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How about a listener sponsored human curated eclectic internet radio station? So, if I make my own playlist on Spotify I am limited sort of by what I know and already like. Algorithm-driven streams like Pandora also wind up feeding you what you already like in a way. I do subscribe to a paid streaming service and that is great when I know what I want. But I love to turn on Radio Paradise and let the expert DJs choose stuff that is sometimes new to me and often familiar as well. It is eclectic in taste, but so am I, from jazz to rock to classical one might get any cut.

The new web player has a main stream, a rock stream, a mellow stream and a groovy (more ambient and psychedelic) stream. There is a smartphone app that lets you capture up to five hours on your phone for offline listening. Listener-sponsored so free unless you decide to kick in something. The DJs don't nag either. And they have forgotten more music than I have ever listened to. Let's not forget a song-relevant slideshow option.

FYI I have no connection to this operation except that I like it and am a modest supporter. And am known to talk it up from time to time.

When Google shut down its RSS reader I noodled around and landed on Feedly. They try to upsell me all the time, but it is not a big annoyance. Their free service feels like RSS, and I think it still uses RSS. I have a broad range of periodicals covered in my feed. Maybe 50. From the Register to Variety to the NYT. With a couple of the periodicals I actually pay for e-subs sao I can read in. I can parse headlines nationally in about an hour. I never look at Facebook for news.. Or Google much either. It is creepafied by my past viewing. How can something be new if it is always based on my past habits. It produces a fallacy like Amazon's shopping tracker, which is a hoot with the crap it serves up. I do not want news tailored to my past interests by a bot. I want human editors in quality publications to tell me what is interesting TODAY. Same reason I don't like robot radio streams. I listen to Radio Paradise, a human-curated eclectic stream and I get informed and surprised by some people who know and love music. The expression gets used, but in reality it is sort of hard to actually surprise one's self. Much easier if somebody else does that job for you.

I'm going to AC-shill for Radio Paradise. No ads, occasional requests for support. Run for decades by a professional DJ. If you don't like the current song, you can tell it to play something else for a while.

If the music was worth buying, people would buy it.

The problem is that 'worth buying' is a moving target. A hundred years ago, you had a very small number of AM radio stations, none playing music all of the time. Buying some music was then very valuable, because it was the only way that you could guarantee being able to listen to music whenever you wanted (unless you were rich enough to hire a band).

Twenty years ago, there were a few FM stations that played music most of the time. Enough that you could probably turn on the radio and listen to a genre that you liked, even if it wasn't one of your favourite artists. Genres were quite broad, however, so you may get a lot of things that weren't really very close to music that you wanted to hear. Buying music was still quite valuable.

Now, there are thousands of Internet radio streams. You can connect to one playing music that you really like. I'm in the UK, but I often listen to one in California. When I hit play, it's almost always playing music that I enjoy listening to. I've not bought much music for the past few years, because I find that I rarely listen to music that I've actually bought. I only do when I'm not near an Internet connection, but still want to listen to recorded music, which is fairly rare. I get a much wider selection of music that I want to listen to by turning on the (Internet) radio.

Now, the record companies could do something about this by making tracks cost about 5 for a DRM-free download. At that price, every time I heard a track I liked, I'd be tempted to buy the entire album and listen to it, and I'd end up with a very large collection of music - large enough that I could listen to it in shuffle mode and get a similar variety to the radio - quite quickly.

I pay Radio Paradise a small amount every month, but this goes to cover their costs - very little (if any) of it actually goes to the people who made the music. I'd happily double or triple my donation if I had some assurance that, at least 50% went to the artists. Unfortunately, the money that they pay for licensing goes to SoundExchange, and getting money out of SoundExchange is almost impossible for artists.

I'm a regular listener of Radio Paradise http://www.radioparadise.com/, largely because they'll often put songs after each other that sound great in sequence, but are of completely different genres. Independently owned, not what I'd call a college vibe.

one scheme might be to ask for donations

I support a commercial free, listener-supported Internet radio station every month for the simple reason that I would be devastated by the loss if they ever went away (or * forbid, started playing commercials).

