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Internet Radio Failing to Find Support?
K Fox asks: "WOXY, one of the Internet's larger radio stations, has announced that it will soon implement a monthly subscription fee, to support operations. When the Cincinnati based station went from terrestrial broadcast 97.7 to Internet only, they vowed to keep their streams free to listers. Now, they are saying that increased broadcast taxes, falling advertising revenue, and the overall uncertainty in the market (local or global?) has pushed them to change their business model. Is this a sign of things to come for the other radio stations, that broadcast over the Internet? Will digital music distribution fall solely to giants like XM and iTunes?"
Seems to be working pretty well for KCRW, even Steve Jobs seems to love them.
moo.
Radio over the internet is great untill the conection goes "a bit funny" and it stops streaming or drops to a lower sample rate.
Also how do you listen to it on the move - I can't listen to it in the car or on my portable device.
Then there's the problem whereby you can't go to your local comet (or other electronics store) and buy a radio for the office that has an ethernet port on the back - and no i'm not going to connect my computer up to the stereo becase evry time someone IM's me or I get an email or windows breaks you get horible alert noises that would drive everyone insane!
Surley these problems are why these broadcasters are having problems.
Reinventing the wheel since 1979
Its simply a glorified PA system. Radio is wireless so unless you're
using wi-fi to listen to the radio station it doesn't have the
flexibility as a normal radio station (can't listen walking down the
street , in the car or anywhere not near a cable or dial up line).
Even with wi-fi , who wants to walk around with a laptop switched on
under their arm?
Internet radio is fine for the home and work markets , but it fails
miserably for the on-the-move market where a large proportion of
people listen to the radio.
Internet radio is just another format where content is fired at you like a cannon. I think most people would prefer to build their own playlists from their own content, and only niche broadcasts will see much support.
If your station is good enough, people WILL listen.
I listen all the time to Virgin Radio in the United Kingdom
(I'm in Canada)
as well as all the various SKY.FM channels that iTunes has
Although I'm not sure how sky.fm stays in business since they only seem to have about one commercial every two hours.
OTOH - I can get XM or local broadcast from my desk just fine, or just use my iPod.
It will if the RIAA has any say in the matter. The last thing they want is Internet radio. Consider that they pay broadcast radio to play songs but demand to be paid for the same songs going over the Internet.
We can speculate on why (greed doesn't explain it, since they don't stand to gain any revenue from strangling the baby.) My own guess is that Internet radio is cheap enough to run that independent artists might build listeners and escape from the RIAA plantation.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I suspect it's the same for most people. That would explain the difficulty of being a 100% internet-only radio station.
That seems a little much to me. That's almost as much as satellite radio. Better quality but only two channels. If they continue to innovate, like with making the audio available via podcast it might be worth it in the long run, but right now that sounds expensive to me.
Somehow KEXP seems to make the "internet radio" model work, although they do maintain a true radio broadcast as well.
Actually I think the business model of normal radio is being out performed by services such as Pandora.
Normal radio (even if it's over the internet) is limited to the tastes of the people choosing the music.
Additionally they tend to play to the lowest common denominator.
They play a very small set of songs for a very long time and rarely bring in new content.
Where Pandora is designed to introduce you to new music and have an enormous playlist.
www.pandora.com
Anybody else agree/disagree?
...but not in the WOXY/broadcast model. Two types of stations will persevere: (1) stations that stay off the royalties radar. (2) sites like pandora and last.fm that use personalization and social aspects to attract throngs of listeners and maximize ad revenue. WOXY made the mistake of trying to keep a high profile, i think. charging a subscription doesn't stand a chance. there are just too many other choices.
How do they have broadcasting taxes? If they are Internet Only, last I checked, they were not technically broadcasting. Any one have any idea?
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
It means that they realized people don't want to listen to advertisment and if you are listening to internet radio, you might as well listen to non-crap non-commercialized radio.
The problem is that radio stations have to fool advertisers that people are listening to them with contests and call in campaigns and sheer speculation. There is no way to prove how many people are listening at any given time. Just a big assumuption. With internet streaming, you have stastics and logs of who is actually listening. As with the problem with click through ads, people discovered that people ignore ads and have been for years.
I've personally never bought or been influenced by an add on a TV or radio. Mostly because 99% of the products don't apply to a geek other than laughing at Geico commercials.
However, I have bought plenty of things because of Adsense and searching on google because it interests me or I was actually looking for comparable products. Brute force advertising is just a waste of money.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Why would I listen to their playlist when I can listen to a customized dynamic stream that forms itself based on my preferences like Last.fm?
From the OP: Is Internet Radio dead?
No.
WOXY has long been an independant station that played what the DJ's and fans liked. They never sold out to corporate rock, and their motto always has been "Corporate Radio SUCKS!" Their selection varies so widely, and they try their bests to honor requests from everyone. Even when they were on the air and internet at the same time, they took email request around the world.
Gonna have to buy a subscription and support this incredible station.
DI can support up to 40 to 60 thousand listeners simultaneously during peak loads (thrus afternoon), and still make a profit.
DISCLAIMER: I worked for them previously
Sunny Dubey
Their first mistake was going off of the FM band. Most successful internet radio stations around Boston have the physical station to draw in revenue. A popular net radio station probably still has less revenue opportunity than a small AM/FM one. My favorite station's webcast even plays DIFFERENT commercials on the web than on air... thus doubling their potential ad revenue.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
If you have access to a computer with all of your mp3's on iTunes or whatever digital music player, why chew up bandwidth to listen to someone else pick songs you don't really want to listen to?
The only online radio stations I ever listen to, and barely at that, are playlists from David Byrne on his website cast as streaming audio.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
From someone who used to live on the fringes of their broadcast area, WOXY was hard to reach unless you were within spitting distance of Oxford, OH. I see where moving to internet-only initially offered a larger area but they forgot that kids who like alternative music are rarely going to pony up the bucks to pay for it. It was a weak signal but when you got it in your car or home stereo (rarely unless there was major sunspot activity it seemed like) it was heaven.
You effectively need to have a portable wi-fi player... which is an awful lot like having a traditional radio. The only difference is being able to listen to the same station where ever you go, like satellite radio. If that's not a significant enough advantage and/or lacks a strong enough appeal, it should be no mystery that Internet Radio isn't catching on.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
1. The music is usually bad
2. The music is the same playlist shuffled differently for each new day
3. There are no deejays that will actually play obscure requests
4. Too many annoying commercials / fake deejays
5. Too many stations are owned by the same companies
6. Companies have been doing 'pay to play' illegally - big surprise
7. I buy my own music to hear the artists I enjoy - I am in control
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
While many consider the PC the center of their worlds, sitting in front of a PC to listen to music or watch videos is not my cup of tea.
My PC at home is in my home office, and I do listen to internet radio when I am working there, but I don't generally spend my entire day there. Internet radio needs to find solutions to make the content available on any home media device.
I am anxiously waiting for the TuneDock from Griffin Technology, which will allow both iPod playback on your home theater system (with onscreen television display) AND integrated with internet radio as a standalone receiver.
This is what internet radio needs to catch on, a cheap appliance that can integrate with people's home theater and stereo systems.
Also, Internet Radio needs to step up an improve the quality. I am tired of 24, 48, 56, and 64 kbps feeds that sound like your listening to radio from a tin box in the subway. If its not at least 128kbps (i.e. CD quality), then don't bother. Also, internet radio seems to suffer if there is any network traffic at your end. Perhaps its just the poor way most Internet radio software is implemented, but when the radio cuts in an out and drops connection frequently, its just annoying. Better standards are needed for the delivery and quality of internet radio. Something, BTW, Satellite Radio both excels at.
I can see that perhaps subscription rates might be beneficial for many internet radio providers, but MANY of them are just live feeds of their regular FM radio broadcasts. THESE SHOULD NEVER BE PAID FOR. FM radio stations make money by selling advertising and kickbacks from music companies, they should not expect a revenue stream from streaming their FREE LIVE radio.
But those internet only feeds, if they got together and formed a subscription based service like XFM or Sirius, then I could see how a subscription revenue would improve quality.
In the end, though, Internet Radio needs to become a consumer electronics product, not tied to the computer. If they don't break out of the beige box, then it will never catch on and they cannot remain viable as a solution to FM and Satellite radio. Hopefully more solutions like the TuneDock will become available allowing more ubiquitous access to Internet Radio.
BTW, Griffin Technology also has an excellent product called iFill, which allows you to record Internet Radio streams and fill the iPod with new content. No, I am not a sales associate.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Internet radio doesn't work because radio doesn't work.
If radio worked Howard Stern wouldn't need to be on Sirius.
And internet radio fails because they don't/won't have Howard Stern.
This
From TFA
And for those of you who just can't afford to pay one more bill each month, we're keeping a low bandwidth stream. It may not be the best quality, but you can still tune in for free.
They are only charging for CD quality streams. It seems they're moving more towards a donation (with perks) scheme rather than a subscription only service. And moving to such a system certainly doesn't mean support isn't out there. I'm a fan of KEXP which has done very well with membership drives while keeping the music free for everyone.
I came here for a good argument
I am listening right now and my understanding is that they are implementing a DigitialyImported (or DigitalImports, whatever it is called) style service whereby the higher quality streams will be fee based and the lower quality are free.
Cheers.
D
If at first you don't succeed, redefine 'success'
If a couple of giants take over and end up playing the same crap as your monolithic FM broadcasters, I think we'll have plenty of pirate stations. Used to be you had to have broadcasting equipment and you could get caught easily. Now all you need is a server and it is slightly less difficult to get caught.
"The Greatest Station in the Universe", New Orleans' WWOZ, not only survived Hurricane Katrina, but has been a lifeline to New Orleanians in exile. The public radio branch of the NO Jazzfest is supported mostly by subscriptions from the public. And for years, subscribers outside New Orleans have paid much more than residents for their Crescent City Connection.
Of course, Katrina did a lot of damage to WWOZ, also - including blowing away (literally) their local FM transmission antenna and gear. And of course the unpaid volunteers who broadcast the best music ever recorded (and live realtime performances) mostly lost everything in the storm, including CD collections they have to replace. WWOZ needs subscribers and listeners now more than ever - at any level, even $1 (or E1 etc). They were succeeding in exactly the kind of Internet Radio project we want most for well over a decade - "transmitting" by FTP even before streaming software was available, in a city which still lived in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
--
make install -not war
Most public radio stations also stream their audio. There is some sort of an agreement between NPR and the copyright owners that allows it, and it is done in addition to the over the air stream. You can usually find a link from their home page, which tends to be W---.org.
