Internet Radio Access Using Your Cellphone

July 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Image representing MOG as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

Technology advancements are mining down the amount of gear you need to stay connected while you’re on the go. That includes radio. Where internet radio is common, it’s the great features like Pandora and MOG that make music on the go so incredibly cool. This new genre of radio is easily streamed through your cell phone.

Music Exactly the Way You Want It

Even your favorite traditional radio station can have a run on songs you’re just not interested in hearing. It’s always nicer when you like everything that’s played. With the new radio concept, you can create your own stations that only play a specific style of music. You can create a radio station that only plays Daft Punk or artists who sound like Lil’ Wayne. On a cross country drive, it’s a real lifesaver. Just plug your phone into the aux in your car stereo and you’re jamming the way you like it.

If you’re liking the idea of personalized internet radio stations, but you want to avoid a long-term phone contract, then prepaid cell phones are the way to go. Depending on the apps that are most important to you, you may find that you’ve outgrown one platform in favor of another. With prepaid service, you can make the change without the hassle.

Smartphones Sound Great

The advancements and updates in phone technology that have emerged with the smartphone have made it possible to stream music with a high quality sound. Your personalized internet radio will sound as good as your favorite old school FM station. With most personalized services, you’ll be able to create an account that will give you access to the music on your cell phone and on your home computer. That’s a real treat for the true audiophile.

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Popular Free Internet Radio

June 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Old radio 

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Internet radio is free and easy to use. Many allowing listeners to plug in an artists as it builds a play-list. The shape of internet radio is on the expanse. Here is a selection of sites that listeners love.

What makes internet radio so appealing? Select an station and begin listening. You can listen to streams in a specific genre or choose a personalized site to suit your radio preferences. Grooveshark operates much like Pandora. Internet radio stations, since on a constant stream, cannot replay songs. With Grooveshark, listeners can create their station or choose from a list of genres. Songs can be moved in sequence and replayed with ease.

If social networking is your forte, give Last.Fm or Maestro a listen. Users can share play-lists and discuss music with others in a social setting. Many popular internet radio sites can be taken on the go. Mobile apps are easily downloaded to your phone or other portable device.

Make no mistake, listeners love Pandora. It offers an easy way to have an internet radio site cater to your tastes. When you give a songs the thumbs up, Pandora plays more like it. While you’re listening to your chosen station and an artist pops up into rotation, you might be able to see which Facebook friend likes the artist as well.

For listeners who crave all things acoustic, with alternative splashed in for good measure, Acoustic Alternative is gaining ground and making friends. Dedicated to genres such as ska, punk, and more, Acoustic Alternative has been providing its edgy stream since merging with The Ville Radio Network in 2006. Internet radio grows fast and furiously.

 

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The Expense of Running an Internet Radio Station

September 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Many FM radio stations are floundering financially right now due to a mass migration of listeners to internet-based media and music services like Pandora, Live365, and Last.fm. Since that is the case, you’d think that internet radio would be a booming and profitable business, but that is hardly the case. In fact, in August 2008, Pandora was doing so poorly financially that they were on the verge of shutting down and that was with a listenership of over 1 million people a day!

Although it is true that an internet radio station generally has less overhead than a traditional FM radio station, they also bring in far less in advertising revenue. And some don’t bring in any ad revenue at all, which makes it difficult to stay on the air. In addition to a slim profit margin, internet radio stations are actually hit with larger royalty fees than FM stations.

In October 1998, Congress passed the DMCA (the Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The act requires that internet and satellite radio stations pay both publishing royalties AND performance royalties while FM stations pay only publishing royalties. Essentially, the law stated that internet radio stations have to pay twice as much in royalties to play the same music that is played on FM stations.

This, of course, caused quite an uproar in the digital broadcasting community. Many internet broadcasters argued that these fees were unnecessarily harsh and extremely unfair that they were meant to be overly burdensome in order to stymie the burgeoning internet radio industry. Although large companies like CBS, AOL, and Yahoo! could afford such fees, smaller, independent radio stations would be forced to shut down.

As a result of internet broadcaster’s and public outcry, SoundExchange (a leading royalty company) agreed to negotiate fees not based on a per-performance rate, but rather based on revenue (or expense) for smaller, independent internet radio stations. But those fees are still a greater percentage of an independent station’s revenue than a traditional FM station’s revenue. So although internet radio may seem cheaper on the outside, generating a profitable internet radio station is, in reality, extremely hard.

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The History of Internet Radio

September 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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The internet offers a great new alternative when it comes to listening to music you already love and finding new music to fall in love with. Although music broadcasts have traditionally been the domain of FM radio broadcasters, internet radio stations can offer much more in the way of variety and sub-genre music choices that are not popular enough to be played on larger FM stations.

But internet radio has only been around for a relatively short time and has only been in wide use for about the last 8-10 years. The birth of internet radio really begins with the invention of internet streaming technology. Although computer engineers have been trying to stream media over the internet since the mid 20th century, it was not until the mid 80s that it became possible and not until the mid 90s and early 2000s was it possible for the average consumer to stream media directly to their home computer.

In fact, a hallmark in the road to internet streaming was a November 1994 Rolling Stones concert which was the first to be broadcast live over the internet. That same month, WXYC, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, became the first FM radio station to simultaneously broadcast over the internet. Now the vast majority of FM radio stations simultaneously broadcast their streams over the internet as a standard practice.

Of course, in the early days, only those people with high speed internet connections and extremely fast computers could actually listen to such streams in real time without annoying pauses and buffering problems. But today, high-speed internet is the standard, and most computers are fast enough to handle live streaming effortlessly. In fact, most new PCs come with free streaming media players already built in. And if even if they don’t, it is very easy to find and download free media players from the internet.

In 2003 it was reported that revenue from online radio stations was at $49 million. However, by 2006, that number had risen to $500 million. In addition, a 2008 survey found that over 13% of Americans listen to internet radio regularly.

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