The Radio Survivor team returns for a new episode, during which Jennifer, Eric and Paul recap some of the latest radio news. Topics this week including LPFM, college radio history, radio documentaries, expanding and returning radio stations, and a slow radio broadcast for Earth Day.

Jennifer talks about her new gig working on a college radio history collection that is part of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC) on the Internet Archive.

Additionally, we cover some updates to the radio landscape, including details about the most recent low-power FM licensing window, during which 388 groups (and counting) have been awarded construction permits for new LPFM stations. In San Francisco, streaming radio station BFF.fm is the recipient of one of these coveted spots on the dial.

Also coming to the San Francisco airwaves is Seattle-based non-commercial radio station KEXP, which acquired the former KREV full-power FM commercial frequency in a bankruptcy auction. Across the country in New York City, streaming community radio station East Village Radio is returning after it ceased operations nearly a decade ago.

A few radio stories are coming to the big screen. 35,000 Watts, a documentary about college radio, has made its debut and is initially hitting the college radio circuit. Jennifer will be in attendance at a 35,000 Watts screening and panel discussion at Pomona College on March 28th as part of a fundraising event for college radio station KSPC. Another radio film in the works, 40 Watts to Nowhere, recounts the story of pirate radio station KBLT, which ran out of founder Sue Carpenter’s home in Silver Lake near Los Angeles in the late 1990s.

Finally, we alert stations to an opportunity to participate in the annual Earth Day radio event: Wetland Project Slow Radio Broadcast on April 22, 2024. Stations can air all or part of the 24-hour broadcast featuring the sounds of nature, including birds, frogs, insects, and airplanes.

Show Notes:

• Podcast #335 – Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC)
• DLARC on the Internet Archive
• College Radio Collection on DLARC
• Website for the college radio documentary 35,000 Watts
• 35,000 Watts screening dates
• Pomona College radio station KSPC-FM website (and see Jennifer’s tour of KSPC)
• BFF.fm on LPFM (Bff.fm)
• Jennifer’s tour of BFF.fm
• KEXP Coming Soon to the Bay Area (KEXP)
• Jennifer’s tour of KEXP in Seattle
• East Village Radio website
• Here is Why NYC’s Iconic East Village Radio is Coming Back from the Dead after a Decade (NY Post)
• Jennifer’s 2008 tour of East Village Radio
• Granted LPFM Applications for 2023 Filing Window (REC Networks)
• 40 Watts from Nowhere Documentary Kickstarter
• 40 Watts from Nowhere: A Journey into Pirate Radio book by Sue Carpenter (Amazon)
• Podcast #330 – Wetland Project and Slow Radio
• Wetland Project website

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #337 – Catching up on Radio News including LPFM, a College Radio Archive, Documentaries, and More appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Shortly after its 26th birthday, we revisit this interview celebrating a quarter-century of the MP3.

On July 14, 1995 the file extension .MP3 was chosen and set in place for an audio format that would go on to change music. Artist, scholar and curator John Kannenberg marks the 25th anniversary of this event with an online exhibit, “MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition” at his Museum of Portable Sound.

John joins this episode to explain why it’s important to observe this anniversary, and to recount some of the milestones in MP3’s history. From the somewhat apocryphal story of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” as the first MP3, to the introduction of the iPod, he helps us understand the role of MP3 in delivering us into the fully digital music universe we now inhabit.

We also dive into his singular museum, which exists on a single iPhone 4s, with a printed catalog to guide the visitor. Because of COVID-19 John is now available to provide guided online tours of the many sound artifacts that Museum of Portable Sound has in its archives. Either way, it’s about experiencing sound directly and purely, without distraction. (And we are here for the love of Radio and Sound.)

Show Notes:

• MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition
• The Museum of Portable Sound
• Atlas Obscura: A Loopy Library of Sounds Features Sprinklers, Sirens, and Freud’s Toilet
• The Diamond Rio was one of the first MP3 players, garnering a lawsuit from the recording industry
• 10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)
• Minidisc.org
• Podcast #255 – ‘Geek of the Week’ and the Beginning of Internet Radio
• Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio
• Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting

The post Podcast #308 – Marking a Quarter-Century of MP3 (Replay) appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Just when we thought the Franken FM era might be over for good, the FCC grants “Special Temporary Authority” to a LPTV channel 6 in San Jose, California to keep its analog signal – heard on the FM dial – on the air while transitioning its video signal to digital. We review this news, along with a proposal in front of the FCC to boost low-power FM stations to 250 watts.

We also take a look at the most recent issue of The Wire magazine, dedicated to radio in both broadcast and internet forms. Dedicated to “Adventures in Sound and Music,” the journal looks at stations that share experimental and forward-looking sounds, highlighting Radio Survivor favorites like Wave Farm and the Pirate Radio Sound Map, alongside community-oriented stations in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, South Africa and Palestine.

Then Jennifer shares her experience taking the cassette-hacking course that Eric discussed in episode #299, as we analyze the intermixing of radio, physical and digital media in the 21st century.

Show Notes:

• It’s Alive! FCC Authorizes Last-Minute Franken FM Experiment
• Time Is Running Out for FrankenFMs – Just 4 Months Left
• St. Francis High School Files Paperwork to Sell KSFH to Group Focused on South Asian Community
• REC LPFM Advisory Letter #11 – LP250 Upgrade: Technical Planning Considerations for LPFM Stations
• See if your LPFM station might be eligible for a power upgrade at check.LP250.com
• The Wire #449: Radio Activity / On Air
• Dogbotic: Cassette Hacking: A Modern Musician’s Guide to Mangling Magnetic Tape
• Podcast #293: Exploring Radio Art and Transmission Art with Anna Friz
• Podcast #292: The History of Sound Art with Judy Dunaway
• Radio Survivor Podcast #190: Radio Spectrum and Transmission Art with Amanda Dawn Christie
• Radio Survivor Podcast #193: Wavefarm, Reveil and Transmission Arts
• Radio Survivor Podcast #289: Celebrating Women in Sound with Jennifer Hyland Wang and Jenny Stoever
• Radio Survivor Podcast #151: The Wave Farm Grows Transmission Arts
• Sisters with Transistors
• Podcast #163 – The Post Radio is Dead Era

The post Podcast #303 – Radio on TV, Magazines and Tape appeared first on Radio Survivor.

It seems like physical media continues to have a hold on humans, even while most of us in the West engage with online, streaming and virtual media for much, if not most, of our time. Audiocassettes are like radio, in that they have been declared dead multiple times in the last three decades, yet continue to be found, employed and enjoyed by new generations who insist on keeping them alive. Eric just completed a weekend-long cassette hacking workshop, joined by a diverse group of musicians and sound-makers of a variety of ages. He shares that experience as we discuss conjoined histories of cassettes and radio.

That leads us into a presentation Jennifer watched at this year’s virtual Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, where she learned about a pre-VCR underground of people who recorded the audio of television shows onto cassette. It turns out some of these recordings may be the only surviving artifacts of some broadcasts that were not preserved, or have never again been seen or heard in their original form. We show how cassettes are for everyone who cares about sound in its myriad forms.

Also under discussion: the shutdown of internet radio directory service Reciva, and the perilousness of proprietary platforms.

Show Notes:

• Dogbotic’s Cassette Hacking Workshop
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies
• Broadcast Historian Nora Patterson
• Podcast #297 – Radio Studies and Soundwork
• Negativland: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
• Wobbly (Jon Leidecker)
• Wikipedia: Iannis Xenakis
• Podcast #145 – Hip-Hop Radio Archive
• Radio World: Reciva Internet Radio Platform Shutting Down
• “Electronic project kits: hands on with a vintage 160-in-1“
• Mystery Show Case #6 Kotter
• The Real World Homecoming: New York
• Billboard: ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ to Return With Fewer Music Videos Due to Licensing Constraints
• “The State” FAQ
• Podcast #141 – How Radio Isn’t Done, According To Negativland’s Don Joyce
• An Affectionate & Honest Filmic Portrait of Negativland’s Don Joyce
• Radio Garden
• Exploring Radio Garden on World Radio Day
• Radio Preservation Task Force
• Podcast #133 – Preserving Brooklyn Pirate Radio
• Soundtap’s College Radio Discovery Tool
• 82 Best Freeform College Radio Stations
• RIP: Podcast #125 – Radio Free America Is an Online Hub for Noncomm Radio
• Internet Archive
• Podcast #168 – A Time Machine for All the Radio plus Shortwave

The post Podcast #299 – Cassettes for Art, Radio and Recording TV appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On July 14, 1995 the file extension .MP3 was chosen and set in place for an audio format that would go on to change music. Artist, scholar and curator John Kannenberg marks the 25th anniversary of this event with an online exhibit, “MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition” at his Museum of Portable Sound.

John joins this episode to explain why it’s important to observe this anniversary, and to recount some of the milestones in MP3’s history. From the somewhat apocryphal story of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” as the first MP3, to the introduction of the iPod, he helps us understand the role of MP3 in delivering us into the fully digital music universe we now inhabit.

We also dive into his singular museum, which exists on a single iPhone 4s, with a printed catalog to guide the visitor. Because of COVID-19 John is now available to provide guided online tours of the many sound artifacts that Museum of Portable Sound has in its archives. Either way, it’s about experiencing sound directly and purely, without distraction. (And we are here for the love of Radio and Sound.)

Show Notes:

• MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition
• The Museum of Portable Sound
• Atlas Obscura: A Loopy Library of Sounds Features Sprinklers, Sirens, and Freud’s Toilet
• The Diamond Rio was one of the first MP3 players, garnering a lawsuit from the recording industry
• 10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)
• Minidisc.org
• Podcast #255 – ‘Geek of the Week’ and the Beginning of Internet Radio
• Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio
• Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting

The post Podcast #257 – Marking a Quarter-Century of MP3 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I got my first Sonos speaker more than five years ago, and since then I’ve installed a speaker in nearly every room of my small house (except the bathrooms). Just a few weeks ago I treated myself to the rechargeable and portable Sonos Move so I can better enjoy music in my back yard.

Though there are many more networked audio systems out there, with some reported to offer higher fidelity, I’ve stuck with Sonos because the system is pretty intuitive, sounds very good and supports the widest array of audio services. The latter reason is why I wrote that “My Sonos Is an Internet Radio” in 2015.

Earlier this year Sonos made internet radio even more accessible by rolling out the simply named Sonos Radio. The key value of Sonos Radio is that it offers a bevy of curated internet stations to every Sonos owner, whether or not you have an account for any other service, free or paid.

What I appreciate about Sonos Radio is that they didn’t choose just one partner. There are stations from both the iHeart and TuneIn directories, which means you’ll find nearly most local broadcast stations as well as plenty of internet-only ones, from local to international.