I used to volunteer for the local public radio station and noticed, while the number of listeners to the stream was rather small, they seemed to contribute somewhat more than the over the air listeners, and some that did so were well out of the area.
Until they sold their radio station to Clear Channel, and we yet another top 40 station. WOXY would play truly alternative music, independent stuff. And you could pick it up in the middlde of the Indiana, way out in cornfields. But it's no wonder they are failing online, since there is plenty of competition here. And WOXY offers nothing alternative. That they wish to charge for thei service means that WOXY is about to die.
If I could, I would listen a lot more. I do occasionally at home and at work but most of my
"radio" listening is in my car.
I wrote a simple streaming media system that used HTTP for a class. It wasn't exactly the hardest thing to do. If you can get good upstream, you should have no problem setting up your own streaming media system for your music collection.
Of course that only solves the problem of music, but to each their own.
Here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota Public Radio has recently launched an alternative music station called The Current. Though they are, at heart, a terrestrial broadcast station, they also stream on the web. Given their target demographic (i.e. young people), I'm guessing that a significant number of their listeners tune in over the web and that their fundraising successes thus far have relied at least partially on convincing internet listeners to donate.
Is it inconceivable that this model could work just as well for an internet-only station? I don't think so, but it isn't easy. Minnesota Public Radio has been in the public broadcasting business for a while and in addition to producing excellent radio shows with talented staff, they are experts on fundraising. It's not enough to just throw some music on their internet and hope people will send you checks, but I think The Current proves that the possibility is there for this model to work.
Usually I can't find a station which suits my tastes.
2. The music is the same playlist shuffled differently for each new day
The playlist is effectively managed by RIAA members in cahoots, under the table, with station ownership. It was called Payola and it was illegal, but it's obvious it's rampant and as long as Al Qeada isn't involved the FBI isn't going to assign more than one already overworked person to it. Remember the How Songs Get Popular? Keep hammering that song you have heard 20 times today into the heads of people, some actually like it.
3. There are no deejays that will actually play obscure requests
You need a station like KPIG
4. Too many annoying commercials / fake deejays
Too many commercials, period. I switched from satallite to broadcast and had forgotten how awful it was listening to KFOX.
5. Too many stations are owned by the same companies
Seems to me this is the result of a deregulation thing during Reagan, as being in some way better to serve the public BS.
6. Companies have been doing 'pay to play' illegally - big surprise
Addressed above.
7. I buy my own music to hear the artists I enjoy - I am in control
I listen to satellite (Sirius) and pick and chose mostly between 4 stations, whichever suits my mood at the time.
On the BBC this morning they were going on about this new tomb found in Egypt near Tut's digs. Fascinating level of detail in the broadcast I could never expect on a local station.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Who really wants to be able to listen to the same tired filler that happens to be broadcast over the radio spectrum on an IP-connected device? Maybe a few people, but not many.
What is much more interesting are internet-only stations like the ones run by Soma FM, which provide fantastic music, no ads, no DJ, and since you're already online, you can instantly look up the musicians via google. This type of stream totally changed my world in the last 2 years; I used to be a 40 year old guy whose passion for music had died because I just wasn't hearing anything new; now I'm a 42 year old guy who is buying more CD's than ever and who comes across a dozen or so new pieces a week that I love. Throw in my ability to listen to those few radio-spectrum stations that still play music that is innovative and energetic (sometimes), and its a pigs heaven!
I can't mention my favorite internet-only station because they only support 16 listeners :)
Uh -- no. But internet radio is in its infancy. It will take off with the deployment of wireless broadband and a new class of devices capable of pulling streams without being connected to a computer.
The first show will drop when Apple makes available a wireless version of the iPod. I bet this will happen before Christmas.
After that, it's just a function of wireless rollout. According to Bridge Research, a research company that does most of its work for commercial radio, There will be something on the order of 130 million wireless broadband users in 2010. Wired users will make up another 150 million or so. This should be enough critical mass to make internet radio commercially viable.
Of course, all advertising-supported media is changing. The day of mass-media supremacy is coming to an end, and wirelessly delivered entertainment should further democratize content delivery.
In the meantime, internet broadcasters will have to find clever business models to stay afloat. Applying old-school models to new media won't be effective.
By the way, Bridge projects XM and Sirius to be at a combined market of less than 50 million subscribers in 2010. Sat broadcasting could become quite profitable at that level, but hardly dominant in terms of ears. Look for major satelite entertainment brands to migrate to internet radio as it grows.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
It would be worth your while to check out WOXY, then. Before they were Internet-only, they were an actual, physical, independent radio station; their DJs do actually play your requests; they actually announce the names of the songs they've played; and you hear more songs than the same 20 over and over.
Of course, you still may or may not like the music that they play, I guess.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Unfortunately some of the plans cost some $$$, but it is certainly doable to get a 128k stereo mp3 stream using a broadband wireless network such as EVDO network and nifty phone. Broadband connections seem to work best on short trips or sitting in one place but that's fine for those who work at jobs with firewalls.
In fact, I work for WFMU and I've tested a 40k live mono OGG, a 32 live mono mp3 and 20k mono Real audio archive streams while on the 1xRTT network(think narrow band network delivery that all cell phones work on) going form the George Washington Bridge on up to Mohegan Sun in CT riding along on I95. I'm sure that pumping up the buffer settings in my player was largely responsible for nary a drop or rebuffering while my wife telephone conversation would drop during the trip.
For those interested, we've cobbled together a FAQ here:
http://wfmu.org/mobile_faq.html
I invented radio. Tell 'em Fred! hoo hoo
is the fact that terrestrial radio is a public "good" (in economic terms) which cannot be impeded upon by other radio station listeners, barring call in listeners who request crap. No matter how many people listen to your favorite station, you can listen to is just as well, with no degradation in service.
/.er.
Alternatively, many internet radio streams that I listen to have a predetermined max # of connections. Fortunately, the stuff I listen to (limbikfrequencies.com) does not present this issue. If you can only stream to X number of users at a time, your advertising base will be a bit limited, and not attractive to advertisers.
The majority reason I listen to streamed audio is that #1 I don't have to hear 10min worth of repetitious adverts between songs. In fact, the only breaks in the music of some stations is the website identification voice in, then it's back to the music. #2 There is what I consider to be, great music on these mainly independent sites. Alot of what I've bought over the last 4 or 5 years has not been American top 40, but primarily electronic ambient from Europe (yeah, call me a fag if you want).
So, no adverts + good music + no crap = me listening to streamed audio out of London all the time. Perhaps it would be a better model to have artists "contribute" to streamed audio stations rather then sell their soul to **AA to get promoted, acts which we all know are for shit. Any music I listen to anymore is NOT advertised. Perhaps a small contribution to the station for the pleasure of listening would be possible. If you have 2000 folks that would pay $1(approx)/month to listen, I would be quite sure this would more the make up for bandwidth costs. I would. Hell, I pay iTunes that much for one song. *Disclaimer: I do not have a television, I spend a great deal of time at the computer. I'll assume roughly the same for the average
I see a problem when you try to switch from a working traditional model to a barely young one, especially when you don't have a name for yourself. Why Internet only? Do they even have the strength to operate under this new model? Why don't they keep their radio frequency, and use the net for free? Only if when they were doing exactly that, they thought their net audience was so high they could have made it with it only...!?
In the midst of innovation, beforehand, you gotta draw out realistic objectives. I'm sorry, but the urge for money is creating the wrong meaning to the word 'internet'. Free is the word, b/c its with it that we share culture and grow... not locally or regionally, but globally.
I listen to the radio in the car. The only internet access I have in the car is cell modem, which is A) expensive, B) slow, and C) unreliable. The radio in the dash, on the other hand, is free, delivers high quality audio, and is pretty reliable unless I'm out in the sticks. If I need to listen to the radio at work, I can get a $10 FM radio for my desk.
Furthermore, I hate it when people use internet radio at work, then complain about how slow the internet connection is. Tangentially, I also hate it how companies like RIM and GoToMyPC market to the end user, instructing users to do an end run around IT and install whatever they like.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Several years ago, when internet radio wasn't common, someone I knew went to the trouble of installing it on his computer. When I asked him what was wrong with broadcast radio, he replied that he had trouble receiving any stations from Kurdistan (where he was from). So, there's a huge advantage for internet radio. We've seen many foreign short wave stations go silent but the web sites continue.
As another poster pointed out, many national public broadcasters are on the internet. Some of them also do podcasts. There is definitely a place for this technology.
Internet radio stations have to buy more broadband for each listner - unlike convtional radio stations. Multicasting never happened but what about a broadcast torrent-type thing? Where you reciever is also re-broadcasting. I'm sure there must be thing like this out there but since I've never heard of it, it cann't be widely adopted.
If its not at least 128kbps (i.e. CD quality), then don't bother.
128kbps is nowhere near CD quality. I think you've had your earbuds in too long, cranked up too loud!
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
You just need to use a tool such as RadioLover on the Mac, that lets you rip an MP3 stream to individual, tagged tracks. It's not even re-encoding, just pulling from the stream. The tracks get sent to iTunes automatically, and thus onto my iPod when I sync it. Viola, portable internet radio. I have it set to rip 2 hours worth of Indie Pop Rocks every night and that gives a pretty much endless supply of "internet radio" to listen to on the go. What's really sweet about this is that not only can you skip backward, but you can skip *forward* when you don't like a track. Try that on XM or Sirius! Moreover, I can use the iPod's star rating feature to "tag" tracks that I like when I hear them. When I sync later, those star ratings get copied over to my Mac's iTunes. I have a smart playlist that lists all tracks from the stream that I've tagged with such a star rating, so when somebody wants to get me a birthday or christmas gift, I just check out the list and can quickly put together a CD wish list. This is a fantastic way to find new music, and just a fantastic way to listen to "radio". I prefer it to actually listening to the stream "live".
--- What?
Well, they'll get a taste of being one of the small guys soon, what with the public broadcasting budget being gutted in the most recent budget.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
A friend of mine purchased advertisements on WOXY, and once the ads played, their sales staff never contacted him out placing more ads. That's sad. Maybe if their sales staff was better they could be ad supported and not have to charge.