I think this model is workable, if your goal is to keep things simple and run it like a small business. I'm sure that's not what the big-money-media types want to hear, but simply asking people who value what you have to offer to voluntarily support you can do wonders. Look at how many people have an * to their user name here on Slashdot.

So I listen to SOMAFM.COM

And Radio Paradise.

RS

Alternatively, you can also switch to another station :D

That's what I came here to post. My favorite station is commercial-free and listener-supported. I encourage people to seek out stations and other business who are employing this business model and support them.

This is really the best response to the idiotic behavior of the MPAA and RIAA. Don't "steal" music and movies, support those who are offering an alternative. They can call us "thieves" all they like, but if we can point to examples like RadioParadise - which exists solely because people voluntarily send them money when they could simply be free-loaders - it really deflates the argument that people are not willing to pay for something they can also get for "free."

Tune in to Radio Paradise (but not the 192Kb/s stream, because it's connection limited, and I'm listening to it). He plays a nice selection of music from the last few hundred years, biased towards recent stuff (i.e. most stuff from the last 10 years, a quite bit from the last fifty, and a the occasional thing from earlier). You might be surprised about how much good music has been produced recently. I was - I've actually started buying music again since listening to it.

What, without record companies to help us along we'd have to sift through every dross song released to find something good? Lots of new bands are being "discovered" by record companies now because of online communities that supported them, and found them, previous to their "discovery".

Plenty will do this for not much money - money most 1/2 way decent bands can get doing gigs

Much of I'm talking about only works ideally

"the next level of the dungeon is complete, we'll release it, public domain, when we receive $X in donations"

http://www.radioparadise.com/

Listener supported radio with no commercials. Not everything is non-riaa, but there is lots of excellent indie music to discover there.

"We know that Apple has destroyed the music business -- in terms of pricing -- and if we don't take control, they'll do the same thing on the video side," Zucker said at a breakfast hosted by Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications.

Apple pays the record labels for every download they sell. If they're not paying them enough, the labels have the right to take their business elsewhere but (except for NBC) they don't, so by definition they're making enough money.

The key to understanding his complaint is his phrase "in terms of pricing". What that means is that the labels can no longer monopolistically control the price of recordings any more.

And I think this is a good thing, good for the fans, and good for the people who really deserve to benefit from it: the musicians.

I think such a loss of control is the reason the labels are so opposed to Internet radio: because everyone and his dog can run a streaming radio station from their home, Internet radio takes away from the big labels the ability to decide who the big stars are going to be. Payola just doesn't work anymore when fans have a choice of thousands of streaming music stations to listen to at every computer.

The result of this is that I've noticed artists who were first made popular at places like Radio Paradise getting airplay on traditional broadcast stations. And I can't remember the last time I listened to a ClearChannel station.

Many people need to support the band in order for it to stay afloat.

Check out Radio Paradise, which plays eclectic mostly-pop/rock (but some jazz and blues and electronica and country and occasional classical). http://www.radioparadise.com/ You'll likely hear a lot of stuff you already like, and hear some new stuff too. You'll never hear anything new listening to your own CDs.

Radio Paradise is an internet radio station that works well with free software. I listen/streamrip using VLC. The only thing I don't like is the lack of an Ogg Vorbis stream (or some other free codec) :-P.

Radio Paradise is an internet radio station that works well with free software. I listen/streamrip using VLC. The only thing I don't like is the lack of an Ogg Vorbis stream (or some other free codec) :-P.

One reason people may "stream-rip" is to time shift, so they don't have to listen to commercials, idiot radio "personalities" and - for that matter - crappy music while driving.

At home and at work I listen to RadioParadise. While I'm on the road, I listen to my (bought-and-paid-for) music collection on my portable player, much of which was purchased after I discovered the artist while listening to (drum roll) Internet radio.

Although I haven't bothered to do so myself, I'm sure there are people who enjoy listening to streams from their favorite station while away from an Internet connection.

Of course, doing things this way helps expose independent and obscure artists to potential fans (and paying customers) which is something the major labels don't want, so I understand why they are fighting Internet radio at every step. They control the Terrestrial stations through payola and such. They are trying to use these performance royalty rates to extend their control to independent stations like RP.

