Thanks, as always, George. More on Net radio:
As legendary global crusader and part-time Internet hobbyist, Saddam Hussein, has exclaimed to the media--please don't rely on his investment or political advice--Net radio (and the audio portion of Net TV) is the "Mother of All Battles."
Given that current technology allows sensational Net radio at today's common "narrowband" dial-up rate of 56kbps (albeit with some limitations), what's most amazing about virtually all streaming audio is that its quality stinks. In fact, most streaming audio presentations appear to be monophonic and don't sound as good as a Third-World transistor radio. CD quality? Fuggeddaboudit.
Most people tend to overlook Net radio's vanishing sound quality because they rely on $10 (is that per speaker or per pair?!) PC speakers. Those who download and play MP3 songs have likely upgraded their speakers or run their computer's sound card line-output to a worthy stereo system. Certainly, this desirable demographic segment is not wasting a great deal of time with today's "tin-cans-and-string" Net radio product. Thus, massive advertising and e-commerce opportunities are lost.
If you're new to this board or asleep at your volume control, compare any Net radio station (Net-only or rebroadcast) to this one (conspicuous in its absence from mention in the MSNBC article below, and deserving of star billing):
internetradiodaer.com
Unfortunately, Internet-Radio DAER's streaming MP3 technology is neither the product of RNWK nor of MSFT (but it's running on an NT platform). More embarrassing still, it comes to you from...the bedroom of a 15-year-old!
So where is RNWK's streaming MP3 Radio solution?
BAM
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Net radio coming in loud and clear
For startups and giants like Disney and Yahoo, there's no static at all
By Jane Weaver
MSNBC
May 13 — WABY.com, a small Internet-only radio station out of Albany, N.Y., this week began beaming its lineup of mellow pop tunes from artists like James Taylor, Patsy Cline and k.d. Lang. But the independent Web station's launch was overshadowed by the rollout of Yahoo! Radio, the first initiative from the mega-portal's $5 billion purchase of Broadcast.com. [No evidence Yahoo! Radio has anything to do with BCST--content is supplied by Spinner.com--and the deal won't close for a couple of months. BAM] No doubt Internet radio, often referred to as streaming audio, is hot. Why all the buzz?
Who is listening to Internet Radio?
13 percent or about 31 million Americans have ever listened to radio on the Internet
62 percent male
25 percent are 35-54 years old
24 percent are 12-17
17 percent are 25-34
SOURCE: The Arbitron Co.
IF THE INTERNET becomes a major force in selling music — and as a sign you need look no further than Wednesday's announcement from Sony Music that it plans to sell singles over the Internet using technology developed by Microsoft Corp. — then listening to Net radio will be how people discover the songs they want to buy, many analysts believe. (Microsoft is a partner in MSNBC)
“We're rapidly approaching a point where the technology for selling digital music online is going to become standardized,” says Safa Rashtchy, Internet Technology and Media analyst U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray.
“As music selling on the Internet becomes more viable, then Net radio will become even more important [in contributing] to the sale.”
Consider these figures. Forrester Research estimates that online CD sales will reach about $7 billion in 2003 from $148 million today. Digital music sales from downloading songs from companies like Sony are expected to be $1.1 billion by 2003. Not to mention online ticket sales for concerts, which could reach $1.8 billion in the next few years, according to Jupiter Communications research.
That's the financial spark lighting the fire in the Internet radio market. Over the last few months the industry's biggest players — including Yahoo! and Lycos, CMGI, as well as investment bankers, technology firms and large media companies like Viacom and Chancellor Media — have made their moves into online radio.
In fact, it was Yahoo's $5 billion purchase of audio and video content aggregator Broadcast.com in March that helped transform Internet radio from a barely-noticed blip on the dial into the next sticky content phenomenon, at least in the eyes of the Wall Street investment community.
MAKING MUSIC
CMGI, backer of Lycos, GeoCities and Planet Direct, said in February it will spend $100 million on a Broadcast.com rival called Magnitude Networks [Actually to be called "i-Cast." BAM]. Headed by former NBC executive Neil Braun, the new company will rebroadcast radio station signals along with audio and video services.
Of the some 1,000 North American radio stations streaming online and 168 Internet-only stations, according to radio research firm The Arbitron Co., only a handful have become popular enough to be tracked by Media Metrix. NetRadio, which filed to go public in March, had 452,000 unique visitors in March and Spinner.com had nearly 300,000 visitors.
More recently, Lycos rolled out a network of five channels of radio music through a relationship with Westwind Media.
Just as broadcast radio is the trigger behind retail music sales, the idea behind Internet radio is that listeners will hear a song they like, click on a button and buy the CD or digital song.
‘Whoever establishes themselves as the No. 1 source of music listening online will probably be the same source to sell you albums in the future,' says Abhi Gami, Internet analyat with William Blair & Co.