From the announcement on woxy.com's home page:
Really it seems their hoping the rest of the world -- advertisers, primarily -- will catch up with what woxy.com is doing.
Basically, woxy.com's business model is: traditional (but independent) commercial radio but over the internet instead of over the air. You would think that advertisers who would be willing to buy commercials on traditional over-the-air radio would be able to easily make the transition to internet-only (especially if they realized that audience measurement online should be much better than the wacky Arbitron and other sampling-based metrics for over-the-air radio). Further, it seems that internet radio's audience has to be growing, while over-the-air's audience overall can't be growing -- sure people listen to over-the-air in their cars, but how many people with desk jobs listen to over-the-air radio at work instead of plugging their headphones into their computer? I just don't get it that adevertisers (inc. the agencies) that have dealt with radio for ages just don't seem to understand that commercial internet radio is basically the same thing.
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.
KUOW, KEXP (formerly KCMU), and RainyDawg.
Most people podcast them or use our Gigapop internet backbones to listen to them.
I think that Internet radio isn't decreasing, it's just going non-commercial. All the stations I mentioned are non-profit.
There's no good music on commercial radio anymore, and no reason to listen to it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...someone has to pay the bills. If ad support isn't working then the listeners have to pay. I though this lesson was learned about 5 years ago (though judging by Vonage's IPO filing, maybe not)...
>Will digital music distribution fall solely to giants like XM and iTunes?
Yes and no. Legal Digital music distribution will become a pay model, no doubt. But if you are going to pay, you might as well pay for what you want, rather than a random stream. This is why I cancelled my XM subscription. I decided I'd rather pay for music that I want to hear.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Rusty has it figured out. He fought the fights - and almost bowed out. But plucky SOMA survived and thrived. They are non-commercial, and have my 50 bucks, which is more than I can say for KQED!
SOMAs "bottom line" is not profit - it's loving what they do and listen to. Otherwise, there'd be no beloved "Secret Agent". You won't find that on XM!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Yes I've noticed decline in web radio station. A couple years ago there were lots of ShoutCast streams dedicated to electronic music and other specialist non mainstream genres. It's a shame many have thrown in the towel (www.tranceairwave.com) or gone subscription (www.di.fm) the remainder have consolidated (www.etn.fm). As always I like to blame the RIAA, in this case for the high licensing fees which small hobby stations cannot afford, as internet radio stations are charged per listener as opposed to a percentage of revenue.
From a listeners viewpoint there isn't much hardware available for hooking up an internet radio stream to your stereo. The different streaming formats and frequent breakups makes for a very limited experience.
As has been pointed out there is no way to receive internet radio on the move which is when people are most likely to want to listen. In recent months 'PodCasting' has become more common. This gets around the problems of bandwidth hungry and unreliable streaming and the ubiquitous mp3 format means they are universally playable. As with TV people want the ability to time shift and listen / view on the move. I don't see why radio shouldn't also move to an 'On Demand' model.
It's the damn pirates! Everyone is using that evil Bittorrent or Limewire or Kazaa and such. Damn thieves! Do you know how hard it is to succeed in this business? Of course not, you've never worked a day in your lives. Communists! How could someone be heartless enough to not recognize the suffering that Britney Spears must endure? Have you no souls?
Sincerely,
A RIAA exec.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Of course not everyone can get this but it is pretty amazing, hours of archived shows. All all the various stations live and only the normal license fee to cover it all.
They finally sold the station but came back about a year later under the internet model. Once they implemented the AAC Plus streams, it was a joy to hear even at low bandwidth settings.
WOXY is a truly unique station able to blend musical styles with new and unfamiliar bands along with more familiar commercial offerings. If you emailed a DJ or the program director, you got a response.
Alas, I cannot bring myself to plunk down $9.95 a month for 2 streams that I access only from work. It seems everyone wants that magic ten bucks a month recurring revenue stream.
Brian Jay and the team need to come up with a better solution. This one won't survive. And if I have an idea, I will pass that along. The best I can say right now is, talk to the folks at Google. They're obviously looking for ways to apply AdSense to every medium possible, at least their acquisitions indicate such.
Good Luck to WOXY
We have a local station the broadcasts both over the airwaves and on the internet. When I am in the car I will listen to them and if I really want to I can listen at home. The problem is that the stream is only 35k, which sounds like crap. The small town in which I live is like a radio dead zone. We are between two radio heavy cities about the same distance away, 40 miles or so. A few miles away the signal is great but here it sucks. So at home I can choose between a crappy FM signal or crappy internet audio.
I can always tune into Sirius on the dish if I want to listen to music but I often want to catch the morning show and despite being mostly spoken word at 35k it still bites. That is the problem with most audio streams. They need to be at least 128k and even some of those sound really bad....like the people know a lot about computers but very little about audio. Would I pay for better audio quality? No, there is too much out there for free and I can always turn the dial or click on another link. Much like their real life brick and mortar counterparts if a radio station cannot bring in the ad dollars it goes out of business. This is also why we get crappy formula radio stations but then again it is work so someone must be listening to all that crap.
iTunes, XM, Sirius, Live365... it's all low-bitrate, over-compressed garbage that is difficult in the extreme to listen to. All are nifty ideas, but are held hostage by the general refusal of ISPs to roll out higher bandwidth and a resonable price. When Vz starts charging content providers on top of their regular access charges, internet radio will disappear.
I've personally never bought or been influenced by an add on a TV or radio.
Several hundred billion U.S. dollars a year say you're wrong. Ask most people if they're influenced by outside forces and they'll always answer "no." Of course, no one wants to admit that advertising, opinions of the media or influential people, or anything else influences them. But this is a blind spot (and one of the reasons I don't own a TV). Everything that you see and hear affects you in some way. Even awareness that the purpose of ads is to influence you only moderates the effect; it doesn't eliminate it. Ignoring that is just ignoring the truth.
And you can bet that if it weren't effective, advertisers wouldn't be spending millions of dollars on a 30-second ad during the Superbowl.
Maybe Internet radio stations should openly tell people that streaming music can be legitimately recorded for personal use. Audacity (an open-source free sound editor), for instance, can record streamed music; in fact, it teaches you how to do it: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=recordi ng&i=streaming.
Radio music is about "surprises" -- it plays new music you wouldn't have the chance to hear about otherwise. Like the old cassette days when you simply pushed the record button and recorded a whole bunch of songs and later edited out the ones you don't like, you can do the same with streamed music from Internet radio stations.
Sun and Fun
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.
I've been running a 50+ plus station for the last 4 years. 4 years ago Shoutcast was up to 5,000-6000 stations. Looking at the directory now Shoutcast stations are now pushing 14,000 stations. More variety, More hobbyists. The corporate air based stations are on the decrease. As more and more restrictions are put on what they're alowed to broadcast on their stream and the uncertainty. Many Canadian stations went off the air just because of the uncertainty on what they were allowed to actually play. Its too much pain for little gain. At 50 connections it costs me about $100 per month. I eat that and I'm fine with its a labour of love...however in the corporate world its all $$$ and bandwidth aint cheap.
The Buzzoutroom - Chilled out ambient downbeats
Try Radio Paradise then. It's DJ-mixed, and you can see the programming was chosen by a human as it is thematic and very, very smart.
Down with random programming.
One more reason to hate the music industry - internet broadcasters actually have to pay MORE in royalties than 'traditional' radio. Their claim is that internet radio doesn't promote sales like traditional radio does. Look at woxy.com - you can click on the name of a song you just heard, and you're sent right to amazon, itunes, or insound to buy it. Show me traditional radio that does that.
Can anyone tell me what the costs of operating a station such as WOXY? The subscription fee they are calling for is $9.95/month. Their website states that their goal is 7k people... So, if you calculate that out (rounding up a bit) it comes out to $840k for the year, which is an extraordinarily large amount I would think.
Perhaps someone could explain why an INTERNET station would need so much capital. People are running them for free out there... perhaps the problem with their station is a matter of waste more than anything else. Maybe they should turn to the geeks at slashdot for better methods of internet distribution and cost cutting. Any thoughts?
-- John Searle
"My own guess is that Internet radio is cheap enough to run that independent artists might build listeners and escape from the RIAA plantation."
Might, might, might. Slashdot always talks about, might. The technology is here NOW! The will (according to slashdot) is also NOW! I'll leave it as an exercise for all you braniacs to figure out why reality isn't matching wishes. (bonus points if your explanation involves something that's stereotypical "Evil")
Who's your auto/home/life insurer? How did you choose that company?
The same one I got in 1995 with state farm. I got them because my parents had me under their policy before that. They haven't given me any greif and my payments are cheep so I keep them on.
What kind of car/truck/motorcycle do you drive (if any)? What makes you think that car/whatever is better than another (better enough to buy, at least)?
It is a used honda. I got because it was cheap (free). It gets me to place A and B and has high gas mileage so I have no need to get a new one.
What's your favorite breakfast cereal?
I hate cereal.
What kind of shoes are you wearing?
I don't know. I've had them since 2003. They say sketchers at the bottom. I choose them because I think I needed new shoes and walked into a shop and picked the first ones that felt good. I've been needing new shoes and probaly will just pick the ones that feel the best next time I walk into a store.
What's your favorite soft drink?
I hate soft drinks. I drink a lot of water though. As far as I remember it happens to be whatever Target has on their shelves and not
Do you own an iPod?
Yes. It was a Christmas gift so hence free and I didn't ask for it. So indirectly, I suppose the person got it for me might have been influenced by ads or maybe it was because I have a mac.
I just realized, maybe I am an exception to this being average human rule and I am the corporations worst nightmare because I tend to not actually go buy things unless I need them and when I do I just go to the store and say "you there product... you don't cost more than the money in my wallet. I shall aquire thee!" and then buy it. I do spend a great deal of money on hardware, software, anime, and hard liquor alcohol (not beer) and as far as I know I hardly see any mainstream ads for any of those products (unless you count dell).