I've been wondering the same thing myself. How are they going to enforce those payments, exactly? The most they MIGHT be able to do is shut the radio station down, but that sure isn't the same thing.

http://www.radioparadise.com/ the same guy that does this is/was the engineer for kpig radio in gilroy, ca, the FIRST internet radio station :)
they have been running on linux there for some time now. They are a landbased station too so they need to follow some laws... but bill was interviewed by linux journal in 2004 about the setup there. (the dj's call the main server HAL :)

You are not being asked to lobby in favour of just "the RIAA's clients." The "performance royalty" is collected for all songs played, regardless of whether the artist is signed with an RIAA-affiliated label or not. An Internet broadcaster's choice is to either pay royalties at the rates prescribed by the CRB to SoundExchange for each song played times the number of listeners, or to negotiate separate deals with the copyright holder of every song they play.

The rates are so onerous that they threated to make Internet radio unprofitable, and therefore only an option to big companies and terrestrial stations (who don't pay the "performance royalty" for their over-the-air broadcasts, btw) who have other income sources to subsidize the losses they will inevitably suffer from their Internet broadcasts.

So these rates threaten to put out of business the same Internet radio stations who would be likely to play those independent artists you (and a lot of others) enjoy supporting, further entrenching the RIAA-controlled stations and giving listeners fewer choices.

Bill Goldsmith of RadioParadise has a lot of material and links on his site detailing how the rates are applied and what they mean to independent, listener-supported, commercial-free stations like his.

Big box retailers are interested in volume and marginal pricing. The range of music they pick, the bands that get prominent shelf space and the albums that appear in the advertising will all be driven by the bottom line.

No - if we want diverse musical forms to survive the big box stores, it will be despite them, not because of them.

Small dealers will help - but at best they can only provide small niche markets. Internet sites tied to such retailers may help a lot. For me though, the future of diverse music depends on the internet providing the resources to find out about less known bands and albums and hear stuff I can't hear on the radio. But right now, the Internet Radio station is on the brink of an extinction event. So support Save Net Radio before it really is too late.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

I heard about this yesterday on Radio Paradise (and submitted it). They are hoping that the bill will pass in the House before the deadline. If this happens, then they hope to get a reprieve until it's been heard in the Senate before they have to pay the royalties. I hope it passes, since I listen to Radio Paradise and WCPE quite often, but since I'm not in the USA I can't do much directly since it's nothing to do with my elected representatives.

Another faithful RP listener here. I've also bought many CDs of artists that I first heard on RP. I rarely listen to commercial radio anymore (unless my wife is driving, because she likes listening to oldies). When I'm in the car, I listen to public radio. When I'm at my desk, I listen to Radio Paradise. This works well, since the language part of my brain that I use to listen to talk radio isn't as heavily used when I'm driving.

Another faithful RP listener here. I've also bought many CDs of artists that I first heard on RP. I rarely listen to commercial radio anymore (unless my wife is driving, because she likes listening to oldies). When I'm in the car, I listen to public radio. When I'm at my desk, I listen to Radio Paradise. This works well, since the language part of my brain that I use to listen to talk radio isn't as heavily used when I'm driving.

I just realized this.

I am a big fan of RadioParadise.com. I have purchased a total of 15 CDs over the past year or so. All 15 (I kid you not) were by artists introduced to me by RP.
In my case: No RP, no CDs. Especially now, you greedy pricks.

The link posted was broken, so here is the fixed version:

http://www.radioparadise.com/

Thank you for the discussion, Robert. I think there are a lot of us hoping this won't turn out to be the "worst case scenario." A collective of webcasters - including the proprietors of my favorite Internet radio station - are hoping to negotiate a "percentage-of-revenue" style royalty payment structure with the RIAA that would fairly compensate artists for the use of their work, while allowing independent sites to survive. This is how the previous rate was calculated. Broadcasters - including heavy like AOL and yahoo - proposed a system based on revenue to the CRB during last year's hearings, but they were ignored. The Board went with the system proposed by SoundExchange, which bases payments on the number of listeners.

(Imagine the howls of protest if FM stations had to do the same).

