It's missing

[pocket-radio]

Something is missing from HD radio's digital scheme and it's bigger than CD quality or hundreds of new radio stations!

I dare say so called loudmouth industry know it alls haven't really thought this through.

It's analytics and I'm not talking about PPM, ratings, AQH or share. While important those are radio's measuring tools from the past..

When you visit Radio-info the webmaster knows plenty about you and your computing habits. Google knows more about your likes and dislikes than say your wife..

With a few mouse clicks Google Analytics tracks what websites you came from and where you went..
Unique views, your location or how many impressions were made from the last ad that ran and much more..

The power of digital isn't sound, or stations it's the ability to receive real time tracking results.
Post a video on Facebook and you get instant real time tracking results, FREE!

The future is now, not 10 years from now.

So for radio or HD radio to compete in this arena wifi or G3 is required!

And if you have G3 with accesses to anything you want why would you want HD radio?











For these reasons ad budgets are being shifted to digital and that doesn't include HD radio.

 

[Lee Rust]

It isn't just HD Radio. All the one-way "old media" have this deficiency, and they will have to make themselves comfortable in their new places a few rungs further down the ladder of the media hierarchy. It doesn't mean they're going away, though.

 

[nd2023]

Stations get instant data from their web streams. They know if people tune out when a song or commercials come on and where they are listening from

 

[tomservo]

You mean 3G. A G3 is a small Pontiac that's a rebadged Chevrolet Aveo that's a rebadged Korean-made Daewoo Kalos.

3G internet service, depending on what network infrastructure is behind it, is useless for streaming radio. I've found that out the hard way. Technically RTT1x appears to be a 3G technology but download speeds are hardly appropriate for streaming any content, much less music. We're talking like 0.05 Mbps throughput downstream. My service provider only offers EV-DO Rev. 0 which means I'm lucky to hit 0.6 Mbps down on any given day. Enough for a low-bitrate audio stream, but it sounds pretty bad and tends to cut out a lot.

Streaming audio really becomes a bit of a laugh when the throughputs are increased, as is common with HSPA and HSPA+, which I've heard T-Mobile is using to deliver 3-6 Mbps down in many cities now. (HSPA+ may have recently been reclassified as 4G because of marketing hype, I'm not entirely sure.)

To get back on topic, 3G and 4G are far from ubiquitous considering each carrier offers different speeds and different coverage areas. What may work for one iPhone toting funkmaster may not be available to a Boost Mobile fanboy, or vice-versa. Beyond that, there are bound to be more and more data caps as more bit-hungry devices hit the shelves. Case in point the Verizon iPhone (a/k/a the ViPhone), which is being offered with Verizon's unlimited data plans for a limited time after launch. Yes, they have already confirmed they will be instituting bandwidth caps and usage metering on new iPhone users in the near future.

It's only going to get worse from there.

Wi-fi or wired internet home is a radio killer; there is no doubt about that. But the same cannot quite be said yet of terrestrial broadcast radio on the go, where a ton of people still tend to listen. So why not offer them a way to get more variety in the car where their data cap may keep them from streaming radio? (I'd be saving it for video downloads and things like that.)

As much as I've ragged on how technically poor HD radio in my particular market, it turns out to be no less dropout prone than the 3G streaming music apps on my phone. And my mouth to God's ear the sound quality is almost always better on HD.

Maybe that'll change with seamless 4G coverage, but my carrier and others have announced ZERO plans to upgrade my market for the time being, or to even offer a phone capable of 4G speeds. So until then, I'll keep listening to HD radio as it suits my needs (which admittedly, is not much lately.)

 

[SirRoxalot]

Bandwidth caps are radio's best friend. New memory technologies that allow you to put 30GB of music on your phone without killing the battery will be the next challenge.