Still, I think everyone should aspire to be me in at least in a sense that you don't buy everything you see on tv (then again I only watch Commedy Central, Cartoon Network and History Channel). No wonder this nation is in debt if I am the exception and not the rule of the average person.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I lived in OH, went to Miami University and for any of you that are/were locals, this station represents independent radio. Sure, there are others nationally, but this one is hard to match in its variety, its zest for new artists and the unique way they can pull in bands for sets, interviews, etc. Is any radio/media venue worth $120 a year? Boy, WOXY's two streaming stations v. XM and Sirius at ~$15/month is a tough match up. HBO at ~$10/month is also a tough pricing comparable. With Oprah getting $55mm, why can't they just partner up with a sattelite provider for who they are? Howard Stern sure did. In the end, I've subscribed for one reason - I've learned more from this station about new artists than anywhere else. Who can put a price on knowledge and credibility?
Working to make ideas into reality. www.i4e.com
It would be very easy and very economical to run an internet radio station. It would be fairly simple to build a p2p broadcast client that operated like bittorrent (so as to eliminate the need for a single server to serve bandwidth to everyone). And find people who would want to DJ and play music is easy. There is nothing inherently expensive or technically difficult about that. Because the costs are so cheap, it wouldn't take much to make it a profitable buisness.
The hard part of Internet radio is dealing with all the legal restrictions, licencing, ASCAP payments, and whatever.
Like all government regulation, the regulations and legal restrictions are designed to create fixed costs such that the barrier to entry is so high that there are only a few large competitors in the industry.
Eliminate all the restrictions and regulations, and Internet radio will take off.
I agree about The Current, I listen to the morning show daily. It's one of the best in the business and has replaced BBC's Chris Moyles in our home. I've been a big fan of Dale Connelly and Jim Ed Poole since they were broadcasting off of MPR out of Houghton, MI. and it's great to be able to pick up their show online. They are a great twist on the morning shock jock shows -- their jokes are funny and witty and they play a wide array of music.
There is a lot of great radio available for free due to public/government funding (NPR, BBC,WNUR,CBC.CA, Notmuch.com, to name a few), so I don't see why anyone would pay for it or want to listen to something loaded with commercials.
Commercials == junk.
I'd rather be strapped in a dental chair and be forced to listen to Canadian content like Bryan Adams, if it means being able to also listen to Saturday afternoon DNTO on CBC.CA, than ever listen to another beer commercial against my will.
So really it's not that Internet radio is dying, it's just that dinosaur formats are dying because they cannot make the evolutionary leap to the internet. And as far as commercial stations, there are some I will listen to anyways because of nostalic reasons. Otherwise, there are only so many people who want to hear a bland commercial Ohio radio station and most of them are in Ohio. If they can't make it on the Ohio airwaves, what makes them think they are going to make it in cyberspace?
Give it a few more years. When 3G cellphone service prices drop, then you'll be able to use Internet radio like you'd use a standard FM receiver today. As long as you have passable cellphone coverage, you'll be fine.
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A good example of successful simulcasting is WFMU-FM, a non-commercial non-NPR freeform station in Jersey City, NJ. They play lots of obscure and strange music, and they also have a weekday Jewish music and chat show called "JM in the AM." The station has two morning webcasts - one for JM and another that features the usual odd brew that is WFMU's specialty.
From what I understand, the transition to Internet simulcasting was quite successful and led to improved fundraising (now the world funds the station instead of New York City). The station streams in Real, WMA, AAC, Ogg, and two flavors of MP3 (128 Kbps/32 Kbps). Each 128 Kbps MP3 stream (usually 3 hours long) is stored for three weeks, but the Real version is permanently archived.
I've found the WFMU streams to be very reliable. Now I hear that the station is going to be streaming direct to mobile phones. Well, good luck to them 'cause I'm a big fan.
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
If small players are unable to compete with huge monopolies in the music distribution business, that represents a complete failure of current economic policy. Put simply, successful economics policies make more goods available to more people. Instead, we find that fewer and fewer have the means to take advantage of our technological abundance. Why? Because politicians don't represent the greater good, they represent the greater greed. Infrastructure technologies which should be commoditized are privatized and monopolized, and as a society, we suffer. We the people are being robbed, and the robbers are blessed by our own government. They are our government.
This is by far the best station I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. I had already subscribed before the on-air announcement was over.
I highly encourage anyone with an interest in good music (especially of the modern rock variety) do themselves a favor and have a listen on the currently free stream.
The people are really what make the station. The DJs know everything about the music they play and add a very personal element to the station. They are also a huge force in discovering new interesting music and they somewhat frequently have "Lounge Acts" now where rising bands will come play a live set. Additionally they have a show called Unsigned@WOXY.com which features unsigned artists. Both of these are available as podcasts. WOXY.com also has full independence in what they play, unlike corporate stations which are payed for spinning certain tunes at certain times to increase ratings.
The problem is that radio has never been free, and now the people who used to pay (advertisers) do not know what to do with the new WOXY.com (BAM! The Future of Rock and Roll!). Is it a radio station? They don't broadcast on the dial! Is it a webcast? Well, its still very much a radio format! There is incredible value, but marketroids do not understand yet.
As other people have suggested here another major impetus is that most people don't have EVDO or EDGE in their cars. My hope is that subscriptions can carry the station over to a time when the rest of the world has caught up with the amazing things WOXY.com is doing; a time when we'll once again have The Future of Rock and Roll in our cars, except this time without geographic boundaries.
Overall, Woxy.com is the paragon of artistic integrity. This makes them very unique in what they have to offer, and I would highly suggest that you go to the web site, read their appeal, and have a listen. If you like what you hear, I HIGHLY urge you to support what 20 years from now will still be the preeminent independent music station with your assistance.
And no, I do not work for WOXY.com, I just really love the station for the knowledgable staff who provide a great service in providing music I would never have otherwise heard.
Best Regards,
Paul
Will digital music distribution fall solely to giants like XM and iTunes?
I think this is very short-sighted, and in fact I think it is going to go the exact opposite, XM and Sirius are going to be in toruble evry soon.
As more and more major metropolitian areas get cheap or free blanket Wi-Fi access, it will be harder and harder to justify paying 6.95 a month to listen to digital radio, when you can tune into an internet-based digital stream for free. Personally, I already find the quality of a 192kbps stream at shoutcast.com to be far superior to anything on XM.
Satelite also has much higher expenses - it costs a lot more to run and power a network of satelites than a few web servers.
Not a popular word around here, but *whispers* podcasting! I used to listen to the radio a lot. I was actually a DJ for a few years. Now I fill that need with podcasts. I have talk in the morning for my commute and music shows during work. It's an opportunity to hear new music. Better still, the music I find is RIAA-free which means I can buy it with a clean conscience (and I do).
My car doesn't have wi-fi, but it does have an Mp3 player that can sync podcasts. Advantage podcasts there too.
The biggest problem with the podcasting concept is that *anyone* can do it. It's hard at first to tell the wheat from the chaff. This is however the necessary price of variety. Commercial radio is of uniform (mediocre) quality. Many podcasts are worse, some (enough, I'd say) are better.
Podcasts might not be a 24/7 stream, but I've found that there's more good content than I have time to listen to. That's close enough for me.
~p
Another post made me think about a new model of internet radio website where obscure songs could be played on request.
The internet radio website takes requests from listneners using e-mail. The e-mail requests include the music file that the listener would like to have played. Screeners listen to the music file and make sure it meets their standards. Using their bandwith the internet radio website streams the file. The basic idea being that the internet radio station would only play music that others suggest and would never have to rely upon a playlist of their own. Really obscure music that one person in Malawi likes could be broadcast to all the listeners.
There are some pretty obvious problems with this model. The legality is pretty questionable even if the internet radio station were to delete the content they played. Even so I would love to listen if someone were to create something like this.
"Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is: I don't know which half."
According to a quick google often (but not solely) attributed to Henry Ford.
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.
You've just described mainstream radio in the US.
If we're talking Internet radio, you've got other options. Just picking a few English speaking places for starters, you could try Ireland, South Africa, Australia or the UK. I'm sure that there's crap broadcast from all of these places (for any definition of crap, there certainly is in the UK), but there's non-crap too.
I think alot of their intended listeners will get it turned off from their evil SysAdmin...
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Many people HATE commercial advertising on terrestrial radio, despite it being free to listen to. With greater access to broadband now, podcasting will grow significantly, IMHO.
Some radio stations have found though (as Air America Radio did, for example) that they can't afford the cost of distributing giga/terabytes of files without charging for it. Listeners baulk at the prospect of having to pay for something that was previously free. That's why I think that the future lies with independent podcasters (not affiliated with major media corporations) who don't charge for their content; and produce shows whose quality is every bit as good as main stream media. For an example of such a show, head over to The Richard Vobes Radio Show. He does a 30-minute variety show EVERY day.
Is this true? I listen (probably like everyone else here) to several podcasts. Most of my preferences are podcasts that play music. I know several of them have ASCAP licenses, CovervilleK for example, and I didn't think the license was that much. If a one man podcast can avoid all the licensing entanglements, why can't an actual radio station that has converted to the net?
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1. The music is usually bad
Well, taste is subjective, but WOXY is the best station around in my opinion
2. The music is the same playlist shuffled differently for each new day
While WOXY does have songs in heavy rotation, heavy for them is like twice a day. They have a selection of thousands of songs and are not afraid to play them.
3. There are no deejays that will actually play obscure requests
WOXY has live DJ's M-F during the day and evening (US East Coast Time) that not only plays requests, they often ask listeners to send in obscure requests.
4. Too many annoying commercials / fake deejays
WOXY is commercial free and some of the most sincere DJs I've ever heard.
5. Too many stations are owned by the same companies
WOXY is independently owned and operated.
6. Companies have been doing 'pay to play' illegally - big surprise
If WOXY did that they certainly wouldn't be asking for listeners to support them!
7. I buy my own music to hear the artists I enjoy - I am in control
OK, I admit that WOXY can't compete with that, but I am willing to bet if you listen to it for an hour you will hear at least one band you have never heard before which would expose you to new music.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
some posters have pointed out that you can't buy a radio with an ethernet port or that internet radio streams fail, or u cant use it in the car.
all true, and imho irrelevant.
there is something very, very , very simple that is killing internet radio:
the lack of a simple radio gui.
we all have a very set, simple expectation of what a radio looks like: you turn a knob, and the Mhz or Khz changes, and as you pass diff stations, youre signal gets strong and weak.
to make Internet radio a success, all you have to do is provide this simple simple simple gui, a button foryour home zipcode, and make it the same and universal on all platforms, and just have a simple band swithc for the other stations that you have on the internet
most of us don't want, or at least don't want to start with 100s of stations - to much choice is NOT alwasys good (anyone who argues taht is a moron and can be safely ignored [as can the people who complain about my spelling]). what you want is something that starts SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE and then allows you to explore complexity as u get comfortable (bill gates are u listening: windows media player is NOT the answer)
of course, all the radio stations are too stupid to get together and do this, so they shoot themselves in the foot....