Sonos Radio: From Cruise to Chill

Sonos also has about three dozen of its own stations across most genres, from hip-hop to show tunes. Though I was skeptical at first, they quickly won me over.

One of my “guilty pleasures” is the genre now known as Yacht Rock, thanks to the parodical early YouTube series of the same name. While I enjoy the soothing melodies of Michael McDonald, Steely Dan and Christopher Cross, I find most yacht rock styled internet radio to be either too Catholic, maintaining a too-tight playlist centered only on the most well-known hits, or too soft, serving me too much Bread and America, and not enough sophisticated pop.

With a bit of trepidation I dialed up Sonos Radio’s “Soft Rock / Yacht Rock” station, Cruise Control. I got some tasty Michael McDonald-era Doobie Brothers right off the bat, but then I heard some Phoenix. Originating in the 21st century I didn’t expect to hear the latter band, but their smooth but sophisticated sound totally fit in with the groove. Clearly the Sonos Radio programmers were more fixated on the idea of Yacht Rock rather than a frozen-in-time definition. Since then Cruise Control has been on my backyard chilling-with-a-drink rotation along with the more indie-rock focused Sunset Chill.

Other Sonos stations follow a similar familiar-but-just-different-enough pattern to make them stand out in the sea of ultra-genrefied (and calcified) internet stations. My only quibble with Sonos Radio is that it’s ad supported, and mostly the same ther ads from well-known national radio advertisers are in heavy rotation. Luckily the ad load is low – maybe three or four an hour at most.

AccuRadio Shows a Human Touch

I also want to give a shout out to AccuRadio, which requires a free account to use with Sonos, but that’s it. The service has 1000 stations across 50 genres, and can get very, delightfully, specific. My favorites right now are World Fusion, which melds jazz and world music – but not remotely in an easy listening way – and 1980s Alternative, which doesn’t hew as closely to new wave and synth pop as similar channels from other services, adding in a healthy dose of punk, post-punk, industrial and guitar rock.

All of AccuRadio’s stations are curated by humans and you can tell. There are enough deep cuts and left-field choices mixed in with more familiar tracks to keep you interested over the course of many hours of listening.

The post My Sonos Is Now an Even Better Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Carl Malamud is credited with having one of the very first streaming internet talk radio shows, “Geek of the Week,” beginning in 1993. And because it was available for download, too, it’s considered a proto-podcast.

Carl joins us this week to dig into this early history of internet radio, recounting how his efforts quickly snowballed from hosting a weekly interview show with internet trailblazers to conducting live broadcasts of the National Press Club luncheons and Congressional hearings.

Prof. Andrew Bottomley of SUNY Oneonta also joins as our special expert co-host to help us place these achievements in historical perspective. Carl tells us he was always more motivated to “do it for real,” rather than write a policy paper, and that he was also driven by a commitment to openness, to ensure public access to information of civic import. Today he continues working for the cause of public information as the founder and president of Public Resource.

Show Notes:

• Internet Talk Radio and “Geek of the Week” at the Internet Archive
• Wired Magazine, July 1, 1994: Geek of the Week
• Wikipedia: Carl Malamud
• Public.Resource.org
• Internet Radio Is Older Than You Think
• Streaming Media: 25 Years of Internet Radio, Part 1
• Podcast #160 – Marking a Quarter-Century of Internet Radio
• Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio

The post Podcast #255 – ‘Geek of the Week’ and the Beginning of Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Internet radio was born more than 25 years ago, yet, according to Edison Research, only in the last month has the medium garnered just 10% of all broadcast listening time in the US. We might lay at least some blame on the commercial radio industry, which didn’t embrace it until well into the 2000s, long after the college, community and public radio trailblazers.

Prof. Andrew Bottomley returns to the show to help us understand the reasons behind mainstream broadcasters’s delayed acceptance, and explore why college broadcasters were at the forefront. His new book is “Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence,” detailing the first comprehensive history of online streaming audio.

We also discuss the similarities between long-distance listening, a/k/a DXing, and internet radio, and how the societal changes wrought by COVID-19 are affecting online radio and podcasting.

Show Notes:

• University of Michigan Press – Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence
• “Sound Streams” at Amazon
  (Radio Survivor will receive a small affiliate commission if you buy through this link)
• Andrew Bottomley’s website
• Andrew was the guest on: Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting
• Edison Research: Streaming accounts for 10% of broadcast radio’s consumption during covid-19 disruptions

The post Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This Tuesday, April 21, at 12 PM EDT I’ll be participating in an online panel on the “History of Internet Radio,” as part of the first World Audio Day virtual conference. I’m really excited to be in the company of excellent co-panelists:

Dom Robinson is UK-based writer and technologist who has written about the 25th anniversary of internet radio in 2018 and discussed the topic with me on podcast #160.

Prof. Andrew Bottomley from SUNY-Oneonta has a book coming out this June entitled, Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence. He guested on podcast #167 to talk about this early history of internet radio and the precursors to podcasting.

Dane Streeter is the Managing Director at Sharpstream in the UK, a leading audio streaming service provider, and a true fan of internet radio.

Rob Glaser is the founder of RealNetworks, one of the first practical streaming media platforms on the internet, and certainly one of the leading technologies from the 1990s through the 2000s.

Live365 is sponsoring the conference, and registration is free for this and other panels on topics like station marketing, studio technology and the “future of podcasting.”

The post Online Panel on the History of Internet Radio Is Part of the World Audio Day Virtual Conference on April 21 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Last week we declared that the 2010s were a banner decade for community radio. As Jennifer notes, though college radio had a tough start to the last decade, with the loss of prominent stations like KUSF, KTRU and WRVU, the service seriously bounced back, aided by factors like the low-power FM boom, internet radio, HD Radio and support from the new College Radio Foundation. That all adds up to the defensible declaration that it was also the biggest growth decade for college radio, too. We unpack all that happened.

Digging further into our second “Decade in Review” episode, Jennifer also looks at how efforts to preserve radio programming and materials stepped up, seen most prominently with the founding of the Library of Congress’ Radio Preservation Task Force. On that subject, we’re pleased to report that this show has been selected for collection by the Library of Congress as part of a new podcast program. We’ll talk to the manager of the Podcast Preservation Project on next week’s show.

Finally, we also dig into how video, and YouTube specifically, has become radio, in many ways. A picture may be required, but what does it matter if it’s the audio that’s most important?

But, wait, there’s more! Find out how Jerry Lee Lewis fuels a discussion of border blasters, the tempestuous relationship between radio and the record industry through times of both war and peace in some bonus content that didn’t fit into this episode. Our Patreon supporters can hear this bonus episode, and so can you for a gift of just $1 a month.

Show Notes

• More College Radio than Ever in the 2010s as it Takes New Forms
• Preservation is One of the Most Important Radio Trends of the Decade
• Podcast #207 – Building More Communities Around Your Station
• Is YouTube the Home of the New Radio Pirates?

The post Podcast #228 – College Radio’s Biggest Decade appeared first on Radio Survivor.

We begin part one of our review of the last decade in radio with the observation that it saw the greatest expansion of community radio in history. Though the second US LPFM licensing window that happened in 2013 is a significant driver, the growth happened all over the world.

The 2010s were also a growth period for a lesser-known type of radio station, that isn’t officially even radio. We’re talking about FrankenFM TV stations that can be heard on the FM dial. Not remotely as numerous as low-power FMs, they nevertheless increased in number.

We also note the cataclysmic shifts in independent internet radio that went largely unnoticed outside specialist press (and Radio Survivor). Though indie stations, and platforms supporting those stations, still exist, an unknown number were effectively forced to shut down.

Still, at the end of the decade, there are substantially more radio stations on the air than ten years ago. Not bad for a dying medium, eh? Next week, in part two, we dig into the decade in college radio, and dig deeper into the convergence of radio and video.

Show Notes:

• The Greatest Flowering of Community Radio in History Happened in the 2010s
• Podcast #67 – New Community Radio in Borneo
• Podcast #103 – The Popular Community Radio Movement in Argentina
• Podcast #198 – Defending Human Rights with Radio in Honduras
• Podcast #170 – Community Radio in Brazil
• The Near-Death of Independent Internet Radio Is One of the Most Important Radio Trends of the Decade
• The Rise and Possible Fall of FrankenFMs Is One of the Most Important Radio Trends of the Decade
• Understanding Radio in the Popular Zeitgeist – An Analysis of Radio Survivor’s Most Popular Posts of the Decade 2010 – 2019

The post Podcast #227 – A Banner Decade for Community Radio and FrankenFMs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Internet radio experienced a sea change in the middle of the last decade that washed away many independent broadcasters, and changed the atmosphere for others. While the medium continues to sail on, it is also more fractured – and more diverse – than ten years ago. That’s why this evolution is one of the decade’s most important radio trends.

Internet Radio’s Indie Roots

Independent broadcasters have been a cornerstone of internet radio since the very beginning. Looking back 26 years to the very first internet broadcasts, we see that – much like terrestrial radio – they were initiated by hobbyists and experimenters, not big media companies.

In fact, one can argue that the U.S. commercial radio industry largely neglected internet radio for a good portion of its first two decades. I think we can mark the founding of iHeartRadio as an app and platform in 2008 as the turn, when American commercial broadcasting finally embraced the internet as a useful and profitable medium, rather than a pesky nuisance. I don’t mean that commercial stations weren’t streaming before then. Rather, that streams were treated as low priority obligations.

During that time thousands upon thousands of independent internet radio operations were founded, taking advantage of a very low cost of entry and an absence of any sort of governmental licensing. Esepecially in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was mostly a matter of getting a Live365 account, loading up some music, and going for it.

The DMCA Takes a Bite, but not a Mouthful

Beginning with the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, internet broadcasting transitioned from its anything goes days to being a little more regulated. This was due to being required to pay royalties to songwriters and musicians for playing their music.

However, thanks to lobbying efforts on their behalf, small, independent and hobbyist webcasters got a break from Congress, twice. The Small Webcaster Settlement Acts of 2002 and 2009 established reasonable performance royalty rates for internet broadcasters not intent on going commercial, making much income, or serving large audiences. In effect, they were for webcasters that are akin to a small community LPFM or college station.

While this meant running a legit internet radio operation in the U.S. wasn’t free, the costs could be low enough to be comparable to, or less than, any number of other hobbies. Live365, then one of the biggest platforms offering streaming radio services, make it particularly easy by bundling those royalty payment in with the hosting costs. Some of the smallest webcasters could be on the hook for less than $100 a year – less than the cost of cup of Starbucks a day.

2016: The Year of the Great Seachange

The independent internet radio train ran off the rails in the middle of this last decade, January 2016 to be exact. That’s when the medium was dealt two massive blows: the expiration of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009 and the closure of Live365. Though the expiration of the Settlement Act was perhaps the final nail in the coffin, Live365 had been struggling for some time before hand, largely due to the loss of key investors. Its demise on January 31 of that year left some 5000 internet broadcasters of all sizes scrambling for new hosts.

