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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?"
OTOH - I can get XM or local broadcast from my desk just fine, or just use my iPod.
Somehow KEXP seems to make the "internet radio" model work, although they do maintain a true radio broadcast as well.
Have you considered any of the wireless services?
Clearwire is looking pretty good these days (although my house is outside the local coverage area).
Using Wireless internet (not WiFi, not wireless networking but wireless internet service) you can drive around and be connected the whole time...
In fact one of the people signed up for the mailing group of www.bsdg.org was actually broadcasting video from his car just to prove how cool it is.
I'd guess eventually there will be an overlap of services and we may all be paying for wireless internet so we can use our portable VOIP phones wherever we go.
1. to legally broadcast music, you need to pay a royalty
2. the more listeners, the more expensive it is for the broadcaster. Bandwidth is not free, despite common opinion.
3. internet ad revenue is horrendously bad because internet adverts don't really do much for sales. Advertisers know this and don't pay what they used to.
4. there is a broadcast tax levied now, in addition to royalty costs.
It's possible that it's a simple matter of economics. I love internet radio and listen all the time but I get the feeling that "free" internet radio is a temporary thing.
Unless people can shell out cash so they can broadcast for free, it isn't going to happen.
-AC
Neither XM nor Sirius are making any money yet so 'surviving as well as they do' doesn't mean much.
I subscribe to Sirius and I'm happy with it. I always hear the argument "why pay to have some stranger play a bunch of songs that he/she selected when you can load playlists on your ipod and play what you like to hear"
The reality is that I hear lots of new music on Sirius that I wouldn't be exposed to if I didn't subscribe. Streaming audio (internet radio) is blocked at work so that option can be ruled out. I can play the thousands of songs I own over and over, but I like to hear new music. Listening to regular FM radio for new music is a horrible experience (littered with annoying ads and stations pushing particular songs because of payola).
Even when Sirius is playing not so new music, I enjoy most of the shows. It's worth the price for now. If I didn't have the money I could easily live without it, but it's a nice convenience that I can afford right now. The only thing I don't like about Sirius is the horrible sound quality of most channels. The classical channels are good and Howard Stern is good, most other music channels are mediocre, and all talk stations (except for Howard Stern) sound worse than AM. I wish they would get rid of twenty or thirty stations that I never listen to and use that bandwidth to improve the quality of their other channels.
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.
>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
I actually listen to "internet radio" on my pocket PC PDA. It has 802.11b and bluetooth built-in and WOXY's streams are available in mp3 (as well as aac+ and windows media).
At one point I was listening to WOXY in my car. I connected to WOXY via the internet connection available from my cell provider and then hooked that into my PDA. It worked pretty well but took too much effort to set up each time.
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
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
I don't know how huge WOXY.com's market is, since all I get is mysql errors (at present) from their site. However, The Ticket once had a subscription internet pay service too, but quickly abandoned it, maybe in part to my email responses and others. I told them in no uncertain terms there were other internet sports feeds I could listen to for free.
When you're WOXY.com (internet only), you have stiff and countless competition to your content across the world even. When you're WOXY.com (both streams), you're content is at least localized to your city with fewer competitors, as a fallback while growing your internet market.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
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?
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
i'm a fixture over at WOXY---streaming and posting daily for a couple years---so, this is a fan's take. as mentioned before, it's all about the DJs, who've not only got a great sensibility, but have also created this aforementioned sense of community, which is what's missing in other streams, or even on the dial with DJ-bots. because WOXY started out as a terrestrial, there was a local listener-base that carried over to the online-only format along with the three surviving DJs. so you have the intimacy of the original local entity, but with listeners jumping in from all over the country, as well as from places like sao paulo, london, paris, sydney, glasgow. makes for an interesting mix of characters on the message boards. i tried a lot of the DJ-less online streams when WOXY went down as a terrestrial, but it was hard for me to feel a personal connection to any of them. i'd got used to feeling that i was a part of something---all of us on the boards listening to the same stream, bantering, laughing, fighting, responding to the playlist. it's a very different experience than SOMA or RadioXY, for instance---both very good streams, but without that personal quality. it's hard not to spam when we're fighting for our lives over there, but it'll be a sad, sad day for us when the site shuts down. really nothing else like it, and i've searched.
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