Great to hear you've found a radio station you like. In Australia, we've got a radio station we're pretty proud of. It's the national youth radio station although it's audience stretches much farther than that. Triple J (http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/)
0 ,_2005). 50% Aussie music this year so you might have to check out the previous years to get a feel for the style.
It's part of the ABC (Aussie version of the BBC) and is totally governement funded so there aren't even calls for subscriptions and absolutely no ads.
Best of all, very good music. You have to appreciate that it's 4am here on Saturday morning so it's pretty much electronic (albeit high quality). Check out the top 100 songs from last year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J_Hottest_10
I don't know your taste in music, but woxy.com plays modern rock -- primarily independent music that isn't overly processed and is generally written and performed by the performers.
Hardly. I've had requests for recent songs dinged by their DJs (very politely) becuase they had just played the within the last three days. Sure, they have their rotations, but heavy rotation on woxy.com is much lighter than at any corporate terrestrial station.
woxy's DJs have a wall of THOUSANDS of CDs from their very beginning -- 1983 or so -- that they can easily access and do on multiple occasions. In addition, they have no problem playing deep cuts on any album if it goes with the flow of the set. Their music ranges runs the alternative gamut from new wave to punk to techno; part of their library is also dedicated to reggae and blues. The latter may not get played nearly as much, but they are available.
The DJs at woxy.com are anything but fake. Their morning DJ, Barb, responds to EVERY email I send her, and she mentions her listners on a regular basis. The other jocks have always responded similarly.
Unfortunately, they don't have enough annoying commercials, which is why they're going to a listner-supported model. The thing is, you can have one or the other: advertising-filled for free or advertising-free for a fee.
woxy is completely independent; they take the risks, they give the people what they want, and there is no corporate angel (or devil) saving their butts/flipping their format when it doesn't bring in enough revenue.
As I understand it, woxy didn't receive that kind of promotional, um, consideration from the record companies because they would play songs before they were supposed to, and playing deeply into the album -- two things that are actually good for the listener, but negatively impacts a song or artist's chart ranking.
Fair enough. But woxy.com has introduced me to a ton of music that I wouldn't have thought to buy in the past all based on hearing new stuff on woxy. Once introduced, I did sample and buy more from those artists, and now i'm in control of those lists.
The fact is that woxy is a breath of fresh air among the staleness of corporate radio. I don't disagree with you that MOST radio stations adhere to those seven reasons why you stopped listening to radio; but woxy is not most stations. It is the antithesis to the kinds of stations that /.ers generally rail against.
WOXY is the answer to many of the ills of US radio. They have live DJs M-F during the day and evening (US East Coast Time) that aren't fake sounding and that beg for requests. They are commercial free. They are independently owned and operated. They don't play songs to death. They don't play Top 40 stuff.
I used to listen to them back when they were a terrestrial radio station and when the company sold the terrestrial signal, they went away for a few months and that was the worst musical time in my life. I had a text file full of the stream urls of other internet broadcasters from KEXP to radio xy and nearly a dozen more. While they were good, none of them had the spirit and quality of WOXY. Then they came back internet only and it was great.
Sure there are alternatives online and via satelite, but I subscribed the day they announced it. So give them a listen. They are keeping the free low quality streams around (use the aac+ stream if possible. it sounds the best) so try them out.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Internet Radio is being killed by four factors:
1. Podcasting - I can podcast a show to millions of people and they can listen any time they want with a 10th of the bandwidth and equipment.
2. Preimium/Subscriber Based Content - A lot of broadcastors are setting up commercial free broadcasts and podcasts with all the behind the scenes audio in place of the commercials for a price.
3. Cost - It costs a butt-load of money to set up a streaming server and internet connection that can handle then load of any broadcast. If you use someone else to do the streaming for you, it still costs a lot and you loss control of your broadcast. P2P solutions for live broadcasts just don't work now and I'm not sure they ever will.
4. Laws - Its been 2 minutes since you looked at the the FCC/EFF/MPAA/ABCDEF page. Better refresh it to see what the new rules are. Can someone point me to an update set of rules and regulations for broadcasting is?
Just for the mobility factor you need a way to transmit your message over the radio waves. If someone could come up with a simple way for me to broadcast my message to say a five mile radius from my home to some I would love you.
CB sucks. LPFM is dead (thanks to my church). Shortwave/Ham radio requires to many licenses (see #4).
If someone could make a simple transmitter in one of the unlicened bands for $200, and then make a reciever that will re-transmit the signal into FM so my car or home stero could pick it up for $100 or less, I would be eternally greatful. The exact frequency wouldn't matter because the listener would ID themself by a digital call sign that people would find your station.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
What about Live365? I may well be mistaken, but from the outside looking in it seems to doing quite well. Their model to provide both free and premium levels of service also seems to be working.
It also points to something possibly missing in the assessment that internet radio is dead or dying -- all the "little" stations run by individuals. Are they not the bread and butter of Live365? Stop looking only at the big players and I think you'll see internet radio is indeed not fairing so poorly.
Another area overlooked may be something I've seen recently -- internet radio streamed over Skype. Internet FM (run by a 14 y/o kid in Australia) can be quite decent at times. And then there is PirateRadio or RadioDestiny, again allowing individuals to run their own IP radio stations.
Internet radio is far from dead or dying. People simply aren't looking in the right direction. IP radio not a big entity only media source, but instead is alive and well in the hundreds if not thousands of "little" radio stations all over the internet. Just because the big boys aren't making out like bandits does not mean it's an undesirable business.
In fact, maybe it's all those little individual-run internet stations that are giving the bigger players a run for their money. They seem just enough off the radar screen to be unnoticed and not greatly feared by the larger players, but they do have listeners. In the words of Satchel Paige, "Don't look back; something may be gaining on you." Maybe that applies in this case.
(In fact, I hope to soon start my own little IP talk radio station. Stay tuned!)
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
Been around for years. They offer both free and paid streams. Plus, they're, like, uh, totally hiring PHP developers and stuff, yo. w00t.
Broadcast radion in general is purely an annoyance to listen to. Yes, I am an XM radio subscriber. In fact, I have XM at home and in my vehicle. I love it. Why? Well, it's very simple. You don't hear stupid "radio voices". You don't hear all the damn commercials for stuff you don't want from companies who are too cheap to film TV commercials. You can get specialized content and stations that you can't get anywhere else. The stations are added and deleted based on listener support of a station. You can see title and artist of songs and hear a lot more music in the spectrum because they're not driven completely on playlists. They have REAL deejays that do take requests.
.02.
Now for those of you with the torches out, cap them please. Don't trip over your 8-tracks while trying to flame me. People try to make tha argument of, "Well, there are still commercials on XM!" Well, that's true, but the "commercials" on the music stations are really lineup notes. They advertise about other special programs on other XM channels. With such a wide variety of stations and content, the average listener would never been able to know what was on. The "ads" are relevent to the listenership of that particular station. You're not going to hear commercials for "XM 66 RAW (Uncensored Hip Hop Station)" on "XM 121 Fox News". It doesn't fit the demographic for that channel. So I would say they do a pretty good job there.
If I hear another "Free FM" radio spot, I might vomit. It really is a sad thing. "Free radio" had no problem running XM's radio spots when XM was getting started [read as, 'taking XM's money while in infancy'] because they never thought it would take off. With the new portable radios that XM is putting out, the Pioneer Inno and the Samsung Helix, XM will actually become portable, aside from the already available XM Delphi MiFi that is kind clunky. Sirius' best offering is a little behind with a potable that's more like a brick than a radio -- so they're a little behind in that department. Anyway, my
Xserv
"I love lamp."
Podcasts baby. You can take them anywhere and hear whatever shows you want when it's convenient for you, most of them are free, it never skips due to network lag, and you can fast forward through the small amount of commercials they have. Combine that with an mp3 library and I hardly ever listen to the radio anymore.
Why the hell would anyone want streaming internet radio?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
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.
It's "PLOAF," not "P-LOAF." Ask about it.
I listen to internet radio for a reason, and I find it very useful. I am an American currently located in England, and without internet radio, I would not be able to listen to some radio stations I preffer listening to for the majority of every year.
r es.htm - under "Audio/visual" heading)
I normally use my HP iPAQ PDA over the wireless network in the British home with a program that supports mp3 pro (*.m3u) or Windows Media Player, depending on which radio station I am listening to.
BBC Radio 4 the vast majority of the time does not provide any good discussion, and Capital FM does not suit my style. I listen to KALW and KOIT, normally. People are amazed when they see what I am doing.
The built-in speakers on the iPAQ are very poor, so I use headphones (purchased at Frys), which offer much better quality.
This is one of the possible, and very useful, uses of internet radio. However, I suspect that this audience that I am in is very small.
It would be great if automobile companies like BMW, seeing as they have got iPod intergration into the vehicles, and Lincoln, would also offer the ability to listen to some internet radio stations, so I can listen to them while driving.
However, intenet radio will no longer be necessary in around five/six years once I return full-time to California to spend the third decade of my life onwards. I will then use a portable radio to listen to the radio while I am moving around the house and be able to listen to it in my car, in HD. The BMW 7 series supports HD FM radio stations, such as KOIT. I do not know whether this is also the case on the internet streaming version. (Link: http://www.bmwusa.com/Vehicles/7/750liSedan/Featu
It is also a big annoyance to have to use the program on the PDA to access the radio station, compared to pressing physical buttons, such as on the steering wheel/knob to to this. Also, the reliability of the wireless connection to the PDA seems to be getting constantly worse, while not to other wireless devices.
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anonymousHuman
http://www.kxlu.com/ or FM 88.9 in most of Los Angeles.
Makes KCRW look like yuppie muzak
You can't listen to internet radio in your car
"Starting today, we will begin offering our premium service. For the bargain price of $9.95/month we will be offering 24-hour, true broadband, CD-quality streams to subscribers."