Despite the hopes and prayers of many a small webcaster, Congress never took up their cause again, and their royalty rates skyrocketed. Instead of paying a percentage of revenue as under the Settlement Act, they would started having to pay royalties based upon tracks streamed per listener. That meant a station that averaged 100 listeners tuned it at any time – not a huge audience – playing an average of 15 songs an hour, was on the hook for as much as $22,000 a year.

An untold number of independent internet broadcasters called it quits. That number is untold because there’s no central authority or accounting. But anecdotal evidence from looking at the Shoutcast directory of internet radio stations and monitoring internet forums indicated that the reduction was pretty substantial, especially amongst stations that served narrow niches and very small audiences.

Many mid-sized independent broadcasters seem to have been able to hold on by virtue of fundraising or ad revenue. SomaFM is one such group, which survives on listener contributions. Back in 2016 founder and operator Rusty Hodge told me that he anticipated his costs to jump to as much as $20,000 a month, and he would be implementing automatic stream time-outs for people listening for more than a couple hours, to be sure SomeFM wouldn’t be streaming music to empty rooms.

Non-commercial terrestrial stations dodged the bullet because the royalties for their online streams are negotiated separately by groups like National Public Radio and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Commensurate with their non-commercial and non-profit status, their rates remained reasonable, though only as a result of careful diligence.

Short-Lived Alternatives

Many small U.S. webcasters left homeless by the closure of Live365 migrated to the France-based Radionomy service, which acquired the Shoutcast internet radio server technology and Winamp media player app from AOL in 2014. That’s because Radionomy offered free streaming hosting, even covering royalties, to broadcasters who could maintain a minimum audience size. In exchange broadcasters agreed to have a few minutes of advertising inserted into their streams every hour.

However, the bloom started to fall from that rose pretty quickly. In February of 2016 four major record labels filed suit against Radionomy claiming non-payment of royalties since “late 2014.” The service soldiered on, but stopped serving U.S. based listeners and broadcasters earlier this year. At the end of November the service shut down altogether.

Radionomy broadcasters were offered the opportunity to migrate their stations to the Shoutcast for Business service. While it’s reasonably priced – starting at about $15 a month – that doesn’t include any royalty coverage. Accounting for and paying royalties is up to the individual broadcaster, and that’s where the significant costs set it.

After Live365 closed in 2016, other U.S. webcasters turned to a company called StreamLicensing.com. The company offered to cover a station’s royalties for a cost lower than paying them directly. It seems the way they did this was probably by aggregating all the member stations into one license and single payment, using the economy of scale to reduce the liability of individual broadcasters. Stations had to find their own stream hosting – which is easier, with costs very proportionate to audience size – and StreamLicensing.com took care of royalties beginning at about $60 a month. Though more expensive than the lowest cost pre–2016 Live365 plans, that $720 annual rate was still on par with cable TV or a gym membership.

But beginning last year I started hearing scuttlebutt that not all was well with the company and that the numbers weren’t adding up. Whatever the case really was, StreamLicensing.com shut down in May of this year, again setting dozens or even hundreds of small webcasters adrift.

The Re-Birth of Live365 Is a Bright Spot

The story for small webcasters hasn’t been all doom and gloom since 2016. In 2017 Live365 was resurrected by a young internet entrepreneur named Jon Stephenson. The new service also offers internet radio hosting and royalty coverage for one monthly fee. The costs begin at $59 a month if your station runs Live365-placed ads – not much more than the old StreamLicensing.com alone without hosting – or $79 a month if you want to remain ad-free.

These introductory plans limit a station to 1500 total listening hours a month – equivalent to an average of 2 listeners per hour. But since the reality is that listeners tune in and out, and few should be listening for more than a few hours at a time, this is more than enough to sustain a small niche webcaster.

Of course, that adds up to $708 to $948 a year, and still might be too much for some would-be broadcasters. The price is not the fault of Live365 or other similar providers because their costs are pretty well fixed, especially the royalties. But small webcasters do still benefit from the economy of scale and and the convenience of one-stop-shopping these platforms offer.

If we’re being honest, spending $1000 a year or so to be a broadcaster is still a bargain compared to the costs of starting and running a terrestrial broadcast station, even a low-power FM. Many folks will spend more on a set of golf clubs, a digital camera or a couple cases of wine.

Early Promise Tarnished

It’s the contrast with the early promise of internet broadcasting that makes the situation feel unfair. In 1997 it seemed that all you needed to be a broadcaster was an internet connection and a few bucks a month to host the stream. The realities of intellectual property and commerce quickly caught up, but for a while – about 14 years, actually – the scrappy indie webacaster caught a break. But by 2016 it seems like folks stopped caring, especially Congress.

It’s not really clear why no congressperson saw fit to try renewing the Small Webcaster Settlement Act. Maybe the rise of streaming music services like Pandora and Spotify, music hosting sites like SoundCloud, or on-demand music show and podcast services like MixCloud made it seem like there were plenty of other opportunities for folks to get their audio out across the interwebs, whether by playlist, DJ set or podcast.

The opportunity hasn’t gone away. Live365 and similar services still offer the most cost-effective way to start broadcasting on the internet legitimately. But it’s probably not the sort of thing you do on a whim. At the same time there are many more outlets for casting out audio on the internet, and that is a net good.

Internet Radio Is Fundamentally Changed

That doesn’t change the fact that internet radio in the U.S. fundamentally changed in 2016. I’m certain many of the broadcasters who found themselves high and dry that year just gave up. This doesn’t mark the end of indie internet radio, just a major shift.

It should be mentioned that it’s conceivable to run an internet radio station without any costly royalty obligations. If you only run talk programming, with no music, then you bare no liability. But no music means you’re not using any commercially released music at all, not as bumpers or stingers or music beds. Now, podcasters manage to do this by relying on royalty-free music libraries, contracting directly with musicians or making their own music. So it should be possible for a talk-only internet station to pull this off.

Another option is to work directly with artists and labels to obtain permission to play their music royalty-free, or pay them directly. Note that this may not be as simple as it seems. If an artist is signed to a label it’s not good enough for them to say you can use their recordings, since the label will own some portion of them. You’ll need the label to give the OK, too. If an independent artist also self-releases, then you’ll have an easier time.

The Free Music Archive was actually founded to provide community and other non-commercial terrestrial radio stations high-quality royalty-free music alternatives back in the early days of the DMCA, before separate negotiations brought their rates down to a reasonable level. While the FMA’s ownership has shifted twice in the past 12 months, experiencing some downtime in the process, the music uploaded there from 2009 to 2017.

Also keep in mind that beyond the performance royalties, there are royalties owed songwriters via rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI. If an artist owns their songs and recordings, then again you’re free and clear. But if they’re playing cover versions or their label shares in the composition ownership (not unusual), then you’ll need more stakeholders coming to agreement. It’s not impossible, but it’s also not straightforward.

Some internet broadcasters have skirted the royalty issue by pivoting to video. Last year I wrote about the new breed of “YouTube pirates” who run live streams of music accompanied by static or looping images. They’re kind of the internet equivalent of FrankenFM channel 6 TV stations that maintain the bare minimum amount of video service to qualify as television stations, while primarily functioning as radio stations.

In harmony with my advice above, it seems that many YouTube stations survive by relying on independent music that falls outside the mainstream music industry’s royalty structure. For instance, the Netherlands-based Chillhop Music channel streams “jazzy beats / loft hip hop” that’s mostly devoid of recognizable hits.

Other channels that skirt closer to major label tunes end up playing a cat-and-mouse game with YouTube. The only real penalty seems to be having your channel shut down, which results in the loss of a potentially large listener and subscriber base. But there’s no indication that a bill from SoundExchange or other royalty collections authority will show up in your mail, in part because you don’t need to provide any legal identity to set up a YouTube channel.

The irony is that YouTube isn’t a radio platform, and that hosting streaming video is more expensive that streaming audio by a significant margin. But YouTube is free, and there are few free radio streaming options out there. In particular, there are none even remotely as prominent as YouTube.

The Future Is Fractured

So maybe the future of internet radio is video? I know that many podcast listeners actually consume their favorite shows – like Joe Rogan’s – on YouTube and think of the platform as the place to find podcasts.

In reality that’s probably overstating things. Like all online media, internet radio has become more fractured in the last decade. While some platforms and opportunities have disappeared, others have come to the fore.

If you’re looking to create a traditional 24/7 live streaming station using copyrighted music, services like Live365 are there to help you do this legally at a variety of price points. YouTube is there to let you stream for free if you don’t mind dealing with that platform’s restrictions, and the likelihood that you’ll need to rely on underground, independent and unsigned artists if you want your channel to stay up for the long haul.

If you don’t mind confining yourself to an on-demand show, DJ set or virtual mixtape, then Mixcloud is a pretty good alternative, since the service is free and covers all royalties.

Both YouTube and Mixcloud are largely confined to the web and their own apps on mobile devices, and platforms like Chromecast, Roku and Apple TV. That does give audiences a fair number of ways to listen, though not appearing alongside pure-play streaming radio stations, like on iHeartRadio or TuneIn.

I will note that the Sonos wireless speaker system supports Mixcloud. It also supports YouTube Music, which sort of lets you access the music available on YouTube, but I haven’t yet figured out how to hear any of the live streaming stations – just their archive streams.

The last decade was marked by a significant shake-up in internet radio, and I don’t think we’ll ever turn back the clock to the heady days of the mid–2000s, when it seemed like medium would be the new “pirate radio,” as the mainstream press often proclaimed. That doesn’t mean there isn’t ample opportunity to broadcast online.

Rather, our definition of radio has expanded. If the platform is about getting audio programs out to an audience, then we can argue it’s radio. If it’s on the ’net, then it’s internet radio. It may change, and morph from platform to platform. But it’s still here as we enter the third decade of the 21st century.

The post The Near-Death of Independent Internet Radio Is One of the Most Important Radio Trends of the Decade appeared first on Radio Survivor.

After the demise of the first incarnation of Live365 in 2016, European streaming platform Radionomy remained the last platform to offer free streaming to internet radio stations. However, the writing was already on the wall earlier this year when Radionomy left the U.S. market. Though not confirmed, one might conjecture this was a result of a lawsuit filed in 2016 by major record labels – including Arista and Sony Music – alleging the platform had failed to pay U.S. statutory performance royalties since “late 2014.”

Now Radionomy announces it is fully shutting down worldwide. In its place, the company is offering to migrate stations over to Shoutcast for Business. Recall that Radionomy acquired the stalwart online radio platform along with the longstanding Winamp MP3 and internet radio player app in 2014 from AOL, which otherwise was ready to shut it all down.

