BBC Radio in iTunes

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Here’s a neat hack from the team at BBC Radio Labs, a research and development team looking at new ways to broadcast and distribute radio content:

Team member Matthew Wood explains his thinking thusly:

“Here’s what I was thinking: all my music is in iTunes. iTunes, via an Airport Express, plays out through my Big Speakers. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use it to find out what this week’s Thinking Allowed is about, or to enjoy some rough dubplate pressure from 1Xtra? … Simply, the app grabs programme information from /programmes and re-presents it to iTunes in its native tongue: DAAP.”

In short, Matthew’s code grabs the BBC’s Flash-based online radio service and hooks it up with iTunes, ending the need for using horrible Real Player (and therefore browsers or Dashboard widgets that depend on it). What a neat idea.

It’s not very consumer friendly yet, but it’s pointing in a very attractive direction.

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