What do they mean by "CD-quality?" I listen to WOXY once in awhile and if I remember correctly, they were doing 56kbps streams. It was okay, but the quality wasn't great. If they put out 192kbps VBR quality, I'd probably subscribe, but if it's 128kbps stuff it wouldn't be much of an improvement.
online communities created by Japanese music fans are likely to put up & finance (using donations & advertising revenues) their own online radio station using the free SHOUTcast streaming platform from Nullsoft, the developers of Winamp. and for those who can't afford to pay for a streaming host, the availability of a broadband connection makes it easier for them to test the waters.
the majority of these stations are based in the US who's primary target audience are those from outside Japan. Unless you have administrator access to the live DNAS (SHOUTcast server) or statistics, you won't have the slightest clue as what the demographics are. Surprisingly, the bulk of listeners are coming from Japan and those responsible for maintaining the stations and live broadcast shows including DJ's are continually baffled; as to finding ways to accomodate additional slots for non-Japanese users without spending a fortune, afterall bandwidth is an expensive commodity. as a result, monetary & bandwidth donation jingles are often played.
but whether they're doing it for legitimate purposes or just for fun, it remains a topic to debate on.
I listen to radio in my car. I don't have access to a computer in my car. Sure I guess I could set up an ipod or whatever and play it in my car, but IMHO that's a LOT of work and expense. I have to really work at identifying new music that I like, purchasing it, downloading it, transferring to an iPod, etc.
I don't like to listen to music while I'm working on my computer.
So really until they figure out how to connect my car radio to the internet in some seamless fashion, I have no use for internet radio.
Rain Man will be very upset about this. Seriously, WOXY was a fairly low-powered FM station that had national acclaim due to the fact that they were beholden to no corporation and held the music above all else. It was a sad day indeed when the owners had to sell their frequency. When they announced that they were going Internet only, I wished them the best but knew that it was only a matter of time before they went under. If anything, their uniqueness is what has done them in. Their playlist remains not only eclectic, but extremely well-chosen by folks with an excellent sense of taste that stretches across the stringent format boundaries imposed upon us by almost all commercial radio. They have such a rabid fanbase that they simply cannot afford the cost of remaining online as they are. Advertisers simply don't know how to adapt their business models to fit in an independent Net Radio station. They are still seen as small potatoes when stood up against national entities such as Launch, Rhapsody, etc. Good radio, we hardly knew ye.
I recently found Atlantic Sound Factory and they play all the music I like with "NO REPEAT WORK WEEK" THAT IS AWESOME! Except for maybe sat radio nothing comes close.
As far as sound I am getting great 128 bit feeds. If I have to restart a few times during the day that is no big deal.
The only problem I do have with them is that they seem to be going after larger audiances rather than building up a war chest with the donations. If I donate $10 that should cover the cost of my connection for about 4 months. Instead of holding my donation it just seems that add more slots. Sheesh.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
Silly me, I always thought the "OX" in WOXY stood for Oxford, Ohio, NOT Cincinnati. Since it could be picked up well in Oxford (Home of Miami University), but not in Cincinnati, I think that's accurate. Miami University, you know, the university that this year's Super Bowl Champion Quarterback went to... THE Miami University (not to be confused with the ficticious Miami "of Ohio", or the University of Miami down south.) I like to remind people that Miami was a University before Florida was a state (1809 vs. 1845). Likewise, don't call Oxford "Cincinnati"!
Totally agreed. I think corporations are wasting money on TV. The future is personalised adds. I also consider myself add-influence-free (thank God). I think that with the hand of technology is possible to deliver information that's useful for each individual. Maybe that's why amazon is very successful.
The problem is how to deliver such information without saturating the user with "spam", but definetely that's the way to go, Ad-Sense and all that stuff. Advertising based on "knowledge" of each individual.
CL
CBC Radio 3 is doing just fine in canada ...
It's growing strong on satelitte and the www i believe.
WOXY is Cincinnati-based now. They're running it out of a building on Pete Rose Way. The terrestrial station was on College Corner Pike in Oxford, though.
My wife and I run a small niche-market internet radio station called Church of Girl Radio that plays music from female-fronted and all-female bands. We do not take ads, but have recently become an itunes affiliate and implemented a dynamic link on our "Now Playing" window that allows the listener to purchase any song we play (provided they are listed on itunes which most are). It's only been a week since we put this in place, so it remains to be seen how profitable it will be.
Here's a couple of community oriented stations from projects that people I know are involved in. The attempt is to produce free (as in beer and freedom) content and also to let others get involved in broadcasting their own content, contributing, adding their own programmes and stations and even loaning servers for broadcasting and relaying. The main point is that this model (as opposed to the monolithich radio station moving to the net) is possibly the one that will work in the future. Bit like community radio for the whole planet! They're both in early days yet, but are slowly growing. Feel free to listen in :)
http://www.radiovague.com/
http://www.r23.cc/
When a person can rip their own cds on an ipod like device, radio transmitter and internet based radio cease to matter. The only reason radio still exists is music is expensive for 10,000 music tracks and a device to store the music. Given the falling price of flash and the proliferation of free music, it's only a matter of time. Only talk radio shall remain.
I think Pandora has music Internet radio right. Traditional Internet radio broadcasts have nothing on it when it comes to music. With Pandora I can build my own station, skip songs I don't like... it goes on.
That leaves talk radio. I think podcasts have got this right. The only thing a traditional Internet radio broadcast has up over it is that you can do it more or less live and have people call/IM in.
I think traditional Internet radio has failed because people tried to transfer the radio format to a new medium not very suited for it. Now we're seeing new formats taking advantage of the new medium, and they are very successful.
Channel 103.1 (KACD/KBCD) tried that in 2000 or 2001. I hate to say, but it didn't do well - the domain name (worldclassrock.com) is now broadcasting a stream from KBCO.
This sig no verb.
I've been broadcasting "toqerTV LIVE at the 7 Bamboo karaoke lounge" for 2 years now. Even with AOL flippin the bill for bandwidth, I haven't been able to pay off my bills.
Camcorder Capable of streaming - $600
First 2 months hosting at he.net $1600 (they tacked on an early cancellation fee)
Encoding PC - $600
DSL setup and monthly (first year)(speakeasy) $1400
bunch of misc costs here and there, $1000
Even with donations (usually only got enough to pay the credit card minimums) to help me pay stuff off, after the first year with interest charges my first years credit card balance was $5000, now it's $7000 on year 2.
I've tried exploring every kind of sponsorship I could find, but nobody wants to sponsor a karaoke video stream. I've offered web ads, ads in our karaoke songbooks, vinyl banners hung from our stage, and even overlayed ads on our stream. I've approached local businesses (mostly resuraunts), i've approached DUI lawyers and bails bondsman (you'd figure advertising in a bar would be hot to them) I've tried contacting budweiser, coors, etc. Nobody is really interested in advertising on an online station. It could be my content, I dunno.
I've heard ads on my fellow shoutcasters radio stations, but it's mostly companies that do business on the net. It's not the type of businesses you usually hear on FM radio stations.
The technology is there. Internet radio does sound way better than FM these days. Unfortunatly advertisers don't see a reason to go there. For most of them, it's a lack of understanding of the technology, but there are some savvy ones. The Savvy ones know that the number of listeners your station can reach is limited by your bandwidth, which on average amounts to about 200 listeners per station on even the best bandwidth.
I don't know what to do anymore. I love what I do, it's damn unique and the few regular viewers we have are really cool. Lately though just lookin at the numbers, even with AOL sponsoring my bandwidth if I don't start getting either advertising dollars or more regular donations, i'm going to have to stop it. Wife and I had our first kid 2 months ago, I have other bills to worry about. Then again, I feel the stream and the small community I created is my baby too.
I was even featured in the New York Times which in print terms should have been as good as a slashdot effect. Yet I never got a single call or email from an interested advertiser.
I think i'm just gonna wrap this up by saying internet broadcasting is cool as hell. I just wish advertisers would see it the same way.
If you are looking for a WOXY alternative, try WNKU.
http://www.wnku.edu/
It's another Cincinnati area station with a similar ethos. They are in Kentucky though, so expect more bluegrass.
And while you are trying new things, give a listen to the Freddies.
http://www.freddiesmusic.com/
It seems you understand the legal aspects of broadcasting more than I do, but lets not forget that it is through advertisement that the media manages to take in a profit and pay their expenses.
In today's standards, the word 'free' isn't completely what it sounds, and I'm sorry not to have pointed that out. The car of tomorrow can come equipped with back seat LCD screens free of charge, but I bet they have further plans of selling you a service to watch on your LCD afterwards. In the same sense, a free Internet station can be embedded with all sorts of goods that will attract an audience and then ads. Something else went wrong along the way.
Were they using this technology to its fullest potential? Did they innovate enough? Hypothetically, the Internet allows you to find out where the person is listening from, so you could give initiative to a new model/campaign to advertisers themselves, giving them the capability to dynamically access listeners of selected regions, purchased and operated through an automated system. Such model targets the advertiser, not listener, so in the same way they would have to work hard on their programming (probably what they are good at anyway).
According to you, they tried solving two problems: one of retirement, the other of survival with a new model. The point is that currently, they don't seem to be prepared as individuals ("owners of the station were reaching retirement age") to lead, innovate, or at least improve the model of Internet radio, so I don't see how this article fits its title.
WOXY was something special. It was the last independantly owned and operated commercial radio station in america.
Obviously when they broadcast FM it was and Ohio / Miami river valley market, which provided their initial fan base online... Guess they just never got a wider geographic market...
I think you're overstating the ease of accomplishing something like this.
The system would have to be specifically designed to deliver streaming audio from a distributed unreliable decentralized network. The reason bit torrent like technologies don't support streaming content is because they block, transmit, and verify smaller portions of larger files out of sequence based on availability.
If you tried to do this with streaming content you would run into issues. In the best of cases with an entirely new P2P system the content would be delayed from the first level peers on down through the network. What I would suspect would happen is that you would end up with out of sequence content with long delays and pauses. P2P networking is sort of like TCP and Streaming content is UDP, they don't really overlay.
So there's some technical issues.
The best option I think we have at the moment would be creating podcasting networks. You would just have to download full programs over BT using a client that could determine the playlisting of the programs. I think it might be difficult to create an actual business around this because people have demonstrated their willingness to create content for free and the actual service wouldn't have much to offer over what the average Joe can do with iTunes. That and it still has the legal barrier you were speaking of if dealing with licensing.
