock. The result is a playlist on your portable music device of songs that just appeared on your favorite station, without the guff of ads and DJs.

So it seems like the technology would be a hit in a mass market, right? Well, there seems to be several roadblocks that will prevent this from actually becoming a marketable product. The main concern with the product is that it has been developed, but has not been manufactured and the company is simply taking pledged orders for the appliance. How could a company that has just a prototype of the product available on their website, in addition to a form for purchasers to be informed when the machine is available, entice consumers to want to buy the product? PopCatcher does not even have a price set on it, and the company will inform purchasers when it in fact has a definitive value. In this regard, the company is merely creating hype for a product that has no foreseeable release date, in addition no informed cost.

But while the product seems to lack an existence, there will be many problems with the technology when the appliance is made available (apparently, some people already received advance promotional versions of it). As a radio DJ that has edited music for over five years on a weekly basis (hip-hop can be dirty, you know), I have found that there is no program that can scan through a music file and separate the chatter from the music. While the MusicDock promises to do this through the art of reading algorithms, it is not as simple as it may seem. On the site's cheesy flash movie that shows how the machine reads these waves, it makes it seem as if the song itself is a straightforward up-down pattern, which boggles my mind. A music file is completely complex, and looks a lot like the pattern shown at the beginning of the flash demo. In this way, the company is completely manipulating the ignorance of the public in regard to reading music waves by presupposing that it's as easy as pie to do it. In essence, scanning through algorithms is extremely tedious and difficult, and I firmly believe that a product cannot do such a thing.

Maybe it's just me being conservative in reference to editing music and upset that I could have potentially wasted so much time slaving in front of my computer, individually highlighting curse words in algorithm form and reversing them. But there are other factors that lead me to believe that the technology cannot exist. DJs tend to play pumping music beneath their vocals, although they usually do not speak in a rhythm that accompanies that of the track. In hip-hop and rap, emcees do rap along to the beat, but in comparison to a DJ talking over a beat, they both essentially feature vocals on top of a rhythmic track. And in the same way that rappers often go off of the beat and play with delivery, a DJ can accidentally sync up the track in terms of rhythm then fall off of it, creating a mirror between a rapper's and a DJ's algorithms. It essentially boils down to the question that if the MusicDock is determining between two algorithms that look similar when constructed in waveform, how can it be so smart as to separate the two? My response is that it simply cannot. If a human cannot determine how algorithms differ by simply looking at them, then how could a machine? I suppose that technology is invented to do things for humans that they cannot do themselves, but in this case, the technology has not been explained enough to evoke credibility. That, my Internet friends, is reason enough to end my lament against the product.

But I continue. Say that the product can actually measure algorithms and convert them into MP3s for their player. The problem that lies in selling the product in a package is that consumers are reluctant to switch from their iPod to a new music player. The MusicDock MP3 player seems sleek and pretty enough, but wouldn't it be much more convenient if you could cut out the cost of a new player and simply use the one that you already have? That downside of purchasing the product as a package is that it diminishes its value, and gives consumers less incentive to purchase it. But if the product is successful, then buyers will have to deal with another downside of the technology. When the machine separates the MP3 tracks, it does not label them, since the radio does not attach tags to every song that they play. Listeners will be completely unknowledgeable about what song is playing, making DJ chatter seem like it actually serves a positive role. Good without the bad? I suppose not.

Finally, there is the question of how legal the product will be. The point of the radio is that there is no way for listeners to steal what they are hearing, as they can do with the internet and peer-to-peer services. With this product, consumers will be in possession of whatever the radio plays and additionally be in control of what songs remain on the player, allowing the user to shape their library according to their tastes. As CDs are vanishing from existence and the MP3 is taking over as the dominant form of music technology, the player will become a tool of piracy, and with this newfound availability, the FCC will have a field day with regulations and product constraints. Is this product worth all of the trouble for everyone who is involved, including consumers, technology developers, radio personnel and the regulatory boards? If you believe that stealing songs from the radio should be available for anyone who wants to do it, then the answer is obviously yes, but for those of us who prefer to listen to music on our iPods without all of the technological hassles, then the answer is clear: PopCatcher, stay away.