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Radio Listening Declining w/ Digital On Its Way Up
Redlands CRC writes "According to C|Net and The NPD Group, the number of listeners to radio media has declined by 4% against the previous year, and the number of people listening to music on their computer has risen 22%. The study has also shown that online radio station listeners have increased to 53.5 million this March, up from 45.3 million a year ago. Music streaming also saw an greater uptake in listeners this year, with an increase of 37% compared to the previous year."
Well, traditional over the air radio was bound to lose out with the digital revolution. Just take a look at shoutcast or any other popular online radio index and the number of choices is infinitely greater than over the air.
Oh, wait ...
...there's always that strange distortion effect in the background; know what I'm talking about? I have pretty sensitive hearing and can pick it out of even a high quality online stream no problem. Furthermore, I prefer to have control over what I'm hearing...I'll continue to stick with my CD collection.
I don't understand why RIAA wants streaming stations to pay them for what amounts to advertising for their members. Do radio stations pay to play music? I'm thinking not.
What I'd like to see is an itunes enhancement that either apple or other stations streams music and while a song is playing, there's a "buy" button so I can just download it if I like it. That would drive my purchases up through the roof. I get to hear if I like a song (more than 30 seconds worth) and the impulse factor is right there. (I've sent that suggestion in already). The streaming stations could get revenue that way too. A referal fee for following a link from a station to buy should help offset the stupid ASCAP/BMI fees to online stations.
The few times I listen to traditional radio, it annoys the piss out of me to hear something good and then not have the artist or song announced after it and have no clue how to find out to buy it. Screw em, let them all play conservative talk radio hosts 24 hours a day.
...have anything todo with the fact that most radio stations are canned and pre-programmed from a master list of the "latest hits".
{fineprint}
Notice: Latest hit has been defined as the latest album or single that the master controlling agency (see RIAA) demands be played over and over and over and over.
{/fineprint}
Three things annoy me about radio stations
1. Lame on-air "personalities" that are never critical of anything [specially sponsor related].
2. Same music over and over
3. Lame advertisements and endorsements that are for things you just don't need that much advertisement for. e.g. I don't care how often you mention it, I'm not buying a $200,000 yacht!
And seriously an mp3 player with a shuffle mode can replace the "selection" of music played on air.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Thats because most of the crap stations are out-sourced to a big company with a building full of generic DJs who just play the same record industry generated play lists and pretend to be in some town they've never heard of between songs. The whole thing is just one big advert. A few years ago, a radio station would have a massive library, now days people have an even bigger library stored in the palm of their hand and with full control over what they listen to - how can a radio compete? New music is more likely to be played online rather than a real radio station so you'll get every band, not just the ones that have been heard by a producer. All thats left is talk radio which is great and has a real future (theres never any shortage of things to talk about) ironically, radio stations seem scared to carry people like Howard Stern in the US because of the pussy FCC.
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Broadcast Radio - a few dozen stations per city.
Internet Radio - Tens of thousands of stations, if not more, plus you can listen to your favorite station in any city.
The huge variety of internet radio menas there literally is something for everyone. With more choices, there's bound to be migration to the more robust medium.
Gee, do you think maybe the reason nobody listens to radio anymore is that they fill everything with "CharlieFM" or "BobFM" or "AliceFM" or "JackFM" with pseudo-random crap and call it "variety"? Or that they replace great AM radio stations with hosts like Rick Emerson and Clyde Lewis and replace them with failing "oldies" format programming?
It's so much cheaper to lose most of your audience and deliver pre-programmed drivel without a host (or just an automated "host") from another part of the country than it is to provide customized, interested, live, provocative, intelligent local content.
I was never a fan of FM, but I did listen to AM talk radio since I was eight years old. After 20 years, I've stopped listening. The last great talk show I found was Rick Emerson's geek-oriented program and Clyde Lewis's bizarre (but better than Coast to Coast AM) program on the weekends. Now that they removed that from the Portland air-waves and I've moved to Colorado where the only talk radio states are sports, jesus and Air America, I don't even own a radio.
Radio is eating itself and will hopefully implode soon.
Listen to the specific music I not only like but am in the mood for at the moment, without interruptions, anywhere I want, with good quality, or...