For the sake of simplicty it is refered to as Cincinnati....
If I said Niles, IL would one know where it was?
Prolly not, so I'd say Chicago.
WOXY always came in fine in Cincinnati, especially on a decent tuner with attached antenna
And yes, all us locals do know that the OX = Oxford
Ah how I miss the good old days of 97.7 !!!
I could just see a new "trendy" phone, like a Razr, that also acts as a satellite reciever. Give it FM broadcasting abilities, and your phone broadcasts those stations in your car or home stereo. Based upon the GPS capabilities of phones, I could see them delivering specific content to your radio, such as weather advisories, traffic conditions, etc. that are of importance to you.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
A lot of negative vibe here! I would have thought the opposite - that is the idea that Internet 'radio', free of commercials and free to listen to would be WIDELY embraced by the Slahdot crowd... but wow!
I saw an argument that questioned why anyone would listen to a stream when you had mp3's and such on your local machine? That is SO closed minded! Why, to discover NEW music, you idiot! Not only that, there is a special connection to OTHER listeners, other listeners that obviously have the same taste and are WITNESSING what you are... right now! So, how is it to live in a cave then? Sheesh!
The other argument that tweaks me is "I don't want to listen to what other people (DJ's) are playing, I want to listen to what *I* want to listen to." Fair enough. But again, CLOSED minded. Music is ART; sir, and ART is a process of DISCOVERY. Go back to your CAVE, and btw, what the HELL are you doing posting on Slashdot anyway!?
Unbelievable! I support Internet streaming (and yes, with my wallet) because it is worth it to me, to not be subject to the rediculous nature of commercial radio. Internet streaming was born out of the idea that is does NOT take lots of money and equipement to share ideas (music, in this case) - the sharing of ideas and information! Anybody? Anyone with a sense of reasoning getting this??
Btw, for you non-haters: http://www.shoutcast.com/
Is this some kind of meta-commentary? You manage to work in an ad for a book, a book about how ads co-opt underground culture terminology, in a discussion about how ads affect you, on geek-culture site.
I'm kind of dizzy, but I salute you anyway.
So how do I decide what shoes to wear or what soda to drink or whether the iPod is the best PAD for me? I try stuff. If they make a product that's worth my money, I'll buy it. There used to be a time when you needed more than clever marketing to sell a product... you needed something desirable. Think PC watercooling - how often do you see ads for it? Now how many of your geeky friends use it? I import parts from Germany because I absolutely love the stuff, not because they have eye-catching ads. They made a desirable product.
Of course I'm not like most consumers - I'm definately on the extreme edge of anti-advertising. There are plenty of people that rely on the ads and nothing else for their choices. But people are moving away from that, albeit slowly. The future is _not_ targeted advertising, however much it will help (because you just hit sensory overload at some point... think Minority Report here; I'd go ballistic if a hologram was suggesting that Mr. Stern should think about replacing his Adidas Samba's soon), the future is making a worthwhile product. Targeted products, perhaps, but not targeted ads.
I think Amazon is so successful because you can find just about anything there in a matter of minutes. I spent an hour at the mall looking for something and ended up failing miserably. Within ten minutes of getting home, I found the item on Amazon and had it ordered, and probably spent less than I would have locally (even if the damned seller took two weeks to deliver the thing, maybe I'm just spoiled by Newegg). Why'd I choose Amazon? It's not because they advertise, and it's certainly not because they have a good layout (it out-and-out sucks imo), it's because I can do a search and find what I need in a few seconds. The "May we suggest...?" thing is helpful in its own sense, but the fact of the matter is that their success is their diversity, which makes it easier for customers. And it's making it easier for customers that makes your business successful. Google: fast, clean, easy. MSN: bloated, fairly slow, overloaded, easy enough but not as easy as it could be. Who's king? I'll give you one guess, and if your guess is MSN, you had better be a mildly-stoned person with the last name of Gates or Ballmer.
I choose Bawls or Wild Cherry Pepsi because I like the flavor. I chose my Sambas because I like how they feel, not because I play indoor soccer (which I don't; I don't even like soccer, or any sport for that matter). I chose an iPod because I like the simple interface. Etc. And I found these products not by advertising, but by trying them out. Put it this way: if advertising was still very important, Intel would have 100% market share. I certainly have never seen an AMD ad, and definately not a Via one, but I've used quite a few AMD computers, own one that's Via-powered, and only have one Intel, and that's solely because I needed the cheapest solution that had four SATA ports. Products that meet my needs are purchased, products that don't - however much they try to convince me otherwise - aren't.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
It would be fairly simple to build a p2p broadcast client that operated like bittorrent (so as to eliminate the need for a single server to serve bandwidth to everyone).
Simpler than building something like that would be to just use peercast. A peer to peer audio streaming program designed to eliminate the need for a single server to serve bandwidth to everyone.
(Amusingly another reply to the parent post is some-one pointing out how this can never work. What I'd call 'management material' there..)
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Of course, you do realize that woxy.com has relocated to downtown Cincinnati since they went internet-only, right? They're in Longworth Hall now.
Thanks I'll have to check out the suggestions
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Four letters: KALX
http://somafm.com/
Is this a sign of things to come for the other radio stations, that broadcast over the Internet?
Yes.
Will digital music distribution fall solely to giants like XM and iTunes?
Yes.
Next "Ask Slashdot", please!
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
http://www.streamerp2p.com/
Very cool idea indeed...even can report approximate listeners on the stream for reporting purposes.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Radio simulcast: wsps.sps.edu "The home of eclectic music"
also pandora.com is an interesting site, you can choose songs you like and it will serve up others like it - and it's free.
Internet radio doesn't seem to be doing too badly to me. I just checked Shoutcast and there are well over 10,000 stations. There's aren't an excessive amount of ads either (at least on the stations I listen to). As for portability, what I do is usually just leave Streamripper on while I go to class, then fill my mp3 player up with the songs later. Probably isn't 100% legal, but it works and I personally don't find it unethical since it doesn't cut out the ads or anything.
My wife and I run a niche internet radio station called Church of Girl Radio which plays all-female and female-fronted bands and artists. Recently, we became Itunes affiliates and I have implemented a dynamic link to Itunes for our "Now Playing" window. Now listeners can purchase songs they like straight from Itunes in real-time and we get a cut from it. It hasn't been long enough to tell whether this will be profitable for us, but well see
I used to subscribe to a station called Makradio, which had 4 channels of great music. I was happy with it, bu t then they decided to drop my favourite channel, so I cancelled my membership. They can't expect to keep customers if they don't keep the channels people want to hear.
I'm buying a subscription TODAY. They were the only good radio station in Cincinnati, and I came near to tears when they shut down their Oxford transmitter. They rock out.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
They say that royalties, reliable streaming, and staff are their biggest costs - they have real on-air personalities (who'll personally respond to email and play tons of requests), and they provide health insurance.
I love WOXY - Check their history page. I grew up in the Dayton area, so was able to hear them when they were FM. They were featured in Rainman as the cool-radio station because the moviemakers wanted the true, independent station, something that would be similar to KROQ back in the day.
I think the number of comments from fans of WOXY throught this article, point out that they've definitely found something that works - hopefully they can find a business model that will let them continue.
This is one of the reasons that paying for internet radio won't catch on. ShoutCast tried to make most internet radio stations free because the server and client are free and portable to other applications.
Anyone with a slight knowledge of port forwarding and the config file can set up a custom, free internet radio station. Quality and songs are simply determined by total bandwidth and music collection.
However, on the other side, people who plan on having more than 15 or 20 people listen in need to get higher upload bandwidth, which then plays into paying for it. It could be solved by running a P2P-style connection, where one server is really just to "echo" the main server. If enough people did that, then the issue of bandwidth would be solved. However, in cases it's not, adspace or fees become feasible options. Adspace is probably more common, because, tracing back to my first paragraph, ShoutCast is free. And so, the debate continues. However, as with apache, for us novices, a server can get set up and be a free personal thing, or we can connect to a 400-slot server.
The issue of whether this lives or not is really not an issue because internet radio doesn't seem to be up in the main stream. High bandwidth and money are a necessity for large stations, and it may end up like the airwaves: Clogged with ads or run by hobbiest.
My Two Pennies.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
The legal restrictions are not very difficult either. All you have to do is not play too many songs from the same artist or album, put a few access restrictions on your publically available broadcast archive (if you even have one), and write your checks on time to SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. You don't even have to talk to the FCC (now thats a nightmare).
Though, finding DJs isn't so easy as you describe, if you're interested in 24/7 (or close to 24/7) programming. Can you put together 2 hours of music that you think would make a good radio show? Now can you find 83 other people who will do this for you? Every week? Without playing the same things over and over again? Obviously, you can automate the whole process, but if you want to avoid excessive repetition you have to have a lot of music in your automated playlists. (Personally, I think automation sucks the soul out of radio, its one of many reasons why mainstream radio sounds so awful)
In other news, check out the station linked in my sig. Kind of like WOXY, but we also have lots more obscure/arcana stuff, and classical, jazz, and world too, and very little RIAA music (even WOXY plays Beck, Radiohead, Coldplay... all RIAA artists).
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
shameless plug. LVRocks and Spankwagon are still free. http://www.spankwagon.net/ for listener links every friday from 7 - 9 PM PST, broadcast live from the LVRocks studio in viva Las Vegas. I know I know. Shoot the messenger
Amazing - So much wrong information posted here! I must be the only /.er that actually RUNs an Internet Radio station. I own http://www.gothradio.com/ and things are going GREAT! (Obviously I'd love you all to check it out, but that's not the point of this post). We started 3 months ago & we're already having to upgrade to a new server & new streaming software to handle the increasing demand - and we haven't even started the promotion yet. Like 1 post said, internet radio is in its infancy as is our station - we have a lot of improvements planned & I bet other stations do too.
Own a cell phone? If the word "radio" means wireless (non-computer) listening, then here comes Internet *radio*. Anyone notice those new Verizon V-Cast TV ads. Guess what, in a couple weeks our station will be available via cell phones, from most major carriers (I'll post details about it on the site when it goes into effect). You could even listen in your car. On a side note, ShoutCast doesn't report the number of listeners correctly, (but we love them anyway).