“Radio is the No. 1 marketing tool for selling music,” says Peter Clemente, vice president of market research firm Cyber Dialogue. “There's a huge opportunity for radio stations to sell direct.”
An e-commerce payout may be the goal, but Internet radio's business model is still being figured out. As yet few Net radio stations include advertising in their audio streams, relying on Web site ad banners for revenue.
Most of the firms acknowledge that audio ads are in the works, however.
“We'll quickly evolve to audio ads in the stream,” says Matt Farber, head of new media at MTV Networks. In June MTV Networks will roll out what it calls the “Buggles Project,” a personalized music service featuring retail, radio and chat.
“Revenue can come from e-commerce or advertising,” says Brian Kalinowski, Lycos' manager of multimedia products group. “Once we've ironed out our e-commerce partnerships, we'll go in that direction and leverage for a share of the revenue.”
ON THE AIR, OR ONLINE?
At fledgling waby.com, the broadcast-radio version of commercials for eBay, Amazon.com and other Internet companies are being played in its live stream, free of charge for the moment, says founder Paul Bendat.
“This is radio advertising,” says Bendat. “It's only the medium of delivery that's new.”
Growing fast in popularity, Internet radio can mean either Web-only sites like Spinner.com, where listeners choose from a wide range of music genres (everything from hip-hop to Celtic) or local radio stations that stream their broadcast signals online to a worldwide audience.
To consumers' ears, the distinctions are blurred.
Finding radio stations either through Broadcast.com or hearing about them from friends, Chad Hoffman, a 26-year-old college student, listens to both Net-only stations as well as broadcast radio online, saying, “I listen to Internet radio more than I turn on my stereo receiver at home.”
“The variety is my main reason for listening,” he says.
G.T. Tyson, 41, of Greenville, N.C., uses the Internet to hear radio stations from New Jersey and California, “because local radio in this particular market has been dumbed down and blanderized and cliched until there is absolutely no substance to it at all.”
Through a site called “Radio on the Internet” (at live-radio.net Tyson found a station that carries that legendary radio personality Dr. Demento.
“We haven't had a Dr. Demento station in this market for years,” says Tyson. “It was like being reunited with an old friend.”
Its the range of choice and control that has already lead tens of millions of people to seek out some form of preprogrammed music online, either through players from streaming media companies like Real Networks or Microsoft or through Web sites like Broadcast.com, a leading aggregator of audio and video content.
OLD MEDIA MOVES IN
More corporate activity is expected.
Next week, Chancellor Media Group — one of the nation's largest radio groups — will begin streaming its six Philadelphia stations over the Web as part of the launch of Chancellor's $150 million commitment to the Internet.
“We look at the Internet as the next iteration of the local space,” says Chuck Armstrong, senior vice president of entertainment and new media at AM/FM Interactive, a newly launched division of Chancellor. The unit's strategy is to consolidate individual station Web sites into “miniportals” with local news, weather and traffic reports.
“It's another delivery vehicle for the local medium, and we want to establish a presence while we can,” Armstrong says.
San Francisco-based Spinner.com, whose executives announced this week that they were meeting with investment bankers in order to launch an initial public offering later this year, plans a redesign next month. On the new site, listeners will be able to buy concert tickets and music memorabilia, and hold auctions. Spinner.com counts Intel and Sony Music Entertainment among its investors.
One of the promises of Internet radio is that once Web surfers land on a station, they aren't so quick to jump to another site. Listeners spend an average of 90 minutes a shot at Spinner.com, says Scott Epstein, marketing vice president.
“It's good, sticky content,” says Rick Mandler, general manager of new media at ABC Radio Networks. At the 21 streaming ABC-owned radio stations online — each station produces its own Web site, available through Disney's Go Network — the average listening time is 40 minutes.
Another reason behind the rush of radio-related activity is improvements in the technology that allows people to listen to programmed music online. The rollout of high-speed phone and cable lines as well as advances in software from leaders like Real Networks and Microsoft, has brought online audio to a near CD-like quality [Now, here's why you can't trust journalists! She's either never listened to Net radio, or never listened to a CD! BAM]. In the last month Apple Computer also introduced digital music software.
Meanwhile the Internet radio audience has doubled in the last six months, according to The Arbitron Co., the broadcast radio measurement firm. A January study found that about 31 million people, or 13 percent of the U.S. population, have listened to Internet radio, compared with only 6 percent in an earlier study.
“Bandwidth has reached a point where a lot of people can listen to Internet radio, and the technology has reached a point that it sounds better,” says Eric Schwartz, senior producer at Yahoo.
Net radio's biggest boom is coming from the office, where Internet connections tend to be faster and radio signals tend to be weaker.
“The growth is coming from the workplace,” says Spinner's Epstein. “People are spending more time in their offices in front of the computer.”
msnbc.com |