 

[BRNout]

To get back on topic, 3G and 4G are far from ubiquitous considering each carrier offers different speeds and different coverage areas. What may work for one iPhone toting funkmaster may not be available to a Boost Mobile fanboy, or vice-versa. Beyond that, there are bound to be more and more data caps as more bit-hungry devices hit the shelves. Case in point the Verizon iPhone (a/k/a the ViPhone), which is being offered with Verizon's unlimited data plans for a limited time after launch. Yes, they have already confirmed they will be instituting bandwidth caps and usage metering on new iPhone users in the near future.

It's only going to get worse from there.

For now, but that's only temporary. You see, consumers are crazy for smartphone technology. This is the "must have" technology item right now. Granted, streaming radio isn't the driver of that demand - but it easily piggybacks on it. Do you honestly think that, given such pent-up demand and new apps coming on line daily, there will forever be a 2 GB cap? Really? Or that it will go lower? If you do, then you lack foresight.

Another thing is that 2 GB isn't all that low. I stream on my smartphone a couple times a week and was using it plenty at airports last month and still managed to use less than half of my cap.

About the cellphone companies; you see, they're doing it now because they can get away with it. But, eventually, you'll have enough people hitting the cap (via gaming and all of that new video streaming) that there will be a rebellion of sorts. AT&T and Verizon will lose business. When that happens, you'll see the caps rise again or go away entirely. They're betting that this won't happen until they're able to upgrade enough to handle the traffic economically. At the moment, those 2 companies hold most of the subs. But Sprint, T-Mobile and others are growing fast and expanding networks quickly to try and catch up with the coverage that the big 2 have. Once they grab enough share with their unlimited data plans, you'll see AT&T and Verizon forced to make a move. That's how capitalism works through competition.

You need to look ahead. Five years from now, there's NO WAY that everyone will be limited to a 2 GB/month cap. There will be too many smartphone owners who will use too many cool apps to tolerate it. That is the challenge that AT&T and Verizon have to grapple with. But, as far as radio is concerned, if station owners think that the spectre of streaming audio will go away due to caps, they're deluding themselves. Most don't seem to be thinking that way though, despite some of the commentary I see here.

However, where they're wrong is that HD radio is NOT the wave of the future (or of anything else). It's a non-starter. Most consumers will skip that technological step entirely and obtain radio via the internet. Operators who embrace the technology will prosper from it, those who ignore it will do so at their own peril (Beasley seems to be an example of the latter).

 

[radiogooroo]

To get back on topic, 3G and 4G are far from ubiquitous considering each carrier offers different speeds and different coverage areas. What may work for one iPhone toting funkmaster may not be available to a Boost Mobile fanboy, or vice-versa. Beyond that, there are bound to be more and more data caps as more bit-hungry devices hit the shelves. Case in point the Verizon iPhone (a/k/a the ViPhone), which is being offered with Verizon's unlimited data plans for a limited time after launch. Yes, they have already confirmed they will be instituting bandwidth caps and usage metering on new iPhone users in the near future.

It's only going to get worse from there.

For now, but that's only temporary. You see, consumers are crazy for smartphone technology. This is the "must have" technology item right now. Granted, streaming radio isn't the driver of that demand - but it easily piggybacks on it. Do you honestly think that, given such pent-up demand and new apps coming on line daily, there will forever be a 2 GB cap? Really? Or that it will go lower? If you do, then you lack foresight.

Another thing is that 2 GB isn't all that low. I stream on my smartphone a couple times a week and was using it plenty at airports last month and still managed to use less than half of my cap.

About the cellphone companies; you see, they're doing it now because they can get away with it. But, eventually, you'll have enough people hitting the cap (via gaming and all of that new video streaming) that there will be a rebellion of sorts. AT&T and Verizon will lose business. When that happens, you'll see the caps rise again or go away entirely. They're betting that this won't happen until they're able to upgrade enough to handle the traffic economically. At the moment, those 2 companies hold most of the subs. But Sprint, T-Mobile and others are growing fast and expanding networks quickly to try and catch up with the coverage that the big 2 have. Once they grab enough share with their unlimited data plans, you'll see AT&T and Verizon forced to make a move. That's how capitalism works through competition.