As RAIN News notes, a big difference between Radionomy and Shoutcast is that the former purported to cover performance royalties (the same ones it was sued over charges it hadn’t paid). In the U.S. if your station uses Shoutcast and plays music then you need to take care of royalty payments to SoundExchange separately, on your own.

Prior to closing, Radionomy offered completely free radio stream hosting, music licenses covered, with no limits on audience size. The trade-off for broadcasters was that they had to accommodate a few minutes of ads per hour, and stations with tiny listenerships risked being cut off.

Now, there are still a number of companies offering free internet radio hosting, however it is up to broadcasters to secure the proper royalties in their home countries. Of course, if your station only airs talk programming with no copyrighted music – that includes even music used in bumpers or to fill time – then you’re in luck. But if you play any music at all, then you’re on the hook for royalties.

At least in the U.S., the thing to note about royalties is that it’s up to the broadcaster to proactively contact SoundExchange, ASCAP or BMI to begin payment. Conceivably you could start broadcasting tomorrow without doing so, but the risk is that once one of the rights organizations finds you, they’ll hound you – or maybe even sue you – until you pay up.

The Final End of an Era

This seems like a logical end to a sequence of events that began in 2016, when the Small Webcaster Settlement Act expired, ending a 14 year period where small and hobbyist internet broadcasters paid discounted royalty rates intended to reflect their mostly low-revenue and effectively non-profit nature. While services like the revived Live365 still offer turn-key hosting that covers music licensing, the costs begin at about $59 a month or $708 a year. Certainly this is less expensive than a lot of hobbies (golf?) – and less expensive than operating a licensed broadcast station – it’s still prohibitively expensive for many would-be internet broadcasters interested in creating the kind of niche, underground or community-focused stations that the internet should be a natural home to.

I do want to point out that the costs are not Live365’s fault. Royalty payments are fixed and unavoidable, and hosting live radio streams costs them money. It’s great that a company like this is available for those who can take advantage, but it must be noted that not all can do so.

To me, the irony is always that it’s free to upload hundreds of hours of video to YouTube or broadcast endless hours of live streams. It’s ironic because it’s far more costly to stream high-bandwidth HD video than the comparatively tiny internet radio streams. But one of the world’s largest companies (Google) never chose to essentially underwrite a robust independent internet radio ecosystem, just video.

Though there are “pirate” radio broadcasters on YouTube who flout copyright restrictions, it’s a game of cat and mouse to stay in operation. YouTube does have agreements with music labels to allow some videos to contain copyrighted music, but not all songs and artists are covered, and using such music can impact a YouTuber’s ability to generate revenue on the platform.

The New Radio Pirates Don’t Pay Royalties

At various points in the last 20 years, internet radio has been trumpeted as the next, legal, incarnation of “pirate radio.” That’s more due to the lack of formal licensing requirements and lack of indecency restrictions than anything else. But the death of reasonable royalty rates means that dream of “legal” pirate radio is over.

That said, a broadcaster that streams music without paying royalties is ostensibly a pirate. So maybe the new radio pirates are ones that set up streams and don’t bother to pay royalties. Just like terrestrial pirates, they would take measures to obscure their identities and where they’re streaming from in order to make it hard for SoundExchange or BMI to track them down and send a bill. Assuming they’re successful in avoiding identification, their biggest risk is having their host shut down their stream. Of course, just like the terrestrial pirate who loses one transmitter to the FCC while remaining on the run, it’s just a matter of finding a new host or streaming server to get back on the tubes.

My question: do these new pirates exist? Or does the seemingly omniscient surveillance and tracking of the internet make a private enforcement authority seem more threatening than any FCC or Ofcom?

The post The Demise of Radionomy Marks the End of Free Streaming for Internet Radio Broadcasters appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Back in June I openly worried about the future state of internet radio on the Mac with the arrival of macOS Catalina and the demise of iTunes. While iTunes has its faults, it still provided a simple way to tune in stations from around the world without using a web browser, whether you found the station in its own directory or plugged in the station’s stream URL yourself.

I’m happy to report that the situation is not as dire as I’d feared.

An early release of the Music app on both MacOS and iOS featured only a handful of carefully chosen stations outside of Beats 1 Radio and Apple’s own curated stations, the latter only available with a paid Apple Music subscription. However, now the Music app now gives you access to a very comprehensive selection of both terrestrial and pure-play internet stations across the U.S. and from around the world.

This is very good news, though Music isn’t yet a full-fledged iTunes replacement. The first big difference is that the Music app doesn’t really let you browse the world of internet radio. Sure, there’s a “Radio” button in the menu, but what you get is mostly populated by Beats 1 and Apple Music stations, along with a smattering of big public and commercial stations. Scroll down and you see a menu item, “Radio Stations,” that seems promising. But click on it and you just get more featured Apple Music stations, along with a list of genres that – you guessed it – deliver even more Apple Music stations.

The Vagaries of the Search

So where are all the real internet radio stations? Search, you must, young Jedi.

Indeed, I was able to find pretty much every station on my local Portland, Oregon radio dial. When I surveyed other Mac internet radio apps earlier this year, I discovered that stations owned by either iHeart or Entercom were often missing. That’s because these two radio giants have started pulling their stations off rival apps. iHeart only wants you to hear its stations on iHeartRadio and Entercom only wants you to hear its stations through Radio.com.

The Music app solves this problem by plugging into the iHeartRadio, Radio.com and TuneIn directories. At least in the U.S., when combined, these directories cover just about every broadcast station that has a live stream, as well as most internet stations that wish to be found. When you search for a specific station, the app displays what directory the result came from.

But search has serious limits. When I searched for “college radio” it returned only about 40 results. Included were ESPN College Football and some other results that indicate the search was only performed on station names. If you were hoping to find your local college station but don’t remember the call letters, you’re likely out of luck.

The same thing was true when searching for jazz or heavy metal. All is good if the genre is in the station’s name, but otherwise you’ll only see a small percentage of stations that might otherwise qualify.

This is curious, because all three directories Music relies on do classify stations by category or genre. The metadata is in there, but Music doesn’t search it. Combined with the inability to browse internet radio stations, this makes Music a poor way to discover internet radio stations.

Still, if you know a station’s call letter or name and its in the iHeart Radio.com or TuneIn directory – a pretty good chance – then the app is a fine way to listen to internet radio without a browser. In fact, if this is your use case, because it combines these three different directories, Music is your best choice for a desktop internet radio app.

Triode – a Promising iTunes Replacement?

I was reminded to check back in on this topic because I just learned about a new internet radio app for MacOS, iOS and tvOS. MacStories positively reviewed this app, Triode, calling it, “an excellent addition across nearly the full range of Apple’s platforms.”

I excitedly tried it out, only to run into the same limitations that hamper the other apps I surveyed: no stations from iHeart or Entercom. On the one hand, as a lover of great non-commercial stations and strange, eclectic internet radio, this isn’t necessarily a huge restriction.

I was immediately impressed with Triode on startup, as it displayed a wonderful selection of truly great independent terrestrial and internet stations, including San Francisco’s BFF.fm and SomaFM, Denver’s jazz KUVO, New Jersey’s WFMU, The Current from Minnesota Public Radio and Radio Survivor affiliate XRAY.fm here in Portland. It’s wonderful to see these recommendations rather than just a pile of big city, highly rated commercial and public stations.

When I searched for “college radio” I got back dozens upon dozens of results – more than I had the patience to count. Same for metal, jazz and blues. Clearly, Triode is searching station descriptions, categories and genres, not just names.

If you don’t find a station in the directory you can add it to Triode if you know the stream URL. Now that’s very iTunes-live behavior.

Nevertheless, I suspect that the lack of big U.S. commecial stations is a drawback that will make this more of a niche app rather than a true competitor for Apple’s own Music app. Radio nerds who love independent stations and don’t want to pick through Apple’s subscription-only offerings to find their favorites are the target audience.

While Triode is free, you can only save stations as favorites with a paid subscription for 99 cents a month, $9.99 a year or $19.99 for a forever plan. By comparison, this is a feature you get for free with TuneIn as long as you’re willing to set up a free account. Plus you’ll get access to pretty much the same catalog of stations. A Triode paid subscription also delivers high resolution album art displayed for each track, a feature whose utility holds little appeal for me.

Consolidation Is To Blame

Now, the limits of Triode’s directory aren’t the fault of the app developer. The guilty parties are iHeartRadio and Entercom, two of the largest radio companies in the U.S. which also don’t want their stations found outside their own app platforms.

Of course you can still listen to these stations on your computer… for now. Ultimately it’s consolidation that keeps independent radio apps from having access to these companies’ streams. Luckily, there are still thousands upon thousands of smaller and independent stations more than happy to be found and streamed through whatever app you might be using.

The situation parallels what we’re seeing in video streaming. Where just a few years ago you might only need to use one or two apps or subscription services – like Netflix and Hulu – to get a pretty wide variety of movies and programs, now you need like six or seven.

I’d hate to see other radio companies follow iHeart’s and Entercom’s lead and set up their own closed app platforms, requiring a listener to have five or six different apps installed just to hear all the stations on their local dial. It could be enough to drive folks away from internet radio.

Or maybe just drive them to their trusty terrestrial radio receiver, which already gets all these stations.

If only their smartphones had a plain old radio tucked inside….

The post After the Death of iTunes Real Internet Radio Is Back on the macOS Music App appeared first on Radio Survivor.

When Jim Bolt was in college at Sacramento State University in 1989 college radio was exerting unprecedented cultural influence in the U.S. But this campus no longer had a radio station. Though he had heard stories of an earlier student-run AM station – KERS – he couldn’t get to the bottom of why it no longer existed. In the same period the university transferred its FM license over to Capitol Public Radio.

Convinced that the school and the Sacramento community deserved real college radio, he and a group of fellow students pushed hard for two years to finally get KEDG off the ground and onto the AM airwaves in 1991. Today that station continues to thrive online as KSSU. But the struggle to bring college radio back to Sacramento State is why he says it’s “a startup that shouldn’t exist.”

Jim tells this founding story and explains why he and his fellow co-founders endeavored to keep the founding story alive with words and archival materials. He shares hard won advice for college students looking to build their own stations, and for alums who want to preserve their broadcast legacies.

Show Notes:

• KSSU
• KEDG Online Archive
• New York Times: The Power of Tower Records
• The State Hornet: KSSU radio station celebrates 25 years of giving voice to Sac State community
• Sacramento News & Review: Radio Control
• CollegeRadio.org: Sac State Students Refuse to Be Sacked: A Story of Student Radio Startup and Survival in Sacramento
• Inside Radio: Radio Plays Outsized Role In Small And Mid-Market America

The post Podcast #220 – The College Radio Station ‘That Shouldn’t Exist’ appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In April 2020 the FCC will open up the next auction for FM radio licenses. This is the next, and only currently scheduled opportunity to build a new radio station in the U.S. Jennifer, Eric and Paul discuss this news, along with celebrating the 60th birthday of KFJC-FM at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA. We reflect on how KFJC and other college stations were trailblazers in programming and service, functioning a lot like public radio in the years before National Public Radio was created.