Listen to a prefab mix of so-called "Top 40," most of which consists of people screaming off-key as if they had been seriously injured, no matter what kind of music I feel like listening to; having to put up with constant advertisements as the price of listening to this crap; only while in range of a radio station, and with dubious quality.
Hmm. No wonder I hardly ever listen to radio!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
CBC's Quirks and Quarks
Science Friday
Bi-Weekly Astronomy Radio program hosted by David Levy
BBC Science Radio
Well this one's not a radio show but is one of my favoritesJack Horkheimer Star Hustler
This just confirms my theory that, as radio declines and digital goes up, digital will become radio with all that that implies. FCC regulation, commercials etc...
Don't believe it? Look at cable TV. When it started, you paid for cable because it had no commercials. That made sense. Commercials paid for television. If people pay for it directly, no need for commercials right? Wrong. Now we pay for cable and still have commercials.
It's only a matter of time before this happens to radio.
That said, I do listen to some stuff that's not available via broadcast (at least locally) as well, but the point was I normally prefer to listen via the computer either way. In fact, I don't listen to a couple of shows just because they're not available via the net.
Also interesting to me is that I'm increasingly listening to recordings of radio broadcasts (that weren't originally intended as "podcasts"). That's a big deal for me since I'm frequently interrupted in my listening, but I like to hear a complete program.
I'm a big NPR fan. My biggest problem is that I can't always listen at the scheduled times.
Streaming has helped two ways -
I can now listen at work, and I can record and listen later on my ipod.
Wicked handy.
I think I need a new sig here.
c89.5 in Seattle. Not quite as good as they were last year, but still FAR better than the rest of the market. And they're worldwide thanks to the miracle of the internet.
I stopped listening to the radio about five years ago, when I started to not hear music on the way to and from work.
Instead, I got a series of advertisments, including the station self-promotional ones, periodically interrupted by a pair of ADD sufferers who seem to be under the mistaken impression that I might be interested in what happened to one of them last night at the grocery store, or, for that matter, find it amusing.
The standard CD player in my car meets my needs quite nicely.
...for comparisons with 44.1 kHz?
And afterwards we'll struggle to remember how or why it was ever any different.
It'll be a huge boom for radio, but bad bad bad for record executives. Radio won't be about the numbing repetition of playlists people suffer through because they don't have an mp3 player in their car. It'll be mostly talk, and based around the shared experience. The stations will specialize and cater to various demographics, with a few music stations eeking out an existance based on catering to luddites. The beauty is, since that's where the money will be, and that politicians are whores, free speech will probably triumph. We still won't be able to drop the F-bomb on the radio, but that'll will just be a collective hope to preserve what little power it still holds.
That said, recent protests abroad have given me a new idea. Holy Koran tampons and toilet paper. Oh it's a niche market, but I bet one could easily sell enough to live a comfortable life.
One reason for a decline in radio may be the monumental stupidty of hte radio industry in not making online radio easy to get (don't both, afficionados of program x, which u think does make it easy) It's like the movie industry opposing videos - total lack of intelligence
...killed the radio star?
There are waaay too many commercials on regular radio, they play only the music that has the most sales potential and it's become completely censored. All the best radio personalities like Opie and Anthony are going to XM. I listened to the free trial and signedup after just a few hours. It's completely refreshing to hear the type of music I WANT to hear and to listen to talk radio that's actually funny and even... politically incorrect!
I, for one, don't need long discussions about anal sex and so forth on my morning drive to work. Neither do I care to listen about how liberals are ruining the country, even though conservatives have been in control for like 12 years now. As for the music - well, thank god for the Morning Buzz, 100.5 - but their signal is weak and I can't get it a lot. Oh yeah, and screw Clear Channel.
Vote Quimby!
I know most players have had this feature forever, but the radio list in iTunes is just great. It makes listening to internet radio a pleasure because its so seemless with the rest of the player and there are multiple bitsreams of many of the stations - a 128 stream is just as good if not better than FM!
Sound waves should be free!
Where does satellite radio fit into the picture? XM & Sirius could also be lumped into "digital listening" but they aren't mentioned in the article. Satellite radio, like online streaming, also offers a much greater variety of content than terrestrial radio with the benefit of greater portability.