You need to look ahead. Five years from now, there's NO WAY that everyone will be limited to a 2 GB/month cap. There will be too many smartphone owners who will use too many cool apps to tolerate it. That is the challenge that AT&T and Verizon have to grapple with. But, as far as radio is concerned, if station owners think that the spectre of streaming audio will go away due to caps, they're deluding themselves. Most don't seem to be thinking that way though, despite some of the commentary I see here.

However, where they're wrong is that HD radio is NOT the wave of the future (or of anything else). It's a non-starter. Most consumers will skip that technological step entirely and obtain radio via the internet. Operators who embrace the technology will prosper from it, those who ignore it will do so at their own peril (Beasley seems to be an example of the latter).

Please explain how the cell phone providers are going to bend the laws of physics and allow an ever expanding number of smartphone users unlimited access to bandwidth. Given the fact that the cellular industry hasn't been able to give us STABLE NON-DROPPING, DROP OUT FREE PHONE CALLS after 30 years of trying, I'm not holding my breath. They can't even get their primary service right. How are they going to pump increasing mountains of data through?

You can't seriously think that they'll just figure out how to handle the increased data demand from several hundred million streaming audio users when they can't even handle the comparatively small demand their phone calls require.

Terrestrial radio will be with us for a long, long time because it's simple and efficient. One transmitter can serve millions of listeners reliably.

As for the subject of the thread, yes, digital media is the current darling of the advertising world. Part of the reason is ad agencies are finding lots of new products they can sell their clients without incurring any expense at all. Would an agency rather get a 15% agency discount for spots they place on a radio station or 100% of a buy for themselves to engineer some social media campaign?

If the best interests of their clients were in mind, agencies wouldn't be so quick to rush to digital, but obviously there are other forces at work. I have several friends who are now working for boutique social media agencies, who attempt to build awareness and usage of their clients' products via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. I've contemplated dropping several of them as friends on Facebook because their posts are no longer about them, they've turned into advertisements.

Banner ads don't work. Has anyone ever clicked on a banner ad to buy anything? They have such a shady history of hijacking browsers, installing pop-ups, spam, tracking cookies, etc. that most people don't trust them.

I can't speak for anyone else, but gateway video don't work with me. They piss me off. There's nothing I hate more than being forced to sit through 15 to 30 seconds of commercial to see content, and generally think of how pissed I am while doing it, rather than thinking about whatever product they're pushing. I'd be willing to bet perceptual studies would show this to be a fairly common reaction to these types of ads.

The one online advertising model that works IMO is search engine placement. Google ads work, but they're the modern day equivalent of yellow pages advertising. People already know what they're looking for when they do a search for a plumber and come across the ad of the one they eventually hire. They might work in a small, secondary way for comparative advertising. You do a search for the Nissan Xterra, and paid Google ads for the new Ford Explorer or Toyota 4Runner come up, potentially swaying you.

But outside of the Google scenarios, advertisers still need traditional media - radio, TV and billboards - to whet customer appetites for their products.

I've been to this site hundreds of times. I have never once clicked on a banner ad here - ever.

 

[BRNout]

Yeah right gooroo, they're going to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure and then let it stagnate? Come on, even with your biased viewpoint of this, you can't be serious.

There's no need to "bend" the laws of physics to enable the growth of 3G/4G wireless internet, acquisitions are being made each and every day to deal with the issue. Talk with anyone inside that business and they'll tell you how they have ambitious plans to address the current logjam and to improve the system going forward.

If there is a logjam (and that's mainly in certain localized spots), it was caused because the excessive demand for this technology actually caught the service providers by surprise. They couldn't have planned for it. As far as the 'call dropping' is concerned, I rarely encounter that any more from where I live, but I will admit that it happens in hilly places and in outlying areas between cities. In those areas, this technology will take longer to provide.

