Apple announced this week the inclusion of an FM receiver in the new iPod Nano range. Of course Apple being Apple they’ve not just included a radio, they’ve enhanced it brilliantly, with “pause/rewind” and something called “tagging”.

Pause/Rewind speaks for itself and is such a simple useful concept.

Tagging is a system where FM broadcasters transmit Apple iTunes Catalogue IDs in spare RDS ODA (Data) groups identifying the song playing. This then displays the Artist/Title information on screen and when the listener hits “tag” the information is stored. When the Nano is sync’s with the PC the song is offered for sale via iTunes.

It’s brilliantly simple yet its downfall lies in the fact it’s so Apple-centric. If the FM station hasn’t signed up to broadcast Apple tags the entire system dies. If the song being played is not for sale on iTunes the entire system dies. If the radio station is not making money from it, what’s the point, the system dies.

Tagging very much appears to be a customer acquisition tool for Apple with very little margin for the broadcaster. However, being able to see the name of the song playing will definitely be welcomed by the listener.

DAB has does this and more already. Pause/Rewind is available on high-end receivers and the now playing information is pretty much standard on all DAB sets. So why does it take a company like Apple to do pretty much the same thing and make the world go “wow”? Discuss!

Apple Video here.

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