This article also makes the mistake that is almost always made when comparing traditional radio to newer mediums for delivering audio entertainment. This isn't the 1940's, a very low percentage of radio's listeners are in their homes or offices. Nearly all tranditional radio listeners are in their cars. Sure people bring their iPods with them in their cars and that does provide some competition to traditional radios but the 80's technology of casette tapes probably has a bigger impact and more people are listening to CDs in their cars than an mp3 player.
Radio is that thing that plays the music that gets mentioned on entertainment news shows, right?
I think I know some old people who still listen to it.
I stopped listening to radio when I got my 8-track tape player installed in my brand new 1969 Chevy Impala.
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
At work bandwidth has to go way up in order for online radio to supplant over the air radio. The only real competitor to over the air radio in the long term is going to be podcasting. It is too much of a pain in the butt to maintain a digital music library and keep it fresh.
I do listen to online radio and I really like some of the variety. However, there are still over the air stations which simply rock... Thanks BOB! (BOBFM Austin Tx.)
Plenty of online radio links at shoutcast.com. (I always follow the link from winamp.com because it's easier to remember).
From their web site: "The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is a performing rights organization which licenses and collects royalties for performance"
Radio stations PAY.
The Mall PAYS.
The elevator company PAYS.
That's why there are "studio session" musicians who play 'covers' of popular songs, give up all rights to their music so that the cheezy music playing every hour in that elevator makes money for the elevator company. The artist who recorded the original version is probably not getting a dime.
ASCAP had to listen to every dreadful hour of the crap that was aired 24/7 until they got the idea of making the content consumers keep and submit play lists.
The reason they don't announce they artist to you anymore is that they are doing it to those that count, ASCAP, on paper so they don't need to lose commercial airtime (which pays for the 'filler') to the names of the artists or the songs.
That's also why they don't announce the 'songs' at the mall or in the elevators.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They are one of the few shows that get it, less than 5 minutes of break time per hour, and that includes commercials and XM promos. At least half the ads they do are live reads, so not only is it more personal (and effective) it keeps the listeners tuned in.
As for commercial radio, if they can't give a compelling reason to listen they're done. There isn't a new song/group the local rock stations have introduced me to in a long time. Instead of playing a new song and getting feedback directly, they use consultants and focus groups to provide an extremely limited playlist. They seem to believe no one will listen for more than an hour or so, which is a self-fufilling concept.
How many times must I hear "Smells like Teen Spirit" ??? And yet songs that were popular last year are gone from heavy rotation... No wonder satellite and portible personal players are going to destroy them.
They won't fight back by providing innovative content, they'll streamline everything for "national formats" and they'll us "national DJs" with only skeleton crews running the boards.
Those figures apply to the US ONLY!!!
And the US represent a mere 5% of the world population! Wanna bet the global trend is the other way around?
Where I work at, our bandwidth is dedicated to the servers, so we can't play stream download songs. So I bought myself a portable radio and tune my favorit e station.
I think most jobs are like this. Anyway, didn't we think that "video killed the radio stars" about 20 years ago? IMO, Radio's still alive and kicking.
The only advantages I see of digital radio over broadcast are:
1. No commercials.
2. Clear signal (I haven't tried it but it should be a nice signal...someone with experience chime in)
3. No commercials.
4. More targeted programming.
5. No commercials.
6. Wider Selection.
7. NO FREAKIN COMMERCIALS
Disadvantages:
1. You gotta pay
2. No local news and info
3. Pay to listen.
4. Needs special equipment.
5. You gots ta pay!
TANSTAFL
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
Something like 40% of the content played by radios has to be Canadian. So the music played is filtered once through the top 10/40/100 lists and a second time by the Canadian governments regulations.
Since many car stereos play mp3s now, people can carry more variety in a cd than what is available through the radio. Hopefully in a couple of years high speed connections will be common in cars.
Check out http://www.live365.com/ for an amazing selection of talk and spoken word (and just about anything else.) There are thousands of stations here, programmed by individuals (unlike AOL or Yahoo) ranging from people who just want to hear their own music at work to hobbyists to professional broadcasters. Free to listen, (install a popup blocker) and for $4.95 a month you can ditch both the popups *and* the audio ads. It's a cubicle-dweller's nirvana. I found the best jazz station I've ever heard there, and listen to it when working.