Maybe our success is due to our focus on non-commercial type music. The indie labels and bands that aren't going to get airtime on any "mainstream" station love us. Yes, you've gotta keep it legal & deal with BMI etc. I would love to address some of the other posts here, but want to keep this short(ish).
hi all, i'm the forums admin for http://www.9412.com/ . 9412 the Rock Station is almost wholely listener-supported, and has been so for over 6 years. the management views "subscription" as a dirty word. it's the personal touch that does it. the website and stream can tell you better than i can, check it out. i found 9412 about 6 months ago, and saw a need for a self-appointed volunteer on the messageboards. now, i'm a proud member of a team that gets to rock the world. IMO, internet radio is gonna go over bigtime, i think a station just needs to think "outside the web" when it comes to sponsors & advertisers. Augie 9412 The Rock Station Forums Administrator http://forums.9412.com/
One of the problems of listener metrics on Podcasts is that you don't know who is listening (or how many times), you only know how many times they download the 'cast, or how many people subscribe to your feed.
Do you really only subscribe to podcasts you listen to? I know I've had several podcasts that I forgot to unsub from and they keep on downloading... even though I never listen to them. (Eventually I remembered to unsub).
Is the paperwork.
Even if you have a licence from the copyright holder for every single minute of airtime, you have to fill in mountains of paperwork just to "prove" to the RIAA that you arent pirating their crap.
Plus, if you DO want to play RIAA music, you have to pay far more than any over-the-air radio station would ever have to pay.
The RIAA hates internet radio because it is close to the BEST way to find music you would never have otherwise find if you listen to a stream specific to the genre you care about.
How can a law that specifically exempts something be considered a "historical accident"? Because copyright is a government granted monopoly, the lawmakers wanted to put some limitations on that monopoly, hence they created fair use and other exemptions - including exemptions for radio broadcasters.
The "historical accident" line, which the RIAA repeats over and over, is bullshit.
You hit the nail on the head.
BIG BUSINESS LIKES BIG GOVERNMENT!
When a government can have far-reaching regulations it tends to have those regulations written in favor of whoever foots the campaign bill. This means that it hinders small business and independent establishments.
This is why the US government needs to be shrunk and severely limited in its powers and ability to regulate.
Libertas in infinitum
Why hasn't a company put a bird into orbit and given free satellite radio with commercials just like terrestrial radio?
The equipment/transmission protocol could be "open source" so the recievers would
be widely spread thus swift adoption by the masses.
Does anyone think this is a viable business model?
Libertas in infinitum
I don't want to pay a monthly subscription for my internet radio. I jump all over the place and listen to various stations. Instead I would rather pay as I go ... like the cell phone model. .0056 cents/minute, like a whole buck for three hours or so.
I can top-up my card and use it at the various radion stations. I think a micropayment solution or PayPal debit would be appropriate. Something like
Looking in my Winamp Radio station list, I see the average listeners is ~100 at any time, ~3500 is the highest for a large/really popular station.
So with 100 listeners you make $33/hour. Also throw in some advertising revenue.
Does anybody know if that would cover the costs of the songs?
What does it cost to play songs as a radio station? I have no clue.
Now I'll plug a couple favorites.. Streamtuner, and Streamripper for Linux.. And for the Windows guys.. WinAmp with the streamripper plugin. Explore these babys, and tell me if internet (broadcasting not radio) is dead.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
"But, my radio is boring to listen to!"
;)
Find a new radio that you actually like. There's thousands of good internet streams out there.
"But tbe DJ's suck at this station!"
See first answer.
"They don't play the music that i usually listen to!"
And neither should they. They aren't a zombiefied relay stream for your personal music collection. You listen to radio because you _want_ to hear new stuff! Why else would you be listening to radio?
-JaL
"But they don't play anything i don't know!"
See...first...answer.
--
Listening to radio is like reading a newspaper; even though you filter all but the sports section out, you still don't know wether it'll be good or bad news.
--
"But i can't easily take my internet radio with me..."
Even not considering that you actually can (DAB radio, also mentioned in another post), it's a bit unfair to rule out internet streams on that.
Because.
When i listen to music, i listen to music. I don't walk around my workplace with speakers out loud...would probably get people pretty annoyned quickly. Anyway, i use headphones (-only, when at work) when at work, since i'm either:
A: Listening to music (Radio, record music, etc), working, and not talking to people.
or
B: Not working, and not listening to music, because i'm talking to people.
"Hooking up the PC to the speakers is such a bore"
At home, my computer is my music controller also. I have my speakers and misc. sound stuff hooked up through my PC, and therefor i do not have the hassle of hooking up my PC to my speakers.
In these days of internet streaming, media centers and digital music all over, who would NOT have their main speakers hooked up to their PC already?
And a tank really sounds better through 4 x mission 737 than your factory supplied PC squeakers
And if MSN beeping is a problem...why don't you turn it off?
Hi all.
My name is Chris J. Popp and I own 9412 - The Rock Station. We've been on air for over 6 years, and I have co-organized two internet radio confrences.
I'd say 95% of the stations out there do not care about making money with their station, they just want to be able to play music and share a dream they have had. Yes, there are stations that raise money or sell commercials and 9412 is one of them. But it costs money to be able to do Internet Radio.
I've seen a few posts about quality of the station in terms of bitrate. With Internet Radio, which is digital, you do not have signal loss or skip. You either get it or you don't. Some stations broadcast at 128k or 320k which can look impressive but elminates a lot of listeners out there and unless you have a trained ear you won't tell a difference.
320, IMHO, is a bit excessive. The stream cost more at about $8 per which is nuts when you look at a 56k stream which is going for approx 90 cents to $1.50. More listeners can be reached with a lower bitrate that still sounds good.
Most stations out there are iPods or jukeboxes that play randomly and have no real feel to it. That is true. 9412 - The Rock Station has 140 hours of live dj's on it's schedule every week. Last I checked, no one else matches that. Oh yeah - we actually interact with listeners by having a dj in a chat room, take requests via IM and email and we check our ego at the door. Lets see your local CC station do that. That's right - you won't because it's corporate "station in a box" radio.
WOXY, Wolf, Y100, DI, Radio Paradise, Club977... these stations are some of the best out there. That's because they have a desire to do well and take it seriously.
Why should Internet Radio be given any special rights? We should not. 9412 pays the Big 3 license bodies - just like FM and AM stations in the US do. I've had stations say "we do not want the competition there" when I have approached organizations such as concert organizers, festivals and similar events.
To me, those stations just put us on the same level playing field as them and see us as equals.
Why have you not heard of many stations yet in the public realm? It comes down to money. Ask ANY internet station owner if they had a choice of spending $$$ on advertising on a bus or getting more streams to accomidate the people (remember them?) they will say more streams so fast it will make your head spin.
I've seen some talk about Internet Radio being able to turn a profit. Here's the thing:
Listeners -> Advertisers -> Money for streams -> Listeners
You have to have a good listenership number to get Advertisers. 50 listeners once a week will not bring in a Fortune 500 company let alone the local book seller.
Get the advertisers, that will bring in the dollars. You need to have a sales person that knows radio and has the contacts with ad buying firms and the advertisers themselves to be able to get them on board. Also, a media kit and rate card will help and DO NOT cheapen yourself. Don't charge $27 for a :30 (which is a rate in a market of say 100,000) but go $9 per :30. Better yet, get sponsors for each hour so you don't have to have commercials. FYI - 9412 only will ever do 4 minutes per hour of commercials. Period. CC and other corporate stations do 12 mins per hour.
Got the money, then you can improve the station. Buy more music so you have a larger play catalog (we've got 15,000 songs) and put the money into giving prizes to the listeners and doing more for them. Get more streams to increase the level of demand you can accomidate.
But, it all starts with the listeners. Without them, the circle is broken and you won't get to do the other stuff. Get the other stuff, then you get more listeners.
Can't hear a Internet station without a computer? BULLS
bump
Do you have a media kit? Do you have a rate card for your spots? If you answer yes, then are they on your website?
If you do not have these things, then you have to create them. There's a slight problem.
Once you go "commercial" AOL/Nullsoft will cut your streams. Happened to me and Wolf FM and a few others in the summer of 2003. They cited the terms of the agreement were broken yet there was no agreement I signed or saw. Same with the others.
So, if you go to getting donations or commercial advertisers be prepared to find your own bandwidth - FAST.
i'm aware, but i doubt that 90% of my podcast subscribers forget they download a 90MB file every week. it adds up quick
-mkb
a little OT i spose...
kfjc
wxwc
wxdu
to name a few, i like the very diverse programming, lotsa indie stuff. there aren't that many commercial offerings that aren't IMHO just a rehash of what i already can listen to on FM in a major market. the few commercial streams i have tried to access need activeX and i don't do windows. streamtuner is a nize backport for my debian sarge desktop.
Serenity now, insanity later.
That's only if you advertise on the stream itself. If you take donations on the website and only advertise on your website, you're in the clear (like ravetrax.com does)
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
>Without a source of random new music how do you know what you want to buy?
You know, that's an excellent question.
I guess I would say two things:
First, I'm not willing to pay for a random stream that may or may not tickle my fancy to buy new songs. I guess commercial radio is what I would use in that case.
Secondly, maybe I'm getting old and less open to new things, but I'm finding I'm less and less interested in going and finding new music to listen to. Most of my iTunes purchases are caused by some old, cool song rattling around in my head, and I make a mental note to go buy it off of iTunes and add it to my collection later on when I get back to my computer.
I think it's less that I'm not open to new things and more that there is so much old stuff that I know is good that I still don't own that I could spend a lifetime's pocket money on old music and still have old music left over to choose from.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I live in Cincinnati and I used to listen to WOXY all the time. It's sad that they have to charge now. I think I'm going to subscribe.
We at Church of Girl Radio certainly have gotten a lot of mileage from the fact that we work with non-commericial artists from all over the world and provide content you can't hear anywhere else. Congrats on yr success too BTW :-)
Best
Glad to hear you're doing well too. Non-commercial music is cool. What's your URL? I'd like to swing by & look at your site, & tune it to your stream. I'm curious about what type of music Church of Girl Radio plays :)
Our URL is http://www.churchofgirl.com./ We play all-female and female-fronted bands of all stripes, from all over the world. I would love for you to have a listen :-) Talk to you soon
Best
Chris