Radio Song Tagging

This is a very kewl idea, and perfect for any iPod owners that have ever said "Oh! I want that song!" when they were listening to the radio. HD Radio is a radio song tagging service that lets you tags songs you hear on the radio for your iPod.

How does this work?

HD Radio is digital radio, not satellite radio, which means that it works like conventional radio where the signal is broadcast from the station and picked up by your receiver. What digital radio does is transmits both analog and digital signals with the digital signal being compressed before the signals are transmitted from a tower. Now, with conventional radio signals, any obstructions between you and the tower will reduce the quality of the signal you receive. HD Digital is specifically designed to compensate for these natural obstructions that deflect the signal and reduce the background noise that you hear when you receive the broadcast. You know - all that fuzzy stuff that makes listening to your favorite songs on the radio nearly painful.

And, just like conventional radio you do not have to pay to get HD Digital radio, you simply need to have the right kind of receiver. This is where tagging comes in. With an iTunes Tagging enabled HD Radio receiver, such as the Jensen JiMS 525i, you can hit a "tag" button on your receiver when you hear a song that you want, this stores the digital information that was broadcast along with the analog music. The next time you sync your iPod with your computer you will see a list of "Tagged" songs, from there it is simply a matter of selecting which ones you want to buy and download from iTunes.

Not sure if you have HD Radio where you live? You can search for your local radio stations to see what stations are already broadcasting in HD - some you might not even have known are broadcasting digital signals. I know I was surprised when I ran a search for my area and found out that the station my dad listens to through the night is. In fact, there are a lot of stations in Alaska broadcasting digital signals. 24 of them as of my search.