Unlike many Shoutcast stations, all these stations pay licensing fees, so don't have the threat of being shut down by the RIAA looming over them. It's also easy to get started on your own. You can start at $10/month (a paltry 100MB of storage) up to however big you want to get. Some of the "pro" stations are spending upwards to $2000/month and selling their own ads.
For a sample of the types of music you can hear, check the 2005 Mikey Awards winners here http://www.live365.com/info/press/20050512.html/( Disclaimer: I have broadcast on Live 365 since 2000.)
on the air except a digital squeal but then I thought "When's the last time I even turned on the radio?"
I couldn't remember. The Buggle may have had something with "Video Killed the Radio Star" and the constant hammering with ads is doing the same for the Video star.
Does MTV ever have music videos anymore? It seems that, every time the station flickers past, its always something airheaded or plain stupid (Bevis & Butt-head or some maschists traipsing around wearing diapers in the jungle looking for something that's hungry enough to bite them.)
And this is entertainment???
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
AM Stereo didn't bring you back?
After the initial enthusiasm, there seemed to be a major international die-back about 1999. I got the impression the internet stream was seen as a money losing toy and I never understood that. Just the inability of marketing and advertisers to grasp the paradigm? You know you have a listener with a stream and even if I'm only understanding 1 in 4 words coming from that station in Paris, I can sure pick out "Coca Cola".
Digitallyimported.com rules. 4 or 5 years of vocal trance and now I can't listen to a handful of guys banging and twanging anymore.
I think one of the very big problems with music radio stations nowadays is that the increasing corporate ownership of radio stations has pretty much killed off a lot of music formats we used to hear on radio. Remember things like classical music? Or easy listening? Or a lot of ethnic music formats? Is it small wonder why XM and Sirius are getting a lot of subscribers because they want to hear a large variety of music?
As for talk radio, it works because it's cheap to syndicate and also talk radio doesn't need the high-quality sound of FM, so an AM station broadcasting a talk show could reach many states from one transmitter. (One thing though: I wonder why Howard Stern is syndicated mostly on FM stations currently, given that his show is mostly talk anyway; that is unless shock talk is primarily an FM phenomenon.)
I myself, due to my job, drive upwards of 10-14 hours a day. So 99% of the time im sitting in my car. I live in the bay area california, So we have quite a few broadcast radio stations, covers almost every single Music style there is. (Short of Trance/techno, which only comes on once a week in the middle of saturday night.. sigh, i love you subsonic) /SUCK/. Get with the times. Play what your customers want, or you'll lose them.
What station do I listen to? The 24/7 news station with 10 minuite Traffic and weather. If not that, I have tapes (Err im too poor to afford a CD player) of Downloaded Trance tracks you cant get anywhere else.
Do i really want to listen to howard stern talking about how hed like to fuck some dumb bimbo because she has big boobies? Or How funny it would be for two morning talkshow hosts, who laugh at themselfs cause their so damned funny, taser their lacky? No, I don't want to listen to that crap at all, it isnt funny, and if people belive it is in *FACT* entertaining, they need to be cleansed from the world, seriously. Fart jokes, big boobies, How bush is the greatest president in the world and how they (who hide behind) freespeech is the bane of the world, is NOT actual entertainment. Its drivel to be archived on 8tracks and remembered like Disco.
Yes Broadcasting industry, yes RIAA, yes the Entire music industry, you
To the RIAA/Broadcast Industry: Either Shit, or get off the pot. Seriously.
Well, they could compete easily by letting DJs do what they're supposed to -- make it their full-time job to find and play music I wouldn't have discovered on my own, in a pleasing arrangement. There are definitely plenty of times where I'd rather listen to a playlist created by a professional than my own library.
Too late now. I won't be going back to plain old radio even if they do remember why a DJ is better than a top-40 playlist on shuffle. If I was Clear Channel, I'd be looking at getting out of radio and into monopolizing something like billboards or concert venues. Just a thought.
