When you're rich. My point is HD will remain free, while streaming requires subscription.
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HD Radio’s History of Innovation and Future of Growth
- Thread starter rbc
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When you're rich. My point is HD will remain free, while streaming requires subscription.
Tell that to the cable companies. Here in the Coachella Valley there are three municipalities that are nearly all Hispanic and blue collar. The cancellation by choice or failure to pay is around 40% this year.
Have you even ever tuned in an HD Radio signal? If you have, then you have to be aware that there is no 'conditional access' to HD Radio. Those 'big broadcasters' will never be able to 'charge for their HD2's and HD3's, any more than they can 'charge' for regular FM radio now. It's an impossibility, due to the way HD Radio is delivered. It's free, over the air radio.
Also, the digital nature of HD Radio wasn't the main driver behind it. Instead, HD Radio was a big deal because when HD was first introduced, terrestrial radio was afraid of satellite radio. They were afraid that satellite radio, with its clear reception and 200+ channels, might eat up a huge chunk of terrestrial radio's audience, and HD radio promised terrestrial FM stations two or more extra channels of programming -- to help FM stations provide more choices to keep audiences from going satellite. At the same time, HD Radio would update AM stations by helping them provide a relatively noise-free local signal at the same time.
Sure, HD Radio hasn't lived up to the hype, but it provides a lot of listeners a service. In many big metros the FM band is full. The only opportunity for further growth in those metros might be stations with HD2's and HD3's. So, although HD Radio might not be the big deal its proponents hoped it would be, I wouldn't count it out yet.
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Kevin
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This royalty thing is a non-issue. Steaming will always have a free service along with premium service.
Pandora is a good example. In spite of being what amounts to a Wall Street darling during start-up, Pandora's business model was getting killed with music fees. During it's independence, Pandora never made a dime of profit. SXM bought them out of the jaws of insolvency, utilizing their satellite 'radio' fee structure to cut costs. iHeart's streaming is structured similarly for the same reason. Both are considered some form of radio.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of independent organizations that have tried and failed at streaming. In all those failed instances, it was likely because of the escalating fee's over time. What streaming has evolved into, is radio with multiple delivery methods. As BigA said, it isn't one or the other.
K
Kevin
Guest
Since we’re on this royalty issue, does Public Broadcasting like NPR pay music royalties? And does non-commercial radio have to pay royalties such a K-Love for example?
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Yes they do. As with most radio stations or networks, they have what amounts to a blanket license for playing copyrighted music over the air and a different negotiated rate for music that is streamed.
This isn't quite the case. As part of the original HD radio license, if a station decides to make programming available on a subscription basis, there's revenue sharing involved. Expiri/Ibquity gets a fairly substantial percentage of the gross reoccurring revenue of the subscriber base. I can't remember, but I believe it's more than 25%. That's why you won't find many, if any, subscription aural HD-2+ services out there.
Not if the people making the music don't want it to be free.
I've never heard of subscription HD radio, though in the past I have wondered whether it would be possible. Do any technical standards/software/firmware exist for such a thing? Satellite radios have unique receiver IDs which make them addressable for service levels. Wouldn't subscription HD require a new generation of receivers with similar addressability?
What they're talking about is similar to the way SCA was used at one time. It wouldn't be for consumer use, but commercial subscribers. And yes, it would be encoded.
SCA worked as a subscription service as it required special receivers that were not generally available to the public. But there was no security for those signals as anyone with the right technical knowledge could build or modify a receiver capable of tuning in the 67 or 92 kHz subcarriers (and I'm sure there are a few people who remember Bruce Elving's SCA mail-order business.)
Any HD subscription model would essentially be a terrestrial version of satellite radio receivers, with individual addressability.
The signal would also be encrypted. Here's the concept as discussed 13 years ago:
Conditional Access for HD Radio (radioworld.com)
Prior to the introduction of HD Radio, the SCA was generally not encoded. It required a special receiver, and it was not legal to sell a tunable SCA receiver (pirate ones were available). The only general providers were the SCA programmers themselves.
I don't believe the old SCA rules have been changed, although that is a moot point.
At one point, an illegal mod for the GE Super Radio was available.
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It wasn't encoded because in some cases it was data. Radio stations would lease their SCAs to banks or similar services. Some stations donated their SCA for reading services for the blind. That's kind of what's being discussed here.
Indeed, in some cases it was telemetry return from the transmitter site. Instructions were sent on the STL and data returned on the SCA. Of course, that was a primitive system which did not work so well if the transmitter was off the air. No way to tell if there was a power failure, a generator issue, a fire or a break-in.
But many SCA uses were specialty groups, and they got their receivers from the program source which was allowed to sell, give or rent them out. Since the sale of tunable SCA radios was not legal, encoding was not required.
Muzak used to use SCA's quite a bit for subscription background music. Once the local flower shop signed up, the local rep would deliver a tuner to connect into their overhead PA system.
And in many smaller markets, the background provider was a local station. In San Juan, WFID (FM) existed for more than a decade with little main signal revenue but a good income from the background service, called "Beautiful Music". It lasted well into the 80's, in fact.
Dr. Bruce Elving, whose Ph.D. thesis was related to FM DXing, and who published the FM Atlas until shortly before he passed away, used to sell SCA receivers, but you had to have a disability in order to buy them. Not sure, I assume he was licensed to do so, but he modified DX type receivers.
We have a few non-tunable SCA receivers that are fixed to our channel only. We use them for our 67kHz SCA channel at our school radio station. We use the channel for talk-back during local school sportscasts; and for a practice channel for the young beginning elementary school broadcasters to hear themselves on a "real" radio. We`ve even experimented with using it for classroom PA service but quieting between messages was a tough challenge.
Analog SCA audio channels have many limits but the kids have fun with it. We don't intend it for the general public but it is fun to mess with.
Analog SCA audio channels have many limits but the kids have fun with it. We don't intend it for the general public but it is fun to mess with.
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