Hardware? Hard Luck.
To replace a really old Denon that finally gave up the ghost, a few years ago I bought myself a Yamaha VX-R675. It’s great – I can tune into the radio, listening to that great legacy media without dealing with retargeted ads that keep pummelling me with the same ad for something I already own. #surveillancecapitalism
It has this great feature called “Net Radio” included in the device, allowing access to the world of internet radio.
THE FUTURE IS NOW.
But then, the radio service that they rely on to support that feature changed its business model. The press release is a triumph of modern truthiness PR. (italicised edits for clarity, mine)
Internet Radio Station Access Issues
Currently, Yamaha products with internet radio streaming capabilities provided by vTuner are having difficulties with accessing the streaming service. Here are the current details that Yamaha has recognized so far:
A customer may see a message saying, “See yradio.vtuner.com for more info about vTuner’s full access.” on user interfaces of Yamaha products or even may hear it through audio playback. This links to a message that states, “to be able to receive full access to vTuner’s service, we [vTuner] would like to ask you for a small contribution of $3 a year. All contributions will be used solely to support the vTuner service.”
The message provided on screen or via audio is delivered by vTuner, and Yamaha does not endorse the performance of the paid service offered by the vendor we selected to include in your device.
Yamaha supports many streaming services rather than picking a single approach. Each one of the services may change its business model at any time, which is independent of Yamaha and outside our area of control and we didn’t consider this when designing our approach to this feature category or technology for inclusion in our product line.
As announced in March 2019, the free internet radio service supported on some Yamaha products has been switched from vTuner to airable.radio via a firmware update on select models to ensure access to free internet radio stations possibly creating a future problem when airable also adjusts its business model.
Please note: once this firmware is applied, all vTuner bookmarks and added stations will become inaccessible from your Yamaha products reducing the value of the device we sold you.
Some models are incompatible with the available Airable firmware update that could provide a direct replacement for the vTuner internet radio station access to ensure future connectivity. If you want this feature, we suggest you junk your device and buy a new one from one of our competitors. Internet radio station access is subject to the availability and functionality of the original internet radio service provider, vTuner, for the following models:
INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE FIRMWARE UPDATE: A long list of devices, including mine
As a technologist, I can see why all these legacy electronics companies are getting eaten by the modern players. The problem:
- Because they don’t think about their brands / customers and the long term future of their devices in the home
- The strategy is about shipping more boxes, rather than shipping fewer sustainably
The solution is pretty straightforward:
- Simplify the on-device user interface for every device on this list to play say 1-5 netradio streams
- Update the domain in the firmware to netradio.yamaha.com
- Put in place a translation to a net radio service of your choice
- Control which stream plays in your new Yamaha streaming service dashboard
AND GET IN THE MODERN AUDIO GAME As it is, Yamaha is out of my consideration set.