Formally 97.7fm in Cincinnati, Ohio, has gone internet only. We can get the best and freshest Indy rock streamed to us daily with live DJ's during most of the day and limited commercials. woxy.com by far is the best internet radio station probably on the planet. They offer a beta aacplus stream, plus high and low streams. They also have live, in-house performances and other goodies for all to enjoy. And best of all, free for the listener! http://www.woxy.com/
A couple months ago, I got a call at work..
"This is XXX radio 101 FM, and we're going to reward you if you listen to our station. If youre listening to our station right now you can win $1001 dollars!!!"
I told them that it wasnt nearly enough money, and if they would please call back when their station wasnt a clearchannel whore, I might think about it.
FM is so bad these days that you cant PAY me to listen to it. That should be a sign to them.
I sometimes listen to WFMU's archives or streaming broadcast online, because their signal is so weak. The sad thing is, they're only a few miles away, in the next state over.
..and no doubt once internet/digital/satellite radio recovers from the copyright inquisition rampage, it will offer up the same stuff. More Top 40 big media-enforced payola, government subsidized left-wing whining, talk radio personlities, more of the same smooth jazz, motown, and 60's-80's era fiddle faddle. All in high fidelity.
1 poor sound quality
2 poor programming
3 They all want to add soundbytes (cars crashing, cowbells, various noise effects)
4 There is no effort given to matching the sound level as they go from program to ad or soundbyte so we have to keep messing with the volume or go deaf.
5 They want us to listen to people call in and say how great they are...instead of music. Why would that be?
6 They play commercials that start out like songs which is infuriating.
Here is a formula: play music, play commercials, play much more music, play some commecials. Pick commercials that blend in and do not yell or shout or ruin the mood.
I have an in-dash mp3 player. The ONLY thing radio has to offer is to play songs I dont have or havent thought of yet. If they screw me with too much noise the mp3 player goes on, and I probably wont turn on the radio again for the whole trip.
Kids all have mp3 players. You can get a CD based one for VERY little money.
If radio doesnt become very creative and raise their quality standards so that evere SECOND of airtime is reviewed for quality and entertainment value, they are going to lose to the mp3s...
The Clear Channle takeover and FCC overpowering free speech has pretty damn near killed any real future for legacy broadcast radio in the US. What is the future ? I am thinking sattelite really isn't a serious contender barring a major overhaul of space based infrastructure. Its advantage now is badnwidth but I think its disadvantage in the future is bandwidth. Expensive gear and monthly fees etc... What I do see picking up along with WIFI is seeing internet radio's start to creep out into the world away from computers.
It(net radio) has a great deal of the same properties that launched early radio... its highly democratic with low entry requirments. Only now instead of horizon limitations on braodcast capacity and unique tunning capacity you now have all of cyberspace to send a digital stream to. As Wi-Fi gets bigger and constant data connection moves into more and more devices my guess is that internet based and not proprietary sat based radio is going to go big.
We need a domain purely for radio broadcast feeds and build "radio's" that can sort through and request those feeds via wireless connections. It is this requesting process that will ultimately cause sattelite problems... just the same as it does when using sattelites to provide net connectivity. They can broadcast a good fixed stream but they still can't be very responsive to a large number of individual requests. The broacast bandwidth is greater than radio, but selection is still less than the internet. Additionally getting a show carried by sattellite has a pretty high entry requirment.
Off hand for a timeline I would say it will not be far behind VOIP mobile phone solutions. Radio's biggest market is the commute so once you solve handovers from station to station sufficient to carry on conversations via VOIP you create the capacity to listen to a feed from hot spot to hotspot.... only now you can listen to ANY feed provided you have a connection instead of just being limited to what is broadcast withen range.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
I thought radio listening was on the decline due to the virus of the airways...the ClearChannel monopoly.
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
From The Article:
"The study also found that online radio stations had 53.5 million listeners this March, up from 45.3 million a year ago. Free streaming of music also saw gains, with a rise of 37 percent, to 46 million listeners."
What the heck is the difference? What kind of music streaming is there other than online radio". Are they talking about the 10 second clips from Amazon or the 30 second clips from iTunes?
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I'm not sure if the trend is continuing, but one thing that has been noted in the past several years is that listenership to public radio has been booming. The decline in commercial radio listeners is probably more than 4%, though I couldn't say how much more. When you see that many commercial music stations only have 300 songs in their playlists but run more than 20 minutes of ads each hour (especially during drivetime), it's hard to be surprised that people are looking elsewhere.