We also dive into the proposal to allow AM radio stations to all-digital, using HD Radio. These stations would be unreceivable on the millions of radios that don’t receive digital HD signals. We survey the supposed benefits of the idea, and the deficits.

Finally, we celebrate another momentous occasion, the 25th anniversary of a terrestrial station simulcasting on the internet. And, wouldn’t you know it – both stations credited with being first are college stations.

Show Notes

• Happy 60th to College Radio Station KFJC
• Can We Save AM Radio by Killing It? Considering All-Digital AM Radio
• Inside Radio: FCC Is Auctioning 130 FM Signals. Here’s What You Need To Know
• Internet Radio Is Older Than You Think

.@DVD points out that today is the 25th anniversary of @wxyc debuting the internet simulcast stream of its broadcast radio signal. This was indeed the birth of modern streaming media as we know it (not just streaming audio, but streaming media, period) 1/4 https://t.co/F4RDHkx5By

— Andrew Bottomley (@abottomley) November 7, 2019

The post Podcast #219 – The Next Chance To Get an FM Station License; a College Station 60th; All-Digital AM appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Net neutrality received a very mixed ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The Court largely upheld the significantly looser rules passed by the FCC in 2017 under the leadership of Republican Chairman Ajit Pai. But at the same time the Court said the Commission overstepped its bounds in attempting to forbid state and local governments from passing their own open internet rules.

Prof. Christoper Terry from the University of Minnesota is back again this week to help us understand the implications of this blow to net neutrality. He’s joined by Tim Karr, Senior Director of Strategy and Communications for Free Press. We learn how the Court justified the Pai FCC’s dismantling of Open Internet rules the Obama-era Commission had passed just two years prior, rules that survived a previous challenge in front of the same court.

However, hope for an open internet lies with state and local governments, which have been passing their own rules in the last two years, and are now specifically cleared to do so by the Appeals Court. We’ll understand what those efforts look like, and why Tim Karr is optimistic about the future of net neutrality.

Show Notes:

• Free Press: Court Defers to FCC on Dismantling Net Neutrality for Now but Opens Door for States, Higher Courts and Congress to Act
• Podcast #157 – Restoring Net Neutrality, One State at a Time
• Net Neutrality Is Over (For Now) – What It Means for Radio
• Why Radio Survivor Supports the Day of Action for Net Neutrality
• The FCC Passes Network Neutrality, Kills Internet “Fast-Lanes”
• Four reasons why net neutrality matters for mobile radio

The post Podcast #214 – Net Neutrality Is a Local Issue Now appeared first on Radio Survivor.

After assessing the state and likely demise of the iTunes internet radio tuner, I started to consider what this means for listening to internet radio with a computer, rather than mobile device, smart speaker or appliance. Then we received an email from a reader who reported they still use iTunes for internet radio, in part because it allows them to curate a playlist of their favorite stations for easy access. The reader noted that using station websites doesn’t quite work the same way, and that those sites vary widely in design and how simple they make it to start a stream.

I’ll admit that iTunes does excel at that kind of radio preset-style tuning. It’s something I’d forgotten since I do most of my internet radio listening using my Sonos, where I keep my favorite stations bookmarked in the system’s favorites.

I started to poke around to see what kind of desktop radio apps are left out there. I started with macOS because that’s what I primarily use. I found that there are damn few.

Go searching in the macOS App Store and you’ll encounter about a dozen or so true internet radio apps. But the majority of them seem not to have been updated in the last three to five years. In fact, I found only one that is worth trying.

myTuner Radio

myTuner Radio is free in the App Store and very simple. It has a reasonably comprehensive directory of a purported 50,000 stations organized by country. Besides that, they aren’t otherwise categorized. The search is decent, provided you know the call letters or name. If you’re searching by genre or format, you’d better hope that it’s in the name.

Stations owned by iHeart are pretty much entirely absent, though I could find plenty of Entercom and CBS stations, along with those owned by smaller groups. myTuner Radio has banner ads, but mercifully no audio ads. A paid version gets rid of all ads.

You can favorite stations for quicker recall, but there’s no provision to organize them, nor is there a provision to add a station’s stream URL like in iTunes. While using myTuner Radio is easier than bookmarking station webpages, you may not find all the stations you want, you can’t categorize the ones you bookmark and you can’t add additional ones not in the directory.

TuneIn Radio

TuneIn Radio has a desktop Mac OS app that replicates the web or mobile app, more or less. To that end, it’s about as good as those. The directory is enormous, and organized by format, genre, location and language. But as I observed earlier, iHeart and Entercom stations have been removed by their owners.

There’s more flexibility in organizing your favorite stations, by putting them into folders. Yet, TuneIn still has no provision to add a station that’s not in the directory. If you like TuneIn on other platforms, you’ll like the desktop app, but it’s not quite a full iTunes replacement.

Odio

Odio (not Odeo) is a free open source app that visually resembles iTunes more than the other apps. It’s directory is more idiosyncratic than either TuneIn or myTuner. I could find some iHeart stations, like New York City’s Z100, but not others, like Portland’s The Brew. I had similar hit-and-miss results with Entercom stations.

Stations are organized by country, language and tag. It took me a bit to figure out how the tags get added, since I saw no feature for doing so in the app. It turns out that Odio uses a directory called Community Radio Browser, where anyone can submit a station. That probably accounts for the idiosyncrasies, since you don’t need to affiliated with a station to submit it. Right now Community Radio Browser lists 24,582 stations, and the project’s webpage has an intriguing list of apps and platforms that use its directory, along with code libraries for folks who might build their own app.

You can maintain a “library” of favorite stations, but there’s no way to organize them.

VLC

VLC is a cross-platform multimedia player app. In that way it’s the closest we have to a free, open source iTunes alternative – one that’s also continuously updated.

The app uses the Icecast Radio Directory. Icecast is an open source streaming audio platform, and stations using it can opt in to be listed. As a result the selection is very eclectic, though you may be hard pressed to find a lot of US broadcast stations. What you may find are live police scanners or Chicago Public Radio WBEZ’s all Christmas music stream. There is no organization – search is your only friend here.

Because it’s a perennially well-supported project, there are ways to add other directories, like TuneIn’s. However, plug-and-play they’re not. You’ll need to know your way around your Mac’s file system. It’s not crazy difficult, but it’s not as simple as installing most apps.

I would call VLC’s interface utilitarian. It’s built more for a power user than a novice, though there’s plenty of help to be found with a quick web search. Its two most iTunes-like features are the ability to add any station’s stream and to organize stations in playlists.

Other Options, Caveat Emptor

Researching this topic I encountered at least a half-dozen other free and open source iTunes alternatives offering at least some kind of internet radio feature. However, they all seem to have little to no development for at least three years. They may still work fine for your, but an OS upgrade could easily foul up the works.

Is there a currently supported Mac OS internet radio app I’m missing? Please let us know.

The post Internet Radio on the Mac, After iTunes appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I have to admit that I don’t quite remember the last time I browsed internet radio in iTunes. It’s been so long, in fact, that during research for this post, when I fired up the app on my MacBook I couldn’t even find the radio directory. Lucky for me, this Apple support doc helped me re-add it to my sidebar.

But the results were disappointing, reminding me why I’d stopped using iTunes for radio in the first place. The selection is downright paltry compared to just about any other directory. For instance, only 129 “College/University” stations are listed from around the world–not just the U.S. By comparison, I was able to find well over 500 on TuneIn, and that’s just when I got tired of clicking “see more.”

While Apple has kept up and grown its podcast directory, internet radio–not to be confused with Apple Music Radio–seems like a forgotten artifact. What will happen, then, when Apple kills of iTunes later this year, replacing it with standalone Music, Podcast and TV apps?

In screenshots of the new desktop Music app there’s clearly a “Radio” item in the left sidebar menu. What we don’t know is what kind of radio.

However, my bet is that will be Apple Music Radio, a set of curated stations only available by subscription, likely supplemented by Beats Radio One. The best evidence for this prediction is seen in the iOS Apple Music app. “Radio” is featured prominently in the main menu, but in exploring it one finds just Apple Music stations. The only non-Apple stations are available under “News and Talk” where there is a stingy seven: CBS News, Bloomberg Radio, NPR, Public Radio International, NBS Sports, ESPN and BBC World Service. At least they don’t require a subscription, whatever that’s worth.

I’m probably just being nostalgic in even pursuing this inquiry. It’s not like internet radio is hard to find online in 2019. Yet, back when iTunes debuted in 2001 listening to internet radio still could be a frustrating exercise, with different stations supporting idiosyncratic mixes of player apps and browser plug-ins like RealPlayer, Windows Media Player or WinAmp.

It felt a lot easier to simply browse well organized stations right in iTunes, clicking “play” to hear them right away, without having to search in a browser and then launch an outside app, often to disappointing results. Still, the fact that I clearly hadn’t tried to browse radio in iTunes in who knows how long demonstrates how it’s barely necessary anymore.

Or is it?

It’s true that today we have large radio directory/apps like TuneIn, iHeartRadio and Radio.com. Though the machinations of corporate mergers and break-ups means that none of these is comprehensive. For instance, you won’t find Entercom or CBS stations on TuneIn or iHeartRadio.

It’s not like iTunes was ever comprehensive. On launch the app used the Kerbango Internet Radio directory. Kerbango was a company founded by ex-Apple folks who intended to manufacture the first-ever standalone internet radio receiver. 3Com acquired the company, but in a pre wi-fi era, the $300+ product was a little too expensive and ahead of its time. The company and the directory were shut down in 2001. That left Apple to maintain the directory itself, for better or worse.

In the 2000s, what iTunes lacked in completeness, it made up for in quirkiness. Certainly I could find big major market stations, along with prominent public broadcasters from around the world. But I could just as easily find a community station in Australia or death metal station in Indonesia. Stations were organized primarily by genre and alphabetical order, which made for fun juxtapositions–not unlike browsing an eclectic record collection. You just couldn’t expect to always find exactly what you were looking for. Though you might find something fascinating, nonetheless.

It doesn’t seem like many will miss the feature, anyway. While researching I couldn’t find a single news article mentioning it. That doesn’t mean that nobody is using the iTunes radio tune. Just not enough, it seems.

The bright side to Apple’s neglect is that leaving internet radio out of the desktop Music app will have negligible effect. You’ll still be able to listen to nearly any internet station in the world in your browser, without any annoying plug-ins or extra apps, even on your mobile device. A directory may help when Google searches fail, or vice-versa. But that’s the way with everything on the internet these days, isn’t it?

