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Audacy sells Radio.com domain

TheBigA said:
Unless they're going to ditch the Audacy and revert back to Radio.com.
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I've been advocating for that since the day they launched the Audacy app. It's such a weak brand with no legacy that's a homonym for Osyssey and presents spelling challenges. By contrast, Radio.com is probably the best possible web/app brand in the radio business. It's even understood and spelled the same way across multiple languages. But, I guess we'll soon see what happens.

TheBigA said:
Spotify has more users than any of them.
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Thanks for reiterating my point.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
I've been advocating for that since the day they launched the Audacy app. It's such a weak brand with no legacy that's a homonym for Osyssey and presents spelling challenges.
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Oh, now I have to tell this.

When Entercom first changed their name, they had all of their stations include "Audacy.com" in the TOH legal IDs. A friend, not in the business, called me and asked why KTWV was directing people to a travel agency.

You'll immediately guess that "odyssey.com" belonged at that time to a booking agency for cruises.

And for a long time after that, I used to wonder out loud if David Field knew he was running a radio company where the listeners would have no way of knowing the clever spelling of the new corporate name.
 
radiofan2023 said:
Entercom should have called themselves something else similar to audio, but they probably would have spelled it Oddio.
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One of the big UK radio owners back in the early 2000s had the bright idea of integrating all their local stations into one single portal* instead of each station having its own site. The name they chose for some reason was "koko.com", which meant that for the admittedly short lifespan of the idea, the presenters were having to plug "koko, that's K-O-K-O-dot-com". It didn't last that long before it was, er, KO'd and replaced with the easier-to-spell "musicradio.com".

For sure, "radio.com" doesn't really encompass everything a modern radio/audio company does, but when rebranding surely the first thing you'd do is think "can someone hearing this brand name on an audio-based medium understand and spell it?". Audacy doesn't fit those criteria, it's trying to be too clever and it's a crap name, but what do I know, I don't work in marketing! (FWIW, 'odyssey' and 'Audacy' sound different from one another in an English accent. Perhaps they should get Claire Anderson to do their VOs!)

* The landing page of "koko.com" and successors was a map of the country, where the listener had to select their local station. Given that the target audience of this level of commercial radio isn't exactly "people who can point to their home town on a map", it was another slight design flaw.
 
The debate seems to be the very word "radio". And people who derogatorily consider it an antiquated word, the way records were when CDs became the rage in the late 1980s.

Please. Just please.

Radio will forever be here. The mediums of transmission and reception may change, but radio will always be what it is. There can always be improvements and as the industry continues to downsize, maybe some of it will be realized. But there will always be people who don't need visuals to get lost in a good audio program of any kind.
 
TheBigA said:
It's been a few days since I noticed that Radio.com no longer forwards to Audacy. However, the WhoIs still says the domain is owned by Audacy Atlas.

My guess now is that this new site will originate from Audacy. Today, they announced their Chief Technology officer is leaving. They hired a new Chief Information officer from SESAC, a music industry PRO. Perhaps someone thinks they can create a business competing with Spotify. There certainly is a big chunk of money that is being left unchallenged by anyone right now. It would be very different from what iHeart is doing. Perhaps this is one of the outgrowths from the bankruptcy. If they can find a way to fund this, it would be very exciting.
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Just because the whois data hasn't been updated, doesn't mean it isn't under a new operator. It's not on Audacy's servers, nor when you sign-up for their mailing list do you get something from Audacy...


Bongwater said:
The debate seems to be the very word "radio". And people who derogatorily consider it an antiquated word, the way records were when CDs became the rage in the late 1980s.

Please. Just please.

Radio will forever be here. The mediums of transmission and reception may change, but radio will always be what it is. There can always be improvements and as the industry continues to downsize, maybe some of it will be realized. But there will always be people who don't need visuals to get lost in a good audio program of any kind.
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It doesn't matter what you think, the Radio.com to Audacy change took place because there are two words that would mean instant death at an investment bank, wall street, etc... RADIO and DOT COM.
 
radiofan2023 said:
Entercom should have called themselves something else similar to audio, but they probably would have spelled it Oddio.
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I remember, when the announcement that Entercom would become Audacy dropped, several of my friends and I were joking that the new name sounded "aud."