;-)
Some people have already mentioned "Jack FM" and other similar formats. "Like an iPod on shuffle" they say. Sure, they bump up the playlist to 1200 songs instead of 300, but you're still stuck in the '80s for the most part. They completely do away with DJs for many of these stations, so if there's a new song, you'll never know who sings it. It's not conducive to learning about new music.
I like to hear new music. All the time. Not just one or two new songs dribbled in each week. Most radio companies seem to believe that very few people are interested in hearing new music nearly as much as I am. Maybe that's true, but I can't say for certain. Apparently at least 50 million people think that they aren't getting enough stuff over-the-air (though obviously some folks are listening to talk, or are using the cleaner online stream rather than a fuzzy AM/FM signal).
Here in the Twin Cities, people had been getting fed up with radio. You might remember that the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis even did a "Radio Re-Volt" last year. Sure, there have been a handful of livable or even excellent options in the dozens of stations in the area. The top two cited were usually KFAI and 770 Radio K. Both had problems, though, primarily with weak signals. KFAI adds up to about 250 watts. Radio K is 5 kW, but on AM, and only during the daytime. They both stream online, which mitigates the problem a bit, but you can't trail an Ethernet cable along as you drive in your car.
Minnesota Public Radio launched a new 'eclectic' music service called "The Current" on KCMP 89.3 FM back in January on a big 100 kW transmitter they'd bought a few months earlier for $10 million. Most of my friends listen to it (and even support it), so I think it has a good chance of surviving. No, I don't like all of the songs they play, quality varies from DJ to DJ, the DJs sometimes make mistakes, and CDs sometimes skip. But they actually have DJs, CDs, and even vinyl, and hope to eventually build a library of 50,000 albums. They have a hefty concert calendar and bring musicians in for very-nearly-live performances every day or so. Local music is in frequent rotation, and the DJs have the freedom to go talking about all sorts of random things. Yeah, there are some people who hate it (and The Morning Show is still an oddball
Online streaming provides a bunch of great options, but it's nice to have something with a local flavor that you can talk to your friends about, and have them know about it and understand. While there are some big notable exceptions, terrestrial radio is meant to be a community affair (well, here in the U.S. where there aren't big national networks). XM can't have that, and it's fairly rare for streaming audio. Admittedly, MPR is a pretty big beast itself and has taken over a
Wouldn't it be nice if free 802.11 was so widespread that I could stream from shoutcast in my car while driving cross country? But I digress :)
I listen to streamed music most of the day. I found a lot of music that I love that I would never have been exposed to otherwise. But It is good to listen to the local radio on the way to/from work, as I learn about local events that are going on (which bars/clubs will the good bands and hot women be at on any given night? What is the traffic like, and should I pick a different route?)
Of all the radio companies (not that there are many left) with something to lose from the satellite radio revolution, ClearChannel has the most to lose. Their "new-age payola" system of leveraging their radio station playlists to boost ticket sales at their concert venues will fall apart as more people switch to satellite radio. If they don't figure out some way to work in the new regime, ClearChannel will soon be "that billboard company".
I also noticed that a lot of people from outside of the station's broadcast area call in or send e-mail to these stations every once in a while, frequently from a different state and sometimes from a different country. Some of the better on the air stations look like they are actually capitalizing on the capability to stream their content on the internet.
mp3 encoding, even at higher bitrates, seems to cause weird changes to the way cymbals (mainly hi-hats) sound - which in turn makes the whole recording sound tinny.
I've noticed this is less prevalent with electronically produced cymbal sounds, though.
I was going to make the same point, well put. Note too that a friend of mine just installed satellite radio in her car. I wonder if that will also have an impact. Satellite has an awesome seelction compared to broadcast, from right wing loonies to air america on talk. From sludge grind to christian, jazz to elevator muzak.
How long before it starts hurting the big radio chains? People are hungry for choice.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I haven't had MTV in my channel list for years. Okay, it's partially because I don't get laid enough to be taunted by watching rappers prance around with naked women. Combined with the lack of actual music, it's a no-brainer. Now if I could only get Time Warner to reimburse me...
