TORONTO (djc Features) — Would you like to listen to an all-blues radio station, or one devoted to hip-hop, or children’s music, or Latin jazz? Better yet, how about one with a playlist based on your personal favourite recording artists?
That’s the promise of Internet radio.
Internet radio stations send their programming over the Internet to your personal computer. It’s simply continuous streaming audio using one of the popular media players — RealAudio, Windows Media Player or proprietary software provided by the station.
Internet radio stations are proliferating. Virgin Entertainment Group’s Radio Free Virgin (RFV) has a selection of channels devoted to different musical tastes. IM Networks, which calls itself an Internet radio network, offers software and a directory of independently-run stations covering all kinds of music.
MusicMatch can give you pre-designed stations aimed at different tastes, or let you design your own station by choosing some favourite performers from a lengthy list. MusicMatch then augments your selections with other music that listener feedback suggests will appeal to you. Choose Leonard Cohen, for instance, and you’ll also get selections by Nick Cave and Jennifer Warnes.
Anyone with an Internet connection and a PC equipped with a sound card and speakers can receive Internet radio. A broadband connection — cable modem or DSL — is best, although you can get passable results with a 56Kbps modem as long as you don’t try to do much else with your Internet connection while you listen.
Some Internet radio stations require RealAudio or Windows Media Player. Others use their own software, which you must download before you can tune in.
Internet radio operators make money three ways: advertising, subscription fees and sales commissions. The advertising can be commercials interspersed among the songs like those on broadcast radio, or pop-up ads that appear on your computer screen. If you object to pop-up advertising, you may not enjoy some free Internet radio services. But not all the free services hit you with pop-ups, and there’s also the option of paying a modest subscription fee for advertising-free radio, often with other added features.
RFV, for instance, offers its commercial-free Royal service for a monthly subscription fee of $4.95 US per month. There’s also an advertising-supported free service. Either way, says Zack Zalon, general manager of RFV, the company also makes money by taking a cut of CD sales — when you hear a song you like, you have the option of ordering the CD online. That immediate option, Zalon says, “closes the gap between listening to music and buying it,” which could boost music sales. MusicMatch also has a free service, but to take advantage of its ability to program playlists based on your personal tastes, you have to pay $2.95 US per month for MusicMatch MX Gold, or $4.95 per month for MX Platinum, which offers more features to customize what you hear.
Some Internet radio stations — such as Radio Paradise (a small Paradise, California, operation) that plays a mix of musical styles — use something akin to the shareware model by asking for donations to support their efforts. Radio Paradise supplements its donation income by selling merchandise, such as coffee mugs bearing the Radio Paradise logo.
Some stations — like many websites today — also collect basic personal information about their listeners. That may worry some Internet users, but some of the information serves a purpose. By gathering data about subscribers’ listening habits, for example, MusicMatch can extrapolate from your list of favourite artists and choose other music you’re likely to enjoy. “We thought that one of the attributes of the Internet was personalization,” says Bob Ohlweiler, MusicMatch’s senior vice-president of business development.
At one point it appeared Internet radio might fall victim to copyright disputes with major music publishers. A dispute over royalties Internet radio stations should pay for music they play went to court, then to arbitration in 2001, Ohlweiler says. Appeals are still ongoing, but Ohlweiler says this “quite natural” price dispute doesn’t threaten the medium’s future.
Internet-only radio stations aren’t the only radio on the Web — conventional broadcasters are experimenting too. A prime example in Canada is CBC Radio, which offers much of its programming on its website. Commercial stations such as Toronto’s CHUM-FM do the same.
But Internet radio operators claim they offer variety broadcasters cannot. Ohlweiler says commercial radio is too homogenized. Even in major markets, he says, there are only about eight standard formats, and most major stations play only several thousand different songs in a year, while MusicMatch’s database covers six billion.
RFV offers more than 50 channels, covering blues, folk, urban, hip-hop, classical and many other genres. “We have never been into giving the most to the masses,” Zalon says, adding that each channel goes beyond the mainstream of its genre. For its blues channel Crossroads, for instance, RFV worked with the blues archives of the University of Mississippi, the Hollywood Blues Foundation and several musicologists to put together a playlist. “We didn’t just buy 200 CDs from a megastore,” Zalon says.
Zalon contends broadcast radio will be driven by economics to more and more homogeneity, until a handful of conglomerates each run dozens of radio stations from one “huge sprawling complex.” But if Internet radio succeeds, won’t it eventually go the same way? Zalon argues it won’t, because the Internet makes it practically free to add channels, so that catering to individual tastes makes more sense than in the broadcast world. We can only hope he’s right.
Links:
“>www.musicmatch.com
Mix different formats (jazz, hip-hop, etc.) to create one customized station or share a station with the “Send to Friend” feature. Digital audio reaches a new level of personalization with MusicMatch.
“>www.real.com
RealOne RadioPass accesses more than 3,200 radio stations worldwide, and more than 50 ad-free stations. One of the most reliable services for intense radio heads.
RealOne Player 2.0 is the digital media player that lets you find everything and play anything. The player fuses a streaming media player, jukebox, Internet browser, and even includes DVD playback and CD burning. The player is available for free and can play over 50 forms of digital media including QuickTime and MPEG-4 formats. RealOne’s Radio tuner features more than 3,200 stations in 100 countries around the world. Every genre of music is available 24/7, and new five-channel audio, including a dedicated sub-woofer channel, allows streaming audio or playback through your sound system.
“>http://mp3.radiopol.com:6000/listen.pls
Radiopol is based in Montreal, Quebec, and is considered to be one of the best 24/7 Internet radio stations in the world. Their music format is mostly Hip Hop. Radiopol is operated by a pioneer of Internet radio Mr. Jarek Bucholc.
