• Advertising Age, Thursday, September 10, 2009 10:25 PM

The unlikeliest benefactor of Apple's fifth-generation nano is the radio industry. The 5G nanos are compatible with Apple's first FM tuner. The radio tuner allows users to tag songs they hear on the radio, sync the songs with their iTunes and then purchase the songs, where applicable, from the iTunes store via the Radio Advertising Bureau's "Buy From FM" platform.

The FM tuner also allows listeners to pause a song from a live radio feed, rewind it or resume listening after switching to another station. In addition, The FM tuner could enable radio stations and advertisers to tag their radio ads to become interactive through the MP3 platform.

The Apple deal gives the radio industry a much larger share of the MP3 market - previously, the only other FM-tuner deal was with the Microsoft Zune worth only about 4% or 5% of the total pie. "Putting radio on portable appliances is going to be the next big thing," says Jeff Smulyan, CEO of Emmis Communications.

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