The post What Happens to Internet Radio when Apple Kills iTunes? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

While updating the 2004 podcast entries for my old radio show “mediageek” I was reminded that I used to post the episodes in both a 64kbps mono “broadcast quality” MP3 and a 16kbps.

The reason why I posted such a low bitrate file, containing relatively low fidelity, was to make the show accessible to listeners who did not have access to broadband internet, or whose access was limited. You see, in 2004 broadband penetration in the United States was just barely approaching 50%, meaning that half of households with internet were still using dial-up modems.

In the best case scenario, it would take a 56kbps modem user about 35 to 40 minutes to download the weekly half-hour “broadcast quality” MP3. That’s longer than real-time, and assumes a very quiet phone line, good connection and no internet multi-tasking, like checking email or surfing the web while downloading. Though I actually had DSL broadband when I launched the show in 2002 and began posting shows online, listeners from around the world had emailed me asking for smaller files.

I first settled on 16kbps because the typical show was about 3.5 MB, or about a fifth the size of the “broadcast quality version.” That file could be downloaded in nine or ten minutes by a modem user.

As I alluded, the sound quality of that 16kbps file isn’t great. But, it’s also perfectly intelligible. Fidelity-wise I’d compare it to shortwave radio, and utterly adequate for a talk program, which is what “mediageek” was.

Hear 16kbps for yourself:

I quit posting those low bitrate files in the middle of 2005, in part because of the extra effort it required, and in part because I assumed that listeners’ internet connections were improving. Turns out, I was mistaken on the latter point. I received several emails telling me that only having bigger 64kbps files was making the show inaccessible, with one listener suggesting that 24kbps files would be an acceptable compromise between file size and fidelity. The sound was more like AM radio than shortwave. So I resumed creating smaller files at this bitrate.

Here’s what one of those 24kbps files sounds like:

The Magic of Shortwave, Online

As I mentioned in my post about the history of internet radio, this is the kind of sound quality I was accustomed to when streaming audio from around the world in the mid- and late–90s over my home dial-up connection. The experience then was very much like the first time I used a shortwave radio as a child. It was pure magic to hear live radio from thousands of miles away, or on-demand recorded shows that I’d never otherwise have the opportunity to hear before.

Though the fidelity was shortwave-quality, the listening experience was more rock-solid. No signal fades, static or lightning strikes intruded on those early internet broadcasts, provided nobody else picked up the phone. I happened to live alone in a one-bedroom grad student apartment, and so was lucky not to have to compete for the line.

Since that time most people with internet access are now accustomed to getting better bandwidth oner 4G mobile connections than we did with modems or even early 2000s cable and DSL home broadband. It’s no problem to stream high quality stereo music from Spotify or Pandora on the go. Certainly makes those 16kbps MP3s seem obsolete.

Or are they?

Low Bitrate Streaming Today

Internet bandwidth is not unlimited, especially over mobile connections. Many folks either pay by the gigabyte or have firm bandwidth limits every month with stiff charges for going over limit. Until this past October my own mobile plan limited my wife and me to 2 GB combined, which required me to limit the podcasts and music I streamed or downloaded over mobile broadband. Podcast files clocking in at 50 MB or more really do add up quickly.

I wonder how many listeners would gladly trade in some loss in fidelity in order to moderate their bandwidth usage? Moreover, many rural communities across the U.S. are still considered “broadband deserts” where home and mobile speeds are very slow, or where dial-up is still the only option. Bitrate and file size can still be a matter of accessibility.

Offering lower bitrates is less of a sonic compromise today than it was 15 years ago, due to advances in codec technologies. MP3 is relatively ancient compared to the more modern AAC, which has many variants, including a “high efficiency” (HE) version designed specifically for low bandwidth applications. This is great for streaming, but still not so hot for podcasting. That’s because MP3 is pretty much the de facto standard for the medium – for a variety of reasons – and while most modern podcast players can play other file types, MP3 guarantees the broadest compatibility.

But sticking with MP3 significantly limits low bandwidth sound quality, which is why I’m reluctant to reduce the bitrate for the Radio Survivor podcast in order to get smaller file sizes (right now the show averages around 26 MB).

However, I recently noticed that Mixcloud, which streams DJ mixes, radio shows and podcasts, uses AAC-HE, likely for the purpose of conserving bandwidth costs. A recent episode of Radio Survivor hosted there is actually re-encoded to 49kbps variable bitrate mono AAC-HE file; our normal MP3 podcast file is 64kbps mono. It sounds just fine to my ears:

I don’t know if the platform adjusts bitrates for lower bandwidth users – I tend to doubt it. However that 49kbps bitrate is just low enough that you can probably stream it over a modem or 2G mobile connection, perhaps with some initial buffering. (That’s not something I can test, since I don’t have a modem or landline.)

Where Are the Low Bitrate Stations?

To see if there appears to be any demand for low bitrate internet radio I checked out the directory at Shoutcast, which is one of the only directories where you can easily sort stations by bitrate. Just looking at the top stations list I can see more than three dozen stations streaming at under 64kbps, with 32kbps seeming to be the most popular low bitrate, using both MP3 and AAC. Looking only at talk radio stations, there are even more low bitrate streams.

It’s not just about accessibility. It also helps to control bandwidth costs for the station. But seeing the wide availability of these streams tells me there are still people listening to them. They may not be specifically looking for low bitrates. They might just be selecting particular streams based upon whether or not they play readily and easily over their connection.

True to my analogy, many international shortwave broadcasters offer low bitrate streams. For instance, the BBC World Service offers streams as low as 48kbps.

In any event, while low bitrate streaming may not be much needed by many of us with always-on broadband connections, there still seems to be a need, even if the format flies mostly under the radar. The ability to squeeze down an audio signal into a tiny stream means we can still get internet radio broadcast from far away places or receive it in places where internet is still a limited commodity.

In that way, the spirit of shortwave radio is still alive on the internet today.

The post The Shortwave Radio of the Internet: Low Bitrate Streaming appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In part two of his history of internet radio, Dom Robinson covers RealAudio, the technology that pushed streaming internet audio into the mainstream, years ahead of video. He talks with Dave Mallinson, an early employee at Progressive Networks – which would become RealNetworks – who discusses the delicate balance between getting good enough sound quality using only enough bandwidth as was absolutely necessary.

But the big get is founder Rob Glaser, who recalls his camp counselor who was a college radio DJ and the intercom-based station he set up in his high school. Glaser says his company started with audio because, in 1995 he thought, “‘It will take years if we start on video’ (because of the bandwidth). Given dial-up adoption was typically around 14.4Kbps, I thought voice-quality audio would be a good starting point.”

Reflecting on the impact of internet radio, Glaser writes,

It made everything global. Everyone could be a broadcaster, and everyone could listen. It took radio out of the niche. It has dramatically exploded the enthusiasm for broadcasting….

For me, internet radio exposes you to so many choices. I lament the fact that modern social media distribution systems restrict things as a mindshare matter (not a technical matter). Somehow the social networks have tribalized us, which is a shame, since the proliferation of internet radio offers us so much more choice than we had before.

Even though RealNetworks is no longer a significant player in online streaming media, one cannot underestimate the role the company played in establishing practical audio and video transmission on the internet. Though we take them for granted now, they were true technical accomplishments in the late 90s, when most home internet connections had just a fraction of the speed that your typical mobile data network provides.

RealAudio runs deep in my own history. I started experimenting with a RealAudio server around 1996 while working at a university media lab. At that time RealNetworks gave away a version of their server software for free if you only intended to broadcast a limited number of streams, along with free encoding apps. It’s hard to explain the rush of setting up your first functioning live internet stream.

Starting in 2000 I led an effort to digitize hundreds of hours of foreign language learning tapes and make them available to students online. At the same time I began working with some forward-thinking faculty to record instructional video that we also streamed via RealVideo to students who had campus network access in their dorms or in computer labs.

By the mid-2000s our campus adopted RealAudio and RealVideo as a standard so that different units across campus could more easily pool resources and we could support streaming big live events like graduation. But by the end of the decade things shifted to audio and video that you could play in your web browser, without needing a special application or plug-in like RealPlayer, Windows Media Player or Quicktime, even though the latter two apps live on as part of the Windows and Mac OS operating systems, respectively.

During the height of the streaming media wars, circa 2006, trying to watch or listen to different programming online often meant having three or more different apps installed. Or it meant every site had to support three different kinds of streams. It could be quite a pain.

The rise of Shoutcast and MP3 streaming had already started to displace the multi-player confusion for internet radio by the time that YouTube came on the scene and acclimated a generation of online video watchers to browser-based experience. Note that smartphones were still a couple of years away.

RealNetworks is an example of how the first-mover advantage is not necessarily a lasting one. While RealAudio was pioneering technology, it was also a closed platform, owned and controlled by a single company. There was no way for other people or companies to create new applications for it, or improve upon it. The same was true of Microsoft’s entry, Windows Media, and the Adobe Flash-based system that supplanted both by 2010.

By comparison, today’s major streaming platforms are based on open protocols and technologies. The browser on your computer is built to play audio or video without having to download apps or add plug-ins, and you don’t have to give a single thought to what format its in. No doubt, it’s an improvement. But it all had to start somewhere.

I’ll end with a shameless plug. Dom also talked with me for his part two article, letting me go on about how internet radio gave a particular advantage to non-commercial radio in the U.S.

Learn more about the early years of internet radio (and proto-podcasting) in the first part of Dom’s series, marking the 25th anniversary of the medium. I also talked with Dom for a recent episode of our podcast, and separately I shared my own thoughts on those early days, including how 1993 internet radio saved podcasting in 2018.

If you really want to get into the wayback machine, you can read my thoughts on RealAudio from 2010, on the occasion of Glaser stepping down as the company’s CEO.

The post Internet Radio History: The Real Networks Years appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Do you remember audioblogging? Prof. Andrew Bottomley does, and he’s here to tell some alternative histories of podcasting. From “Geek of the Week” to Odeo, he illuminates many more bygone shows and platforms from the 1990s and early 2000s that gave rise to what we’ve now settled on calling “podcasts,” for better or worse.

Bottomley is assistant professor of Communication and Media at SUNY Oneonta.

Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways:

Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign.

Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal.

Show Notes:

• From the Internet Archive:
  • Carl Malamud’s Internet Talk Radio
  • Audioblog.com
  • Audioblog founder Noah Glass’ first audioblog post
• Wikipedia: Odeo
• Journalist Ben Hammersley’s first use of the word “podcasting” in The Guardian
• Wikipedia: The Daily Source Code podcast
• Podcast #160 – Marking a Quarter-Century of Internet Radio

The post Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting appeared first on Radio Survivor.

News about Dash Radio crossed my transom the other day, as the growing internet radio operation announced that it secured $8.8 million in seed funding.

