Amazon is your friend. Plenty of HD radios available. If few are buying them, that's a different issue. I own two Sangean HD radios and use them extensively. I also use streaming, mostly via TuneIn or one of the pro sports leagues' apps. Whatever works.
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Audacy discontinuing HD2 to save money?
- Thread starter rustyhodge
- Start date
^^^^^^ Understood. I have a Sangean HDR-16 I got at Fry's before they went under. But to the average listener, HD radio is a non-thing, unfortunately. As we are reminded here on RD frequently, most listeners don't buy standalone radios.
Those of us who are into radio are the exceptions, along with older demographics who are more into the idea of "radio" coming from a box with a couple knobs, a dial of some sort, and a speaker.
Those of us who are into radio are the exceptions, along with older demographics who are more into the idea of "radio" coming from a box with a couple knobs, a dial of some sort, and a speaker.
Which is why some radio companies are putting content on YT. I see Mark Levin is back there. The good news about being on YouTube is that Google sells it, so radio companies don't have to. You can make some extra money from YT.
Radio isn't in music distribution. Those music videos are owned by the labels and they make money from those views. Some of those views are being driven by fans who just want to see their favorites get a billion views. So they put it on repeat and go to sleep.
I don’t, but I’ve been streaming radio stations since 1999 when Virgin Radio 1215 AM in London started streaming online. I didn’t listen to local stations streaming back then because I was on dialup and I didn’t want to spend money streaming something I could listen to for free with a radio.
As I said, that's the retailers' and HD radio providers' problem. I love mine, but I know I'm in the minority and I won't be surprised if it goes away in the next decade. The market decides, and the HD folks shot themselves in the foot too many times.
As one of those "older demographics" (spelled "g-e-e-z-e-r-s"), I've been listening to streaming audio pretty much from the time I first signed onto Al Gore's Invention in 1997. On a 386 PC with a dial-up running Windows 95, RealPlayer didn't work very well most of the time. I've been streaming much longer than I've had an HD radio, which is about 6 years.
Wasn't that about the time when Mel Karmazin took over CBS and order all of their station's streams to be turned off? He was as farsighted as Mr. Magoo.
He wasn't a fan of the internet, and saw it as competition. But I'm not aware that US radio stations were streaming in 1999. It wasn't until 2002 that the music industry figured out how to collect streaming royalties.
My entry point to the internet was WebTV, in 1997. I moved up to a real computer in 1999. From the start, I was able to stream dozens of radio stations that used Real Audio. WebTVers even set up pages with their own collections of links to those audio streams. Two of the first stations I recall listening to were the New Orleans traditional jazz station WWOZ and Kent State University's WKSU, which had a weekly folk show I enjoyed. Several commercial stations, domestic and international -- especially Canadian -- were streaming as well. I can't find documentation to verify my memory, probably because I'm not phrasing my questions correctly while searching. Perhaps you can do better, or David has this info somewhere. I know I am not imagining or misremembering this, even though my WebTV years are now in the distant past.
Around late 1998 Mark Cuban began his streaming service and made a fortune getting stations to sign up with him. I even flew in to Dallas in early 1999 to talk about putting the HBC stations on his service.
Wikipedia (and actually correct) says,
"In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus Todd Wagner joined Audionet (founded in 1989 by Chris Jaeb, who retained 10% of the company), combining their mutual interest in Indiana Hoosier college basketball and webcasting.[36] With a single server and an ISDN line,[37] Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998.[35] By 1999, Broadcast.com had grown to 330 employees and $13.5 million in revenue for the second quarter.[38] In 1999, Broadcast.com helped launch the first live-streamed Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.[39] That year, during the dot com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in Yahoo! stock."
Thanks for the confirmation on that. The stations I cited, obviously, were webcasting before Cuban founded his aggregator website.
One early memory I have of webcasting was on December 31 of 1999 when I captured the stream of Cadena COPE from Spain as they ushered in Y2K 8 hours before Los Angeles and rebroadcast it on KTNQ in Los Angeles.
We later broadcast Y2K coming in from our own WADO in New York, but via a phone line. KTNQ was the only HBC station streaming at the time because I got the gear and we installed it ourselves.
BBC World Service radio began streaming in the late 1990s. Had quite a delay as it wound its way through what was then a slower Internet; I recall the stream would usually be around three minutes behind the live broadcast on shortwave, give or take 30 seconds. That sort of lag was common for stations back then.
Also saving $12k / year in electricity cost by re-tuning FM transmitter from class AB to class C since without HD subcarriers it no longer needs to run in linear mode. Edit: this does not apply if HD1 is kept on.
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If you're a group, multiply that by the number of FMs you're dumping HD on, and that can turn into real money.
Correct, I'm aware of a lot of streaming radio stations around the world, including London and Ireland, in 1999. But the comment was about CBS stations streaming their broadcast signal. I'm not aware that CBS radio stations were streaming their local broadcast signals in 1999.
I recall chatting with someone using IRC/Internet Relay Chat in the late 1990s - we were both using dial-up.
He mentioned that he was listening to a radio station (in stereo) through his computer and speakers while using IRC.
I got curious has to how stereo audio could be piped through low data rate dial up and soon downloaded the RealPlayer software - I listened to BBC 1 music radio a little, but it was always "rebuffering".
Kirk Bayne
He mentioned that he was listening to a radio station (in stereo) through his computer and speakers while using IRC.
I got curious has to how stereo audio could be piped through low data rate dial up and soon downloaded the RealPlayer software - I listened to BBC 1 music radio a little, but it was always "rebuffering".
Kirk Bayne
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