This article is woefully short data to back-up their assertion. There is the recent FCC crackdown on "indecency" which has changed the format of several top radio personalities (read Howard Stern) . Satellite radio is also drawing listeners from away from over the air stations. Most radio listening takes place in the car during commuting hours. At work, people listen to cd's MP3's and now Internet radio stations. Why? Because FM/AM signals are blocked by the structure of modern office buildings.Definitely a Saturday story..long on fluff..short on details.
Okay, this applies to U.S. only. Your circumstances WILL vary in other countries.
(ASCAP | BMI | SESAC) = Songwriters only. Anybody who does "public performance" (including non-profits and webcasters) is supposed to pay these agencies, or specifically the one whose music you're performing. (If you're doing a concert of, say, all Irving Berlin music, you only have to pay ASCAP because all his compositions are ASCAP.) Radio stations usually get blanket licenses which let them play anything the agency controls. ASCAP actually has people who spot-check stations and sample music playlists to figure out how to apportion the money it collects.
The special "streaming audio" charge (which also applies to satellite radio, IIRC) is in addition to the above and supposedly goes to performers. When the law went through, the National Association of Broadcasters used its clout to get an exemption for terrestrial-broadcast radio stations. Again IIRC, there's a court case underway now to determine whether a radio station that streams its programming still has to pay the RIAA streaming charge (needless to say, the broadcasters say they're exempt).
Sirius is the way to go.
I just bought a brand new truck which came with AM/FM Radio, Tape Deck, and CD Player. In the beginning, I used the tape deck all the time. The tape deck was the easiest way to hook up the mp3 players.
I actually got quite frustrated using the mp3 players because if I wanted to change playlists or anything else, it was hard to read the screen (even the 4" LCD on the Archos), use the controls, and drive.
I refuse to go back to CDs simply because I would have to carry thousands of CDs to satisfy my changing appetite for tunes. I liked the mp3 CD player I had in my last car, I would burn a new mix each week.
Now I work out in the bush for months at a time. There ain't no radio stations out there. The first time I went up north, I followed my boss and listened to the FM modulator signal from his Sirius Radio. I was rocking to 80s metal (Hair Nation and Buzzsaw) for the entire 10 hour drive.
Upon my arrival back in civilization, I immediately hooked myself up with Sirius. I now have two dusty mp3 players. I listen to it during the commute to work. I listened to it during a drive half way across the country. I listen to it on my computer. I listen to it at work via the FM modulator.
As far as I'm concerned, the only thing an FM radio is good for is to recieve signals from fm Modulators.
Don't let Congress decide to have an auction system to sell frequencies. Free the airwaves by creating a public grid mesh wi-fi network. Build government towers or buy private ones and create an alternative to the damn cell phone. This device though will have much more uses . With grid mesh system everyone will have broadband !
Ofcourse Congress is way too dense on these matters.
I have become dependent on podcasting for my radio needs. As I use the web for news and weather, "radio" for me has become just entertainment. My favorite podcasts include (please use Google) Adam Curry, Spacemusic, Dawn and Drew, Hometown Tales, Bicyclemark, etc. No commercials (well, YMMV if you count promos as commercials) and if you hit something that you don't like or don't want to hear, there's always fast forward. And it's different. Every day.
I believe that. The ones that will survive are the ones that are least popular today, the ones that 99.9% of slashdot or other reders have not heard of. I am not even sure there are any in USA, where only what caters to the lowest common denominator, will survive.
Those radio stations are dedicated to classical music. I believe they will continue broadcasting, because those that listen to them will continue to listen.
Sigged!
As long as I can get my http://wholewheatradio.org/ the commercial radio stations can go straight to HELL! This radio station has a firm anti-RIAA stance and won't play songs that are part of RIAA. Suprisingly that (listening to lesser known musicians) and the lack of commercials make this about 10 times better than any commercial radio station I have ever heard.
Then you get into the site and find the creator of this (Jimbob) is a former geek programer. His site streams in a number of formats, embraces podcasting, and has tracks an amazing array of stats. The site has an online interactive chat that is integral to part of the radio station itself, where listeners can rate music, post comments to the DJ's, or even call in an leave a message on the show. Add to the chat that it has a digital (dj free) request format, where you can request songs and they are autmatically cued up an played.