Then again, I don't see small markets having much in the way of HD Radio either. ;D

Where people live and work, it's all about the smartphones. That's reality pal.

 

[tomservo]

Another thing is that 2 GB isn't all that low. I stream on my smartphone a couple times a week and was using it plenty at airports last month and still managed to use less than half of my cap.

True, if that's all you do. But the smartphone crazed masses are doing video and lots of uploads to their Facespace and Mybook accounts and even Twitter pics. That eats up bandwidth.

I have come across tons of heavy users who routinely hit their caps, and as a consequence have had to shift more of their use to Wi-Fi. But there's no Wi-Fi in the car (and if it is, it's tied to a cellular broadband plan… with caps.)

About the cellphone companies; you see, they're doing it now because they can get away with it. But, eventually, you'll have enough people hitting the cap (via gaming and all of that new video streaming) that there will be a rebellion of sorts. AT&T and Verizon will lose business. When that happens, you'll see the caps rise again or go away entirely. They're betting that this won't happen until they're able to upgrade enough to handle the traffic economically. At the moment, those 2 companies hold most of the subs. But Sprint, T-Mobile and others are growing fast and expanding networks quickly to try and catch up with the coverage that the big 2 have. Once they grab enough share with their unlimited data plans, you'll see AT&T and Verizon forced to make a move. That's how capitalism works through competition.

The problem with your argument is there's no real competition in cell phone technology. Sure, there's tons of phones by a handful of manufacturers that run on a myriad of networks in the US, but the pricing is all basically the same, it's all contract-driven and worst of all there is little to no compatibility between carriers to allow true competition.

Look at the super popular iPhone. Out of the box it ONLY works on AT&T, and has to be jailbroken (voiding the warranty in theory) to work on T-Mobile. And while it CAN work on T-Mobile it will not work on their 3G network because it's on different frequencies than AT&T's 3G network. You can't take a Verizon Moto Droid X to Sprint even though they're both CDMA and both use the same 3G EV-DO technology. Why? Just because.

This is what finally broke me of my (rare in the US) habit of exclusively buying unlocked GSM phones: they may work on all carriers but not all carriers' 3G networks. The one I really wanted would have only worked on AT&T's sorry and expensive service, so I had to let it go.

Part of capitalism is maximizing profits. One way to ensure profits is to operate with a scarcity of a product that's in demand. High speed data is that product, and the scarcity is completely artificial. Most of the US carriers are sitting on TONS of spectrum that is going unused. Not because of government interference or a lack of capital, but greed. They could go ahead build out all the licenses they own, but that would cost money, and why increase bandwidth when they can claim they don't have enough and therefore charge more to access this so-called scarce resource?

You need to look ahead. Five years from now, there's NO WAY that everyone will be limited to a 2 GB/month cap. There will be too many smartphone owners who will use too many cool apps to tolerate it. That is the challenge that AT&T and Verizon have to grapple with. But, as far as radio is concerned, if station owners think that the spectre of streaming audio will go away due to caps, they're deluding themselves. Most don't seem to be thinking that way though, despite some of the commentary I see here.

You're right. Caps will probably be even lower by then. Remember, the trend has been going the opposite way you describe. It's only relatively recently that caps and tiered pricing have been put in place.

Since consumers have already balked at high data prices and caps, the solution has not been to revoke the caps and add capacity, but to simply move to a tiered plan where the caps are even lower to go with a lower price. Verizon does this, T-Mobile and AT&T does it and Sprint doesn't but they're constantly teetering on the brink of collapse which means no one will be following in their footsteps any time soon. They're not expanding their nascent 4G network because of money issues, and they're not even the owner of it — Clearwire is. Clearwire's hurting too and if they go under, tech circles speculate they'll basically take Sprint with 'em.