It’s interesting to see this sizable of an investment made in pureplay internet radio operation that isn’t attached to an on-demand service, like Spotify, or a personalized service, like Pandora. Dash is true radio in the sense that it’s stations are curated, programmed and real-time. Everyone who tunes into a Dash station at 3 PM hears the same thing, just like a terrestrial broadcast.

Dash first came on my radar three years ago when the long-running East Village Radio announced that it would return to web broadcasting on that platform. I listened to Dash for a while after that, mostly tuning in to EVR and its metal and punk station Anarchy Radio via my Sonos. But in the intervening years both stations disappeared, so I gradually stopped checking out Dash. (I still don’t know what happened to EVR, though one of the station’s co-founders is still a principal at Dash.)

Dash’s complex of stations has grown to about 75, including ones curated by Guns N’ Roses, or apparently by the estates of Issac Hayes and Rick James.

This approach reminds me of Sirius/XM, especially since Dash stations, like the satellite provider’s music stations, are commercial-free. It’s also a lot like AccuRadio–owned by Radio and Internet News founder Kurt Hanson–which features dozens upon dozens of stations touching upon even very niche genres, like World Fusion jazz. Unlike DASH AccuRadio does have commercials, but in my experience they’re fewer in frequency than either Pandora’s or Spotify’s free tiers. (And I’m reminded I need to write about AccuRadio one of these days, too). Dash and AccuRadio also have better sound quality than SiriusXM–even Sirius’ internet streams.

Since DASH is commercial-free, and doesn’t even have display ads on its website, I always wondered how it made any money. With the investment news I learned that it serves 10 million monthly listeners. That’s a lot of data to serve up gratis.

I found the answer in a 2016 RAIN News interview with CEO Scott Keeney. He indicates the company makes money through sponsored pop-up stations. Build-A-Bear Radio is probably one of those.

Keeney also lays out an ethos that is pretty close to ours here at Radio Survivor, that gets at why we particularly love broadcast-style radio.

“You see all these services that call themselves radio that aren’t radio in the sense that we mean it,” he explained. “They’re playlists, or mixtape generators or playlist generators. less personalities. It’s not a live community listening.”

The post Dash Radio Investment Demonstrates Interest in ‘Real’ Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Internet radio is older than you think. In fact, it’s at least a quarter-century old… and maybe even a little older. That’s the history Dom Robinson uncovered, and he joins to tell the story. He’s the co-founder of online video company id3as and a contributing editor to Streaming Media, and he reveals how he discovered what likely qualifies as the very first internet radio broadcast, which happened entirely by accident.

Dom then discusses the technology that brought internet radio to the masses – at least the masses who were on the internet in the mid 1990s. He also shares why he thinks internet radio is often overlooked, and why MP3 is an enduringly important technology.

Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways:

Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign.

Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal.

Show Notes

• “25 Years of Internet Radio: Part 1,” by Dom Robinson
• Internet Radio Is Older than You Think
• Dom likes Bassdrive Radio
• Wikipedia entry on RealAudio
• Online audio pioneer Rob Glaser steps down from CEO post at RealNetworks (Jan. 2010)
• Wikipedia entry on MP3.com
• Even Its Creator Can’t Kill MP3

The post Podcast #160 – Marking a Quarter-Century of Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

A protocol for streaming audio on a computer network was first published 44 years ago. That’s likely a good two decades or more before you, or most people, even heard of the internet. In fact, streaming audio over what became the internet was in use – for academic conferencing purposes at least – over the following two decades.

Journalist Dom Robinson uncovers this little-known pre-history of internet radio in an article celebrating the 25th anniversary of the medium for Streaming Media. In order to keep things clear, Robinson defines internet radio as, “streaming, over IP, of content that is live, scheduled by the transmitter (not by the receiver), and ‘produced’—so not just a microphone and a lecture.” Or, with fewer words but more jargon: “a one-to-many scheduled live-linear programmed audio content stream delivered over IP and accessible from the internet.”

He traces the first qualifying broadcast to 1993, when technologist and public domain advocate Carl Malamud started a streaming audio channel called “Talk Radio” and his program, “Geek of the Week.” Now, this show wasn’t transmitted in the way we now get internet radio.

It used a technology called multicast, over a platform called Mbone, intended to stream audio and video across the internet in an efficient fashion. In simple terms, this meant the audio was streamed over participating networks, whether or not a listener had requested it. Sort of like cable TV, the show was just on, streaming across your network, and as a listener you could just tune in. The efficiency of it was that everyone could share the same stream, unlike modern internet radio where every listener gets their own data stream. This means that today, if there are five people on the same network listening to the same station, each gets their own stream, consuming five times the data compared to multicast, where everyone would share one.

However, for multicast and Mbone to work, individual networks have to participate, and choose to have all this data stream over their networks. In most cases, this network would be your ISP, like Comcast or AT&T. Since there’s not much in it for them – except a lot of extra data to carry – it never caught on. But back in the early 1990s, when it was mostly universities and research institutions on the internet, and home connections were rare, the Mbone had more penetration, in part because bandwidth was also much more limited than today.

Moreover, computers didn’t necessarily come standard with microphones and speakers, and even MP3 hadn’t been invented yet. So, you can imagine just how small the number of potential broadcasters and listeners was.

Nevertheless, 25 years ago it represented the dawn of internet radio.

Another important side note is that “Geek of the Week” helped to save podcasting from the so-called “podcast patent troll.” You see, the validity of this patent for podcasting – first filed in 1996 for a cassette-based technology and later amended to cover computer audio files in 2012 –  depended upon it being original, and there being no “prior art.” That is, in order for the patent to be valid, it had to be the case that nothing quite like podcasting, or episodic internet radio, had to exist before the patent was filed.

Turns out, not only was “Geek of the Week” likely the first regularly scheduled internet radio broadcast, because the show was also archived online, it was also one of the first documentable podcasts, existing three years before the original “podcast” patent was filed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups used this fact to convince the US Patent Office to invalidate this patent, saving podcasters from the potential nightmare of perpetual extortionate royalty payments just to put audio online.

The story of “Geek of the Week” is just one in Robinson’s fascinating article. And part two, which includes the birth of RealAudio, is still on the way.

He’ll also be joining me on next week’s Radio Survivor show and podcast to help spread this important, but little-known history.

The post Internet Radio Is Older Than You Think appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Monday, June 11 was the day the FCC’s repeal of the Open Internet Order took effect. That means federally mandated network neutrality is over. Internet service providers are now free to throttle or block specific sites or services, or to offer paid prioritization to others, with the only proviso being that they disclose it. (For disclosure, think of the multi-thousand word EULAs we call click through without reading. That’s where they’ll be hidden in plain sight.)

The fact that the internet didn’t all-of-a-sudden slow to crawl, and your favorite audio and video sites didn’t immediately become inaccessible is the argument that opponents pose to demonstrate that net neutrality isn’t actually necessary. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will the open internet close so quickly.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, we need to keep our eyes on the margins. “Both landline and mobile ISPs with data caps have already been pushing customers to particular services and media with zero-rating and throttling,” writes the EFF’s Kit Walsh.

Zero-rating is when your ISP or mobile data provider lets you use one service without any bandwidth charges. In the case of Verizon, this might be the company’s go90 live video streaming service, or with T-Mobile it’s a wider array of Binge On or Music Freedom services.

Though T-Mobile doesn’t operate its own streaming service that it can privilege like Verizon does, do not doubt that the services included are receiving an advantage over those that aren’t. If you’re a Verizon or T-Mobile customer it’s easy to see how there’s an incentive to prefer go90 or Hulu if it won’t count against your data plan, even if maybe there’s a service better suited to your needs that isn’t zero-rated.

On the audio side T-Mobile zero-rates 44 different services, including both big players like Pandora, Spotify and iHeartRadio, along with smaller ones like SomaFM. So what about your local community or college station? It might be represented on iHeartRadio – though a lot of non-comms don’t want to play with the former Clear Channel – or NextRadio, which is Android-only, leaving out a significant percentage of smartphone users.

TuneIn is probably internet radio’s biggest aggregator, and so the most likely place you might be able to stream that station for free. But only the paid TuneIn Premium service is included in Music Freedom. So then it’s really only a matter of who you pay. Moreover, that community or college radio station’s own app is definitely not included.

Now it’s time to watch how these zero-rating programs expand. And, for radio enthusiasts, it’s time to watch how other carriers and ISPs, besides T-Mobile, either start offering strategic partnerships with the biggest audio players, start their own or acquire them. There’s precedent for ISPs to become media companies: Comcast merged with NBC/Universal and Verizon gobbled up Yahoo and AOL.

This is something I discussed on our podcast with Prof. Christopher Terry, from the University Minnesota, after the FCC repealed its Open Internet Order.

Another of the anti-net neutrality crowd’s favorite arguments is that the FCC’s Open Internet Order isn’t Constitutional. That argument, however, has already been tested in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the Commission’s ability to protect net neutrality. That decision has been appealed to the Supreme Court by U.S. Telecom, but the FCC has filed for a delay seven times. This means that the DC Circuit’s decision that the Open Internet Order is Constitutional stands, regardless of claims made otherwise, even those made by the current FCC Chair.

Meanwhile, on May 15 the Senate voted to overturn the FCC’s decision to undo net neutrality. As Tim Karr from Free Press explained on our podcast, that resolution faces an uphill battle in the House. Yet, there are multiple fronts in this fight.

A net neutrality law just went into effect in Washington State, timed to coincide with the FCC’s repeal. That law prohibits both home and mobile ISPs from blocking or throttling internet traffic, or from offering paid prioritization. 33 states are considering similar legislation.

Local governments are taking steps, also. Six governors and 120 mayors have signed executive orders preventing their municipalities from doing business with ISPs that violate open internet principles.

On top of that, 23 state attorneys general have filed suit against the FCC because the agency declared that states cannot legislate to preserve net neutrality, even as the Commission decided it also did not want the authority.

Net neutrality advocates are urging those concerned about the loss of internet freedom to contact their local and state representatives, as well as federal representatives in the House who might support undoing the FCC’s Open Internet repeal.

The post Net Neutrality Is Over (For Now) – What It Means for Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

“Will performance royalties create a new class of radio pirate?”

That was the question I posed in early 2016 after the music royalty rates for small internet radio webcasters skyrocketed with the expiration of the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009. In essence I wondered if some webcasters would just choose to keep on broadcasting online without paying royalties, hoping to avoid detection by SoundExchange, which collects digital performance royalties on behalf of artists.

Two years later I’ve not found any significant movement of royalty-dodging webcasters. Though, if they were keeping a low profile, I should expect that I wouldn’t know much about them in the first place.

Perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right place.

The New York Times recently turned a spotlight on a new class of internet radio stations using YouTube’s live streaming service. The article reports that the channels routinely play music without proper permission from copyright holders, which is why they’re called “pirate radio stations” in the headline.