I could see other people duplicating this station in other music formats as it creates a community atmosphere (rare for radio) that gets listeners to know one another from around the globe. The station feverishly promotes true musicians, not the big overproduced pop crap. The more you listen and also watch the chat page, the more you get drawn into this little community of music lovers. Even having to switch back to TV where I have to Tivo through commercials is annoying. I highly suggest you check it out.
How can you not LOVE a radio station running out of a small cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska?
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Podcasting.
Couldn't agree more. Last week I drove about 1000 miles on the 405 here in SoCal. My Sirius radio only gets shut off when the fancy strikes me to listen to one of the 6 disc's in the changer (the same ones that have been there for about 6 months...) I would suspect that all of the drive-by's we've had recently may be caused by a commuter who doesn't yet have Sirius :)
I was probing the possibilities of satellite radio transmission when I heard that Iridium was going under (circa 1999 I think). I started my research and thats when I found XM and Sirius had already been working on this deal since the 80's. I wonder how much bandwidth is left on those old Iridium satellites now? I think I read somewhere that that S&XM only use about 4% of whats available on them.
Oh, and FM modulators... Tape Deck is the only way to go here, too many b-cast stations, and Sirius (Sportster) only allows you to tune the built in FM modulator down to like 88.7, a couple ticks farther down would work much better.
I love my Sirius radio and have just accepted the fact that I now have one more annual bill to pay much like taxes.
(P.S. my First /. reply though I've lurked for a LONG time.)
Maybe.
There are two extremes. First is that the stattion pays ASCAP, BMI, or other services for the right to play the music. A playlist is generated and used to determine to payments.
The other extreme is payola. Here, the record companies pay the station to paly their prodcut.
In the current US market, there is a mix of the two models. Some large corporate radio networks (whose initials are Clear Channel) may negotiate deals with RIAA member record companies who want their product played on the large number of stations. These deals may range from the record company paying CC, the record comapny paying toe fees to ASCAP, etc. (essentially providing the music free to CC), or subsidizing CC's costs to a variable degree. Pop music station playing the latest boy band/girl star actually rarely pay for the music. It is comped or even played for profit.
As soon as I see statistics, I stop reading the article.
Damn. I gotta know: are you one of those GNAA trolls (funny) or are you a bitter, sexually-confused dude who lives in Mom's basement and has a part-time gig as a security guard at Safeway (sad?)
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
However my university has a lousy internet connection so I really wish they would make programming available as MP3 downloads
The solution is Streamripper, since then you don't have to listen to it real-time (and thus deal with drained buffers). Added bonus is that you can then take it with you.
...if they didn't play 6 minute blocks of commercials every 15 minutes... ...if they still played music that I want to hear, not some packaged crap for the masses...
You have so many stations, all the same. Oh sure - they're all pushing the envelope by saying they don't play what everyone else does and have the guts to play what they want - and then play the same old crap.
;)
My fave was the local "rock" station which claimed it doesn't play that old crap like xxx or the weird new stuff like yyy, and then usually the next song would be a mainstay on xxx or yyy.
Anyway, as long as ClearChannel, Infinity, etc... are still in control, and DJ's just play the same 1 or 2 tracks from an album over and over, I'll just stick with my iPod and CD's.
Can't wait for Zeptember, or Rocktober to roll around again
and if you believe 'em, Triple M do do some random play segments! (say their playlist is 2-3K songs, not 2-300 according to the odd ad, again if you can believe it)
not that 3000 songs is much - 300 albums? Or 1500 I guess at 2 'good' songs an album.
Not Free SF Reader
I just listen to XM as often as possible. There is one guy that I tune to AM for, but for music, I stopped on FM all together. My CD's and XM are more than sufficient. XM has done the trick so well, I own 3 XM's.
Sigs are nice guns
Come on, the guy's name is Albert Pussyjuice...
If you're in a car, there can be interruptions... but if you're in a car, you're not too bloodly likely to be satisfied with your network connection, either. :-)
Personally, I think that satisfactory Interrnet streaming will have to wait until the network infrastructure gets a significant upgrade. And I don't see that coming, frankly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.