So it's not so much that 2 GB isn't an adequate amount of data for casual radio listening, but most people looking to save money are stuck with 1 GB or even 200 MB plans. 200 MB can be gone through in one day on a typical smartphone if you're not careful.

I do agree with you that streaming must be part of a modern station's image, even if HD is not. But I think HD can be a part if it's marketed in conjunction with the ability to listen to the HD subchannel online. Market the HD subchannel as an online counterpart to the station, with the HD subchannel not as the primary method but secondary to the online feed.

If there is a logjam (and that's mainly in certain localized spots), it was caused because the excessive demand for this technology actually caught the service providers by surprise. They couldn't have planned for it. As far as the 'call dropping' is concerned, I rarely encounter that any more from where I live, but I will admit that it happens in hilly places and in outlying areas between cities. In those areas, this technology will take longer to provide.

Then again, I don't see small markets having much in the way of HD Radio either. ;D

Depends on the market. I'm between Mobile (Market 94) and Pensacola (Market 124) and both have HD stations, and I get all but one of them. But I am decidedly in a small town, population about 6,000. North of here it gets decidedly rural and there's no 3G on any carrier except Verizon, but HD radio is pretty solid up there.

HD penetration has less to do at this point with market size and more with where the major radio corporations have properties. We're "lucky" in that respect because Clear Channel and Cumulus are big here, and both have pushed HD hard. Contrast that to Jackson, Mississippi where the only HD is via the public radio outlet and one of the local college (jazz) stations. There, I imagine they really will skip HD and go straight to pushing the streams.

 

[DaveBayArea]

Please explain how the cell phone providers are going to bend the laws of physics and allow an ever expanding number of smartphone users unlimited access to bandwidth.

IPV6 and Multicast. It's already being used to provide stock quote information to tens of thousands of subscribers using one stream. It's only a matter of time before it filters to streaming audio. There's no limit to the number of hosts that can join a multicast stream.

Dave B.
(a broadcast engineer who's also a network nerd)

 

[radiogooroo]

IPV6 and Multicast. It's already being used to provide stock quote information to tens of thousands of subscribers using one stream. It's only a matter of time before it filters to streaming audio. There's no limit to the number of hosts that can join a multicast stream.

Dave B.
(a broadcast engineer who's also a network nerd)

Maybe if you want to broadcast via IP over wireless networks, but the biggest consumers of mobile bandwidth are people watching videos, etc. The odds of hundreds of people attached to the same cell tower watching the same YouTube video at the same moment are pretty low.

That, and the supposed radio killers are personalized experiences like Pandora. Multicast doesn't offer much help for individualized listening experiences.

 

[DaveBayArea]

Maybe if you want to broadcast via IP over wireless networks, but the biggest consumers of mobile bandwidth are people watching videos, etc. The odds of hundreds of people attached to the same cell tower watching the same YouTube video at the same moment are pretty low.

That, and the supposed radio killers are personalized experiences like Pandora. Multicast doesn't offer much help for individualized listening experiences.

But HD doesn't provide any individual streams or personalized experiences either. So how is it in any way advantageous? Right now all HD provides is interference and low-quality pc-controlled jukeboxes. The major backbone providers are already ipv6-capable, and many ISP's are doing it (that's how espn-3 works). Our station has no interest in adding HD radio, but I can guarantee that we'll be on the bandwagon when multicast streaming becomes a reality. With 192-Kbit AAC+.

Dave B.

 

[radiogooroo]

But HD doesn't provide any individual streams or personalized experiences either. So how is it in any way advantageous? Right now all HD provides is interference and low-quality pc-controlled jukeboxes. The major backbone providers are already ipv6-capable, and many ISP's are doing it (that's how espn-3 works). Our station has no interest in adding HD radio, but I can guarantee that we'll be on the bandwagon when multicast streaming becomes a reality. With 192-Kbit AAC+.

Dave B.