Still, the idea has a chance, as the RIAA backed off similarly onerous fees in 2002. We can only hope. There may be alternative solutions, as you proposed in the post I am replying to, but it would be a shame for what are essentially small business people to have to leave their own country simply to pursue their passion.

By the way, I know this isn't really your axe to grind, but any attention you could give this issue on your blog, or in general communications you participate in, could only help. There is a very short window (two weeks) where appeals can be made. A public outcry sparked by some unwanted media attention might be enough to get them to back off these outrageous fees.

Okay, I'll stop bugging you about this now.

I know, and I appreciate what you are saying. The sad thing is the very stations threatened by this - the independent, in some cases commercial-free ones that play an eclectic mix and take chances - are the ones that would encourage that next great independent artist, and give him a conduit to potential fans.

It's very hard to build a listener base. Most people are just not prepared to pretend the music they grew up listening to (and probably still love) didn't happen.

The Clear Channel stations have access to other revenue sources. They can afford to pay the Royalties for their Internet streams, and watch the little guys go down. Once they have the same strangle-hold on Internet radio as they do on terrestrial radio, you won't be able to tell the two apart.

Would a U.S.-based company (like my favorite, Radio Paradise) not still be required to pay it, even if their servers were in Canada? Bill & Rebecca would have to leave their country (not that we would'nt welcome them up here).

The RIAA lobbyists have been a busy lot. On Friday, they got the Copyright Review Board to grant them a fee based system that will essentially shut down the majority of small Internet Radio stations. Way to go boys. Bring on that corporate commercial media. http://www.radioparadise.com/ http://www.save-internet-radio.com/2007/03/02/save -internet-radio/

deliver the www to my car

Soma is not "free", it is "listener supported radio". Don't leech off those who contribute, but contribute what you can, and what you think it's worth (obviously you do think it has value).

My favorite is Radio Paradise

-R

Give me Radio Paradise: commercial free, listener supported and a great format. I use Streamripper to record it and play back later in the car.

http://www.radioparadise.com/ Radio Paradise operates much like a public radio station - listeners contribute funding to support the station. They have around 10k listeners a day, which isn't huge, but they have NO commercials during the broadcast, and the closest thing to "sponsored by" is the ability to buy music from Amazon/iTunes through the website, thereby contributing a tiny bit to the station. The DJ writes all the playlists, and it's pretty fantastic. Old-school radio programming style, with a broad variety of music. This is what internet radio should be, and what terrestrial radio has failed to sustain. I don't worry about the stream too much, since I listen at work 99% of the time, and the network is solid enought that I never have to listen below 128k.

I listen to Radio Paradise daily here and they along with supporting their running costs are working on paying off their old debts this month. So far they have raised almost $30,000 this month.

It seems that with the right combination of music, and website design internet radio does work. They have taken the route of no advertising in their streams, and make all of their money off donations, t-shirt sales and referral revenue.

The internet radio station I listen to, Radio Paradise, seems to be doing all right, and it's run entirely on user contributions and affiliate programs (iTunes, Amazon, etc). There are no commercials and it isn't even a non-profit. In fact, they recently topped ten thousand simultaneous listeners for the first time. The only minus is that they occasionally mention being listener-supported and ask for donations. Nowhere near as obnoxious as NPR pledge drives, though....

I know this is just one example, but it shows that it's possible to have an internet radio stations with free streams be a successful business.

Some excellent stations, like Radio Paradise seem to stick around based only on donations. I suppose the owner isn't getting rich or anything, and the calls for donation are frequent, but they seem to be able to maintain themselves without advertisements and while keeping the quality high up.

In addition to SOMA, a few others I enjoy:

Radio Paradise for better "classic rock", Smoothbeats for uncensored hip-hop, and Frequence3 for French pop/top 40.

The great thing about internet radio is the amazing selection you can find if you look around a bit. The bad thing is you need a net connection.

Well, cause an experienced DJ may make the transitions more interesting to listen to than your average "randomizer". Especially, if thousands of people upload new songs everyday which are then reviewed by a critical commitee. All of this, plus much more in this ad-free radio. Check it out, it's really adictive! http://www.radioparadise.com/

If downloading isn't time sensitive, I don't know what is.

