THE INTERNET....IS NOT.....RADIO!

[H82BL8]

I have run into a lot of younger people who immediately think "Internet" when I say "Radio".

I really curious why the NAB, early on, did not do something to prevent Internet streamers from calling themselves "radio anything".

Radio and streaming are completely different technologies!

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

If this is a "problem" then it is much bigger than you have described. What about the retail chains who now have their own version of radio coming out of the ceiling speakers. Walmart, Kroger. Even the little SONIC hamburger drive ins.

 

[mleach]

If this is a "problem" then it is much bigger than you have described. What about the retail chains who now have their own version of radio coming out of the ceiling speakers. Walmart, Kroger. Even the little SONIC hamburger drive ins.

One can at least somewhat thank singer Steve Miller for this. Even though there is nothing about it on the Steve Miller Wikipedia bio but I do remember some years back hearing where Miller had sued some discount dollar store ( Dollar Tree? ) because he was shopping at such a store and noticed the radio on their loud system was playing the radio and they were playing I believe "Jungle Love" ( I also heard it was "Jet Airliner" ). Miller wasn't happy, BMI & ASCAP got invloved, lawsuits were filed..etc....

Not sure what was the result of this as far as Steve Miller was concerned but it did scare many chains to the point they didn't allow the radio to be played in their stores( at least made it company policy ) and restaurants. Kohls, Yum Brands ( Taco Bell, A&W, Long John Silvers,etc..) and of course Dollar Tree soon started blasting their own "radio networks".

Of course the bigger chains like K-Mart, Sears, Walmart and Target were doing it long before Steve Miller's fit. Even some long defunct regional chains like Nichols Discount City, Hecks Discount and Zayre were doing this in some of their stores way back in the 70's.

 

[DebBonner]

There are other reasons that stores program and play their own "radio" stations than just fear of litigation. They do it in many cases to be able to control the advertising and marketing messages shoppers hear.

I absolutely agree these entities are erroneously called radio. They are mere marketing tools to lull the shoppers into a more complacent mood and mentally in a more receptive mood for the commercials. Also they are trying to make the shopping experience more pleasant. The more pleasant the experience, the longer the shoppers are likely to linger. The longer they linger, the more likely they are to make a purchase or a larger purchase than the one originally intended.

Internet on the other hand started popping up because it was a cool new toy that any one could play with. So we have two flavors. Flavor one are the people who became frustrated with the homogenized sound terrestrial radio was coming up with and put a stream on the net doing radio the "way it should be" despite the fact most of those people had no idea what they were talking about and knew nothing about radio. The second flavor, seems to be radio people who were fed up with the overly homogenized and consolidated market and turned to the net for opportunities that had dried up in traditional radio.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Internet on the other hand started popping up because it was a cool new toy that any one could play with. So we have two flavors. Flavor one are the people who became frustrated with the homogenized sound terrestrial radio was coming up with and put a stream on the net doing radio the "way it should be" despite the fact most of those people had no idea what they were talking about and knew nothing about radio. The second flavor, seems to be radio people who were fed up with the overly homogenized and consolidated market and turned to the net for opportunities that had dried up in traditional radio.

I have to quarrel with you at least a little bit. Cool toy? Yeah, I'm a sucker for things that whirr, beep and blink. I can understand the fascination of trying something new.

But in your frustration you have latched onto the word "homogenization". As I check out "Internet only radio" I find for the most part a world-class collection of HOMOGENZED program content.

Kind of reminds me of when I was "trying to find MY VOICE" and I would line up every mic in the station and make a tape of me, one mic after another, and then ask a co-worker to advise me which one made me sound the best. Standard answer: "They all sound alike! They are all YOU." But in my mind and my ear, I could hear all these tonal differences. And that is my picture of Internet Radio as practiced today: It all sounds alike. Except, the genius that created his/her own is sure "MINE sounds better."

 

[DebBonner]

You make a good point. It seems EVERYBODY thinks they know better than EVERYBODY else and internet is just as plain and predictable as terrestrial radio. Sad.

 

[listener-in]

So the internet isn't radio. Big deal. When my local stations don't deliver what I want and I'm at home, I find it on the internet. Sooner or later it will be affordable to do the same in a car and when that happens, I can assure you that station managers will lose any complacency they still have.

 

[radioboy]

I alluded to this perception of internet and low power radio in a thread on the community radio board titled "Licensed Legitimacy." There are folks who believe any program content should come from a source that includes a transmitter and tower.