I wouldn't hold my breath dude. Given the bandwidth crunch, I think it's pretty unlikely that wireless carriers will devote huge chunks of spectrum to dedicated streams unless they plan to get into broadcasting themselves. I can see Verizon TV or AT&T Mobile TV. I can not see your station (or mine) getting dedicated bandwidth from those providers to multicast.

 

[tomservo]

There's already been some attempts at mobile TV and they've failed miserably. Anyone remember MediaFLO (later FLOtv?) No? Of course not. It went nowhere. In fact I think Qualcomm is either giving up or has given up the spectrum used for the digital mobile TV broadcasts.

I saw either that or a competitive version of mobile TV a while back at a Best Buy in a big city, and I gotta say, it was anything but impressive. Poor picture quality, some dropouts and a rudimentary channel selection and OSD. No wonder it failed. (Does that sound familiar? )

Now, 100% on demand television like Hulu or Netflix? That might do better. I just tabulated my listening habits up and a good 80% of my "radio" listening is actually to podcasts, both radio and internet-only products. <1% is streaming audio or video and the rest is terrestrial radio, with 40% of that being HD.

Although I can see where HD could theoretically have a place in FM radio's future, if I can give my honest appraisal I think radio is really going to suffer at the hands of on demand programming, and that's NOT something radio can do. In reality there's only so much live content to go around (news, sports, live entertainment programs, swap shop). Everything else can be time shifted, including many music programs.

In a way, it'd almost be better to scrap HD as a live content delivery mechanism and reapportion it as a digital background data service. Imagine being able to sync radio programs on the go without using your data plan and suffering through slow download speeds? Now that would be something. If I could make my own talk schedule easily and it could download for free off the air, that'd be a product I'd have.

 

[radiogooroo]

Although I can see where HD could theoretically have a place in FM radio's future, if I can give my honest appraisal I think radio is really going to suffer at the hands of on demand programming, and that's NOT something radio can do. In reality there's only so much live content to go around (news, sports, live entertainment programs, swap shop). Everything else can be time shifted, including many music programs.

I agree that on demand programming is the only credible threat to radio on a mobile platform. Of course, on demand programming wouldn't work in the holy grail multicasting scenario, thus only contributing to the bandwidth crunch. With that being the case, is it really a threat? No. Radio broadcasting will continue to work for the same reason it has worked since the invention of the car radio - it allows you to reach millions per station with one transmitter and inexpensive, reliable receivers.

In a way, it'd almost be better to scrap HD as a live content delivery mechanism and reapportion it as a digital background data service. Imagine being able to sync radio programs on the go without using your data plan and suffering through slow download speeds? Now that would be something. If I could make my own talk schedule easily and it could download for free off the air, that'd be a product I'd have.

At 96k, it wouldn't exactly be speedy. To make this happen though, you wouldn't have to scrap HD Radio at all. HD as a platform is already transmitting real time traffic data, completely transparent to HD listeners. You could do the same to an HD Radio device designed to store whatever programming it receives via a similar channel.

If you wanted to speed things up, you could combine the data transmission capability of several HD stations in a market.

The commercial viability of such a DVR type service would be questionable to me though. I can see some appeal for talk radio listeners who subscribe to "4th hour" shows via syndicator websites already, and it might be a way to build loyalty by transmitting morning show "best of" bits, etc. for music stations, but I wonder how many people would actually bother to listen. That's one of the other reasons radio works - it's simple to operate while driving.

 

[radiogooroo]

Back to the original poster's topic though...

HD might eventually yield some sort of ultimate accountability mechanism for radio listenership for advertisers, exactly like the metrics streaming and banner ads offer. It wouldn't be difficult at all to broadcast ISCI codes for commercials on an auxiliary data channel via HD.

A wifi enabled HD radio could store this info and transmit it to some accountability service whenever it's in range of an open wifi signal (think Starbucks) or via an integrated system (like Sync's) cellular capability.

Voila. Radio could use such a system to demonstrate its clear superiority and reach over "new media."