I agree totally. The web may be primarily text, but google video of the day is nice, not to mention streaming video clips from the BBC, video tutorials on new programming tools, etc. And just listening to the radio while you surf. Anyone who thinks that this stuff is the same if you wait half an hour for it to download has never used it. Heck, a minute's wait really breaks the experience of it.

For reference, I'm on a UK ISP with a 4Mb uncapped account. I could use a little more bandwidth once in a while for GVOD.

The video web is waking up, and it's hungry for bandwidth.

I don't find it to be stuttery at all. The sound quality is...adequate. Its not massive variable bitrate quality, but for streaming music its pretty damn good. The only benefit over iTunes, imo, is the subscription thing. The subscription part is what I use it for. The only times I've ever actually paid to download/burn songs was when a coworker needed some reasonably obscure songs for her church choir to practice along with...found pretty much everything she wanted and made a CD for her (does that count as a good deed?).

If you're looking for a place to buy and download music...i'd personally stick with iTunes. Rhapsody won't give you any benefits over that. Its strength is the ability to stream anything from their library that you want to. I use it at work all the time (although for my musical tastes, i could probably just as easily get by with Radio Paradise http://www.radioparadise.com/.

I actually like rhapsody's personal radio station thing too. Make your own "radio station", plug in 5-10 bands that you like, and you have a customized radio station playing those bands and other music that they determine are "similar" (they do a pretty good job of that, though).

Sheesh, I sound like an ad guy for 'em. YMMV.

-p

Hey, thanks to the Internet everyone lives in this weird Radio Paradise area.

I'm checking this out now, and I'm pretty impressed... I put in Yo La Tengo and Pandora starts off with (surprise surprise) "Autumn Sweater" (for those of you unfamiliar with the band, it's vaguely like starting off with "Stairway" if I'd put in Zep--it is a great song, but it's such an *obvious* choice that it almost makes you want to roll your eyes). Pandora followed with the Church (I've heard the name, but never the music), and then a string of great artists I've never heard of, and coming back to YLT for one of my favorite songs with an obscure Simpsons reference, "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House". I wish it could do a little more breadth--it seems all these songs have been picked due to similarity to Yo La Tengo's style when they're wearing their straight-ahead-rock hat. And I just noticed that "Autumn Sweater" and "Let's", other than tempo, are surprisingly similar. My favorite web radio station is awesome because it manages to be cross-genre while maintaining a broad cohesive feel. But Pandora's pretty cool... also, is there a way to export the playlist for the radio station?

I haven't bought a CD in years. And I've stopped downloading them too. I've discovered that the majority of the stuff they promote isn't worth anything at all. I have a ton of CD's that I never listen too anymore because I'm sick of them. Why buy CD's when you're can't possibly listen to them all the time, or all at once for that matter? It's a waste of money.

I haven't stopped enjoying music though. I get my fix from internet radio like http://www.radioparadise.com/. Or from subscription based services like itunes or napster. Actually I got rid of my napster subscription because I found the DRM on my portable mp3 player too cumbersome and slow. I was thinking maybe itunes might be better and was going to give that a try.

There are alternatives to supporting this business model of suing children. If everyone stopped buying their crap and suppported better models based on distribution of material rather than the material itself, then everyone wins.

I personally would rather go without their crappy music than support them. Think about it, when you buy a CD you're funding their legal department that sues children.

Also, contact http://www.radioparadise.com./ The owner/operator was spotlighted in Linux Journal a few years ago about his control system, 100% homebrew, FOSS product. He might have quite a few tips for you.

I also how I can support them buy buying things at apple or amazon by taking a link from there instead of just donating cash money. They get a small percentage of what your sale. For example I believe they get a nickel out of every song you buy from itunes if you go from their link.

Radio Paradise has also been operating for years. 7,226 Listeners on right now - I'm one of them. Not too shabby for a station that's listener supported.

Their 128 k MP3 feed is quality enough to pump through a home stereo system.

That is... if you like the music.

Radio Paradise has also been operating for years. 7,226 Listeners on right now - I'm one of them. Not too shabby for a station that's listener supported.

Their 128 k MP3 feed is quality enough to pump through a home stereo system.

That is... if you like the music.