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Clear Channel's BIG Fat plan to rule the streaming radio marketplace!

Lately CC has made deals with other big radio groups to stream their programing over the I Heart Radio App. This begs the question why would they do that? Is this so that they then together can make a deal with one or more of the wireless phone makers to build a new "Custom Proprietary Addressable In-Dash Wireless Receiver" to connect to the I Heart Radio App for sale at discounted price to the consumer or by paying a subscription fee or Both? An interesting way take your entire radio group private overnight! mmmmm? This just might be their grand plan to monetize the I Heart Radio app much like satellite radio! Not to mention the fact that as a subscription service they also eliminate the FCC telling them what they can program much like paid subscription cable television and satellite radio. This just could get very interesting over the next few years......The future of radio is upon us and it doesn't look like it's going to be free!

Just Asking, while thinking "What If CC and the other's are up to this and would it be legal?"

Your comments are welcome.

Are these suits at CC wanting to get a piece of Uncle Mel's pie? He is raking it in you know! Or looking for a way to steal sports programing away from the OTA Television station groups? Or a way to overwhelm Pandora and the rest. What a can of worms!
 
I assume several "players" would like to throw a rope around the on-line audience for audio. I would expect Google and Yahoo to have designs all their own.

From the listener point of view, having some commonality and technical predictability would be a good thing. (Today when I sit at my computer and try to pull up various broadcast stations around the country, it is a "Heinz 57 variety" nightmare. Some stations are using streaming that requires some driver or player or software that I don't have. And many stations are so "dense in the head" that they don't realize they have picked the "streaming stepchild" and they offer NO help screens, no clues how to solve the problem.)

Audio listeners would like having ALL stations use the same technology so radio would always work.

Audio listeners would not like having to pay for what they have received for free through the years.... but maybe they would get used to it. A lot of us have accepted the fact that we are going to pay to watch TV.

Maybe Clear Channel is not pushing a plan where everybody has to pay them... but they know that it is possible someone will end up owning the toll booth for on-line audio, and if so, they would want to be the toll collector.
 
Clear Channel's IheartRadio makes up only a very small portion of the music streaming market. Clear Channel and all their partners combined still have less listening hours than Pandora by a long shot. The most they will be able to do is become one of the large competitors. They don't have what it takes to take over the market.
 
You mention satellite, and here we are, 12 years after Sirius and XM debuted, and they have a grand total of 18 million subscribers. On the surface, that's a lot of people. But as a percentage of the population, it's a drop in the bucket. The operational costs are huge, and contrary to what you say, they aren't making a ton of money. The subscriptions have slowed down, barely keeping up with the cancelations. And the real truth is that the public, for the most part, isn't motivated to pay for radio when most other services are free. So I have no reason to believe the goal here is to create a subscription service. All he seems to be doing is making all of his terrestrial stations available on the internet. Just another platform for the advertising.

You ask if it's legal, and I ask how is it not? There certainly is no monopoly when you compare them to SiriusXM or Pandora. I don't know of any other law that would come into play.
 
Satellite radio came out before the cellular data networks were even built and before MP3 players got popular. It was the only way to hear niche formats coast to coast. Now that more and more people have smartphones, and those smartphones have apps that receive Internet radio, people will drop satellite radio if they get better content on Internet stations. For example, Sirius XM only has one current dance station, and I can tune between over 10 current dance stations online.
 
Nick said:
Satellite radio came out before the cellular data networks were even built and before MP3 players got popular. It was the only way to hear niche formats coast to coast. Now that more and more people have smartphones, and those smartphones have apps that receive Internet radio, people will drop satellite radio if they get better content on Internet stations. For example, Sirius XM only has one current dance station, and I can tune between over 10 current dance stations online.

I have never been tempted to subscribe to satellite radio but I'm all over every radio app out there.
 
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