I attempted for the better part of 20 years to acquire some type of licensed station. I do not have any rich aunts
or family members that are going to buy me a station. I did have enough to make a down payment on an AM some years ago, but the facility was just too far out of compliance. During due diligence, the smarter side of my brain said "No."

Seeing that station struggle now..I KNOW that was the right choice. An FCC visit tomorrow would shut them down.

So in 2001, I got into streaming, when it wasn't the "in" thing to do. No one in my area knew what it was. When I joined the other fine folks on the beach, which seems inevitable for the majority of radio industry people now, I just put more effort into it and ultimately took the station up to the "Professional" level. That means all the ads and promos are ours.

So is the contraption in the back two rooms a radio station or not?

I don't know, and I'm not so sure it matters.

I very seldom look at overall stats but I just looked and saw this:

Total streams launched: 57,324

Total listening hours: 26,373 hours 43 min.

Internet "radio" or not, folks are finding us, and listening.

And I only listen to streaming stations now for the most part. I only occasionally attempt to listen to radio now, and after five or ten minutes I just turn it back off. In my market, there just isn't anything there that I care about.

From a going-on 30-years industry market vet.

 

[landtuna]

... and internet is just as plain and predictable as terrestrial radio. Sad.

Absolutely NOT! There are a ton of internet stations playing music that is not available in my market, or indeed any market. As us old-timers fade slowly away so does our favorite music. The ONLY place to hear it is on the 'net.

 

[JimmyJames]

"I absolutely agree these entities are erroneously called radio. They are mere marketing tools to lull the shoppers into a more complacent mood and mentally in a more receptive mood for the commercials."

Ah. You've just described the majority of FM stations currently. If somehow they're supposedly better "radio" simply because they're over a transmitter..

Plenty of quality stuff for every taste online, if you know where to look.

 

[ricoontheradio]

Radio is a communication medium that can be delivered in many ways.

At the end of the day, if radio's customers (listeners) consider "music on the internet" radio, then it's radio. Radio needs to focus on delivering content that listeners want, and not focus on who calls what radio.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Radio is a communication medium that can be delivered in many ways.

At the end of the day, if radio's customers (listeners) consider "music on the internet" radio, then it's radio.

If the listener considers program content on the Internet to be radio, then the listener has tendencies towards being illiterate and uneducated. I paraphrased the following a bit so we don't violate copyright law and rules of this discussion board. If you will go to your dictionary you will find radio described something like this:

Operated by radiant energy.
The phenomena of electromagnetic radiation of frequencies between about 3000 hertz and 300 gigahertz.
Relating to radio set.

Some commentators and bloggers of our day refer to "spoken word communications" and "audio based advertising" when they want to talk about "The Big Picture" of traditional broadcast radio, satellite radio, Internet delivery, and cable delivery of program content that is "fashioned in the style of radio broadcasting."

Radio ...as a word.... is short for, or a corruption of the words: "to radiate". Radio as used in our discussions tends to be limited to BROADCAST radio... as in "intended for public communication." Cell phones, walkie talkies, police radio, amateur (ham) radio are all NON-BROADCAST... they are intended as a person-to-person private form of communication in contrast to the term broadcast which carries the meaning "freely available to the broad public".

Language does change. It remains to be seen as technology continues to evolve what we shall in the future call the transfer of music and voice communication by various means.

If I download podcasts by my favorite political writers and load them into my mp3 player and listen while I take my after walk, is that radio by your definition? (no radiating transmitter involved.)

 

[listener-in]

It's of supreme irrelevance whether the internet is or is not radio. What matters is how listeners perceive and use the output of each. Whether or not it fits the dictionary definition, webcasting might as well be radio wherever they compete. It's a safe assumption that they will be competing to an ever-increasing extent, and broadcasters will ignore the web at their peril, even if they don't believe it's real radio. It's a bit like ignoring climate change just because you don't think that humans have anything to do with it. It's happening folks, whether you like it or not.

 

[Starbucks]

I agree with both of your posts. Look at IPTV. Is it television? Yes and No. It's video not over the airwaves, and it is referred to as TV.

 

[4dude]

The net might not be radio BUT SOMETIMES ITS THE ONLY PLACE TO HEAR WHAT YOU WANT!

 

[Paige Turner]

I have a question I hope someone can answer...

When they talk about the up-and-coming new technology of putting internet radio in cars, are they talking about internet-only stations, or would you be able to listen to any terrestrial station that streams?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I have a question I hope someone can answer...

When they talk about the up-and-coming new technology of putting internet radio in cars, are they talking about internet-only stations, or would you be able to listen to any terrestrial station that streams?

