Good opinions are here to stay.
To: Rande Is (0 )
From: Rande Is Monday, May 11 1998 9:08AM ET
Reply # of 55
[NAVR] Navarre to sell CDs on internet. News not yet released.
Navarre's subsidiary NetRadio has been called the "biggest and the best audio on the internet." Now, Navarre is moving into the CDNow territory with the launch of their "CD Point" website, which will directly market CDs over the internet. The real magic, in my opinion, are sales made while listening to NetRadio. In other words, you find a new band you like, while listening to NetRadio and you have the band's cover staring back at you saying "buy me." You are just one click away from the purchase, as opposed to having to call up a CD retailer, then search for the band you want.
The listener is already Navarre's customer. Why not capitalize on the time listeners spend on NetRadio by selling them the CD? I feel this is a BRILLIANT move on the part of Navarre. It resembles Microsoft's MSNetwork that stays-in-your-face-and-will-not-delete on Windows 95. This type of "hostage" advertising is obviously far far more effective than traditional banner ads. This plan is also a slick move by Navarre to bring them to profitability more quickly; the one thing that seems to matter most to NAVR stockholders. IMO Rande Is
techweb.com
Net Radio: Tune In, Turn On, Boot Up
(05/05/98; 1:47 p.m. ET)
By John Borland, Net Insider In the Internet's early days, hypertext
didn't have much of a soundtrack.
Today, Web surfers are a mouse click away from hundreds more online
radio stations than can be found even on big-city FM and AM dials. Many
of these are traditional radio shows ported to the Net, ranging from
bible-thumping sermons to underground dance music. But dozens of
Internet-only broadcasters are betting money can be made by keeping
their listeners tuned in online.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check our reference table for a key to the players in this nascent niche
industry.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The biggest of the early Net-only stations spread their audio nets as
widely as possible, offering dozens of different channels with finely
tuned music genres, talk, and news programs. TheDJ.com and newcomer
Imagine Radio both provide users with a downloadable tuner that operates
independently of a Web browser, hoping users will make their service
part of desktop real estate.
Others, such as New York's Pseudo, are using a more traditional
single-stream radio format, with scheduled shows and on-air
personalities. Bolstering both models are aggregators like AudioNet and
RealNetworks, which host other company's shows and serve as portals to
the rest of the Web's content.
The industry's market and business models, however, are still hazy. "The
size of the audience is difficult to measure," said Forrester Research
analyst Mark Hardie. A broadcast radio station can attract hundreds of
thousands of listeners during the morning commute, but Net radio is
still a niche player. "They're narrowcasting to audiences of thousands,"
Hardie said.
Office workers, who increasingly work on multimedia PCs with high-speed
Net connections, are a key target audience, said David Samuel, CEO of
TheDJ.com. "Today most of our users are work users," he said. "It's the
white-collar worker who comes in at the beginning of the day and starts
up the DJ, and is able to work and listen to the music."
Advertising and CD sales are the most promising sources for revenue,
along with hosting and other cooperative deals. Net Radio was bought in
1996 by music and software distributor Navarre, and plans to open a
full-service CD store called CDPoint later this year. Others are
partnering with established merchants like CDNow and N2K, and selling
banner and audio ads inside their broadcasts.
To survive, the stations need to convince the music industry they can
help sell records, Hardie said. "They're hoping they can draw enough
traffic so that the music industry will be interested in funding what
they do with promotional dollars."
Hardie also predicted stations like Net Radio or TheDJ.com will drop out
or adopt more consistent formats as the market matures.
"The early entrants, with 10 or 20 or 50 genres, don't do any genre any
real service," Hardie noted. "Whenever anything's cheap, the early
entrants try to do everything. But focus is the only way they can
deliver the highest quality. You can't be a a country music expert one
minute and be an expert in trip-hop the next."
But with startup costs totaling a fraction of traditional broadcasting,
a short-term lack of profits and unproven business plans are not likely
to silence the Net. "This is a mass-market, mass medium," Hardie said.
"I don't think they're going go away."
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