Seriously, though, I've never hated the name. I has "consulting firm" written all over it, but so do most national company names. The problem, to me anyway, has always been the promotion of it. If I go to a Cardinals or Royals game, the stadium will have a panel that says, "Audacy." If I'm not a radio person, I don't know what that is. Even a tag next to it that said, "On your radio, your computer, your phone," would give me some idea that it was a website or app. "All your audio in one place: music, sports, news, politics, podcasts. Audacy." would be even better. The rollout was lazy, and the promotion continues to be lazy.
 
lanceventa said:
It doesn't matter what you think, the Radio.com to Audacy change took place because there are two words that would mean instant death at an investment bank, wall street, etc... RADIO and DOT COM.
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Clear Channel incorporated both RADIO and DOT COM into the new branding of both the entire company and its new streaming service when they named it iHeartRadio.com. It sure doesn't seem to have hurt them.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Clear Channel incorporated both RADIO and DOT COM into the new branding of both the entire company and its new streaming service when they named it iHeartRadio.com. It sure doesn't seem to have hurt them.
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Don't know if you've noticed, but, when you visit the website or use the app today, it's just "iHeart." Not that radio doesn't get mentioned here-and-there, but it's not the force it used to be there either.
 
The heck of it is that at one time "audio".com was available for less than $100 K. My theory* is most of the podcasts are really radio where you can see the podcaster(s) and possible guest sitting around talking. So IMHO most of podcasting is really radio with pictures. The real content is the "audio". "Audio.com" would cover their radio and podcasting too.

* I really don't know how you could prove or disprove the my belief or theory without watching every podcast ever viewed on the Internet and figure is it a "static" background with verses ones with activity then multiply each category by veiws. But then you would have to figure out what percentage of "consumers" watch their phone for what percentage of the podcast which you you have to use every phone's camera which would be a severe privacy issue. I guess you could find volunteers to allow their cameras to watch them watch their phone, kinda like wearing a PPM device. Really creepy.
 
Miss Tuned said:
When you listen to radio via "Audacy", the first thing you hear after hitting play is ~4-6 minutes of pre-roll ads, or at least that's the case for me. On Spotify and all the other music services, you hit play and hear music. That's going to hurt it much more than a name.
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I have never heard more than two minutes of pre-roll ads on Audacy unless I've joined in the middle of a commercial break. Unless it's a Cumulus station, I rarely hear more than a single minute spot before joining the stream. Cumulus stations have their own 30-60 second pre-roll ads in addition to the ones the aggregators run.

TuneIn, on the other hand, will typically run somewhere between two and three minutes of pre-roll ads with every stream you start from a web-browser. It usually starts with one audio/visual ad followed by two audio ads.
 
secondchoice said:
The heck of it is that at one time "audio".com was available for less than $100 K. My theory* is most of the podcasts are really radio where you can see the podcaster(s) and possible guest sitting around talking.
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Not every podcast has a video component. Not sure how widely known this is, but several years ago KQED had webcams installed in the studios to livestream Forum (and possibly other shows too). They ended up scrapping the idea when a lot of guests didn't want to be on video.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Any relation to the ship where Don Johnson is captain on ABC?
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Given that the name change happened four years ago (March 2021) and the TV series you obliquely referenced (Doctor Odyssey) has only been on the air since last September?
 
radiofan2023 said:
Entercom should have called themselves something else similar to audio, but they probably would have spelled it Oddio.
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And with a single "d" in Spanish it means "hate". Appropriate for what later happened.
 
Kent said:
TuneIn, on the other hand, will typically run somewhere between two and three minutes of pre-roll ads with every stream you start from a web-browser. It usually starts with one audio/visual ad followed by two audio ads.
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I wonder if the streamers behind those pre-roll ads have researched the effects of hitting potential listeners with a bunch of ads before even getting a sample of the audio.

Whenever I go to an audio link that starts with ads, I don't wait. I stop listening. I've mentioned this "annoyance" to a number of friends in several different age categories and all find themselves leaving all but the most attractive audio sources when those ads start.

I'm sure they all measure the amount of people clicking out before the ads end.

Question for all: How often do you listen to all the ads before content starts? Or do you click out?
 
DavidEduardo said:
I wonder if the streamers behind those pre-roll ads have researched the effects of hitting potential listeners with a bunch of ads before even getting a sample of the audio.
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It's not just that. TuneIn also indiscriminately jams ads into the middle of streams where there's no natural commercial break.

Not only does that not encourage me to upgrade to their premium tier, but it has caused me to avoid using TuneIn at all costs, only as a last resort.
 


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