Here is my feeble analysis of your question... no, here is my analysis of the ANSWER to your question. If the program content is streamed on the Internet, and it shows up in your car radio as bits-and-bytes that can be transformed into sound, how would your car radio KNOW, and why would your car radio CARE if the origination was a pure-play Internet-only stream vs being a stream of an terrestrial station.

The big-boys in the cities who are streaming their content have to deal with a bump in the road. They have commercials voiced and/or produced by union folks and sophisticated folks who have contractual agreements about where that sound is allowed to venture. Thus they stream their terrestrial-broadcast-content until they come to one of these contract-bumps in the road at which time they feed down the Internet unique "filler" content that is NOT broadcast. So, if your car radio had the ability to tell the difference between a pure-play Internet station and a terrestrial station.... what would it do with one of these dual-personality streams?

HOWEVER!!!! we are assuming that tomorrow, and day after tomorrow and five years after tomorrow will be just like today.... and that is likely not true. I follow the rants of Jerry del Colliano and others who preach the gospel of digital content being the future for program content and talent. After a rather raucous week of dealing with Comcast over my cable service and it's future, I have spent some time contemplating my navel and contemplating the digital world.

The digital world we know today is a free-for-all that has room for some of us free spirits to jump in and play the game. I can register a domain, buy some hosting space on some ISPs server, create a few HTML pages and for less than $100 per year, I can have a location where you can come and listen to what ever I want to spew out there. Yes, if I choose to include music, then I will incur some royalty fees that quickly begin to add up. If I am any good at doing all this and my traffic begins to build, my ISP will quickly point out to me that my $5 per month hosting plan no longer is appropriate and I will start writing bigger checks there also. But none of that keeps me or you or anyone else from starting small in a back bedroom and being some kind of provider of audio content for something small than our outlay at Starbucks. (Or in my low-brow taste and penchant for frugality, trips to QuickTrip.) And how big can I grow? I could dream of becoming the next Google, or the next Amazon. Whatever.

All of these words I have written to get to this point: When Wall Street and the venture capital crowd recognized that radio could be an interesting playground for for their money, radio changed forever.

Once Wall Street and the venture capital crowd smell the possibility of substantial blood and mean in the digital transfer of "broadcast programming" in the digital world, they will walk into our world hacking and slicing with their fat wallets as weapons. Congress will react with new rules and regulations. Organizations that represent talent and copyrights will join into the battle. To predict whether your car radio will bring you audio content 5 and 10 years from now that resembles what we are playing with is a dicey venture to say the least.

Next time you drive your car, be sure and used the seat belt. If you plan to listen to streaming audio on the radio, wear two seat belts.

 

[bobperry]

"The Internet is not RADIO". Says who?

Cable TV is not broadcast, but no one would argue that it is not Television. In many markets, stations are starting to discuss why they keep the tower/transmitter since most of their viewers come from cable or DBS. ("Must Carry" rules are the really the only reason.)

As someone who started streaming back in 1999 and continues to introduce new ideas today on the 'net, I can tell you that the line continues to blur between "broadcast radio" and "streaming radio". Way back at the turn of the century, you needed to be listening on a computer with an internet connection...today we have folks listening on wi-fi Internet Radios and a variety of mobile devices that make us a choice anywhere there is a signal. Signal? Yep, just like those folks with a piece of paper from the FCC on the wall.

My current way to listen is an iPhone jacked into the car stereo. Depending on your car, it probably has either a jack for audio or a real interface for an iPod/iPhone. A 3G cell signal and a free streaming app means you're riding along listening to "radio" - anything from your local radio station's stream to a pure-play internet broadcast from around the world. The lines continue to blur and the choices continue to grow.

Leaving the car for a moment, how many office workers now listen to "radio" over their PC these days? Some offices don't allow radios, per se, and many locations have problems receiving a broadcast signal in their building...what to do?

The answer for those broadcasters is to make sure they are streaming their station - and for god's sake try to make it sound better than a bad cordless phone.

 

[Starbucks]

900 MHZ 1.9 GHZ 2.4 GHZ 5.8 GHZ ? Picking up your wireless connections from a stream...yes it's radio.

 

[vsa]

I have run into a lot of younger people who immediately think "Internet" when I say "Radio".

This is the most important line in this whole thread!

This is the future of "radio."

I really curious why the NAB, early on, did not do something to prevent Internet streamers from calling themselves "radio anything".

This is like saying the term "wheel" should have only applied to oxcarts or horse buggies.

Radio and streaming are completely different technologies!

AM, FM, Satellite, DAB and IBOC are also completely different technologies.