The stations highlighted in the article originate from the U.K., France and the Netherlands, which means they wouldn’t be subject to American royalty laws (although there are parallel rules in those countries). In fact, it took quite a bit of searching before I found any “pirate” YouTube stations that obviously originate from the U.S.

By and large the stations seem to focus on niche electronic and rock music subgenres that lie somewhat outside the rock and pop mainstream, often featuring many independent and underground artists. This likely puts them further off the major labels’ radar than if they were routinely streaming Drake or Cardi B.

That said, these channels often include copyright disclaimers, like this one posted by Miami POP Dream:

For COPYRIGHT ISSUES song or picture please contact me on YouTube private messaging system, please messaging us and your song will be removed immediately. Once I have received your message and determined you are the proper owner of this content I will have it removed, no drama at all.

As the Times article notes, YouTube disciplines and shuts down channels for copyright violations, but as far as I can tell that’s the only real risk these broadcasters face. It’s unknown if the music rights agencies, like ASCAP or SoundExchange, have gone after any YouTube “pirates” for back royalties, or if they’re simply satisfied to have them shut down.

Just like real broadcast pirate radio, it’s certainly a game of cat-and-mouse. When YouTube broadcasters have their channels shut down for violations, there’s little to stop them from creating new accounts and new channels. Now, they do lose their subscriber base–which in some cases can be a substantial loss–but that seems to be the most painful penalty.

I find it fascinating that YouTube, a video service, has become a dominant platform for streaming audio. Of course, that’s because there is no similarly prominent free service for audio, especially not live audio streaming. YouTube is also very easy to use.

If we went back in time to 2005 and you told me this would be the case in 2018, that would have sounded ludicrous, because video requires much more costly bandwidth to distribute than audio. But I wouldn’t have known that one of the world’s largest companies–Google–would decide to subsidize the lion’s share of video streaming on the internet.

At the same time, unless you’re playing your own music or music that you’ve obtained artist permission for, streaming on YouTube is precarious and unlikely to be a reliable, long-term solution. Many channel operators may not care, at least initially. They may come to care more once a sizable audience is tuning in.

Some grass may grow up through the cracks in the sidewalk. But there’s often someone with herbicide not too far away.

The post Is YouTube the Home of the New Radio Pirates? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Looking for info on how to listen to this 2021’s Super Bowl LV? Click here.

Every year I enjoy the little treasure hunt of figuring out where you can listen to the Super Bowl on the radio. Having done this for five years now, parts are the same every year, especially when it comes to terrestrial US listening. But what keeps me on the hunt is figuring out how listeners outside the US can tune in, especially without internet access.

Why do I do it? Because regardless of whether or not you’re an NFL fan (and I’m actually not), the Super Bowl is a cultural touchstone, and one of the few big events that ties so many people together for just a few hours every year. While most will watch it on TV, audio is still the most accessible medium for many, whether they’re driving, working, or otherwise unable to watch a screen. Sure, you could just listen to the TV sound, but the play-by-play is different on the radio, since the announcers assume you can’t see the action. It’s truly a different experience.

Here’s where to listen to Super Bowl LII live from Minneapolis, MN this Sunday, February 4:

Terrestrial Radio

If you’re just about anywhere in the United States or Canada you should have no problem tuning in the big game. Good luck finding a terrestrial broadcast anywhere else. However, you’ll have more luck online, see below.

United States

As usual, Westwood One Sports carries the Super Bowl live, with the pregame beginning at 2 PM ET. Check the network’s station map to find your local affiliate.

Canada

TSN Radio will carry Super Bowl LII beginning at 6:30 PM EST.

Australia

(added Feb. 1)
Reader Eric Jon Magnuson relays that Melbourne’s SEN 1116AM will broadcast the game with one of its own talent doing play-by-play.

U.K.

Though BBC Radio 5 Live has carried the Super Bowl in years past, for 2018 it sounds like UK residents are out of luck. However, if you have internet access, see Internet Radio below for online options.

Armed Forces Network

Armed services members deployed overseas can listen via AFN Radio on satellite, and AFN 360 Internet Radio, starting at 11 PM CET.

Internet Radio

This year TuneIn is providing free access to Westwood One’s Super Bowl LII coverage online. This includes the national broadcast, along with the Eagles’ and Patriots’ home calls. Plus, in addition to English you can hear the game in Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin and Hungarian.

During the normal season NFL games are otherwise only available with a paid subscription to TuneIn Premium.

A TuneIn representative also confirmed that the streams will be available worldwide, all beginning with the pre-game at 2 PM EST, 19:00 UTC.

Satellite Radio

United States

SiriusXM subscribers in the U.S. also can hear WestwoodOne’s national coverage on channel 88, along with the other program streams:

• New England Broadcast – Mad Dog Radio Channel 82
• Philadelphia Broadcast – Fox Sports Radio Channel 83
• Spanish Broadcast (Deportes) – ESPN Deportes Channel 468
• German Broadcast (Prosieben) – Sirius 132 / XM 227 / App Channel 963
• French Broadcast (W9) – Sirius 138 / XM 226 / App Channel 962
• Hungarian Broadcast (AMC Hungary) – Sirius 137 / XM 225 / App Channel 961
• Mandarin Broadcast (Tencent) – Sirius 134 / XM 228 / App Channel 964
• Japanese Broadcast (NHK) – Sirius 135 / XM 229 / App Channel 965
• Spanish Broadcast (TV Azteca–Mexico) – Sirius 108 / XM 230 / App Channel 966

Canada

Canadian SiriusXM subscribers can hear the national broadcast on channel 145, the away broadcast on 83 and the home broadcast on 82.

Is there a radio broadcast we’re missing? Drop us a line and we’ll add it to the listing.

The post How To Listen to Super Bowl LII on the Radio this Sunday appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The Chicago Independent Radio Project launched as an internet radio station nearly a decade ago, with a mission of bringing a truly independent music- and arts-focused community radio station to Chicago. Thanks to the Local Community Radio Act, which allowed the growth of low-power FM stations in the nation’s biggest cities—and a lot of hard work and organizing—CHIRP took to the Chicago FM airwaves on October 21 of this year.

Shawn Campbell, CHIRP’s founder and general manager, also was a strong proponent and activist to pass the LCRA and grow LPFM, leading efforts at the station to educate listeners and supporters to advocate for the expansion of community radio. She tells the story of the station’s founding and move to the FM dial, and also shares some practical advice for building, organizing and funding a sustainable community radio station.

Show Notes:

• The Chicago Independent Radio Project
• LPFM News: Chicago Independent Radio Project To Take Off
• Radio Station Field Trip #105 – CHIRP Radio in Chicago
• Podcast #60 – Happy National Radio Day!
• Prometheus Radio Project
• Learn more about LPFM
• Spinning Indie Radio Station Field Trip to WLUW in Chicago
• Spinning Indie Radio Station Field Trip to WZRD in Chicago
• Radio Station Field Trip 7 – Northwestern’s WNUR

The post Podcast #119 – Chicago Independent Radio Project appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I just listened to the latest episode of The Quietus Hour featuring an interview with Matt Johnson, the principal behind the English post-punk band The The. Although Johnson largely put the band on hiatus—save some film soundtrack work—since its last formal release in 2000, I learned from the interview that on UK election day in 2015 he organized a 12-hour online radio broadcast called Radio Cineola.

Roughly modeled after a shortwave station, the broadcast included discussions about politics, music and poetry with a wide variety of guests. A week later Johnson hosted a second broadcast focused on music and, “discussing procrastination, apathy, inertia and the creative process.”

I really wish I’d known about these programs when they happened. Unfortunately, there are no archives available. However, selections have been integrated into a new 3-CD or 3-LP box set called the “Radio Cinéola Trilogy,” which can be pre-ordered now.

The frustration of the creative process, tackled in the second Radio Cinéola broadcast, is central to a new documentary about Johnson and The The. Titled “The Inertia Variations,” after a poetic cycle by John Tottenham, the film examines Johnson’s own creative inertia, along with his radio broadcasts and dive back into songwriting.

The Inertia Variations trailer from Johanna St Michaels on Vimeo.

Johnson also reads a condensed version of “The Inertia Variations,” set to a soundscape, on disc two of the “Radio Cinéola Trilogy.” Several tracks are played in the Quietus Hour interview, and you can hear bits in this video trailer:

As a writer and broadcaster, the few excerpts of “The Inertia Variations” I’ve now heard hit a little too close to home:

There was a time when I thought

I might have done something by now;

But that was long ago, and over the intervening

Decades I have shifted from prodigy to late-bloomer

To non-bloomer; I have passed my peak without having peaked

Or even begun the ascent, and unless there is something inherently

Salutary to the energy I expend in frustrating myself then

My sacrifices have all been in vain.

Ouch. And, for me, the words have more impact when read aloud by Johnson than when read on the page (or screen).

Though I missed the original broadcasts, I’m fascinated by the tactic of using a radio broadcast as a way out of this creative inertia and blockage. Putting one on requires forcing yourself into a tight schedule, with segments and guests to be arranged, and then ready and waiting to go one air at the precisely correct moment. There’s no time for procrastination, lest the whole affair fall apart.

On the one hand, live broadcasting is a grind. On the other, it’s a discipline that can help loosen rusty hinges on the doors locking up latent creativity. The combination of adrenaline and no do-overs combine to tinder a spark.

It’s something that Eric and I attempt to simulate in producing the Radio Survivor show and podcast. Though we’re not actually live, and do employ post-production editing, we watch the clock and do our best to get most of it done in one take. This approach evolved over the last two-and-a-half years of producing the show.

At the beginning we tended to do more takes and included several segments an episode. Now we typically have just one feature interview or discussion, and record the wrap-arounds in sequence as much as possible. This shift happened as Eric and I got better at working together, but also because the podcast became a true broadcast radio show this year. It turns out it’s much easier to keep a consistent clock if you just do your best to record to the correct length, live. Plus, we think it keeps things snappier.

Now I’m really anxious to hear the entire “Radio Cinéola Trilogy” and see the documentary. Until they’re available in the U.S. I’ll tide myself over with some free downloads on the The The website that are part of a series also titled “Radio Cinéola,” but not necessarily from the broadcasts.

The post Tackling Creative Inertia with Broadcasting: Radio Cinéola appeared first on Radio Survivor.

While trying to find the Wave Farm Radio feed on TuneIn this afternoon, I stumbled upon “NAISA – New Adventures in Sound Art” and tapped play. What I heard fit the bill of what I was looking for, but from a different source based in Canada: transmission and sound art akin to what Wave Farm broadcasts and supports.

I heard host and sound artist Eleanor King describe her experiences as an artist in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as she introduced the show “Cross Waves Series #7: Top Songs,” a series she curates featuring “artists who consider the musical form of the pop song as a point of departure.” Pieces included a pastiche of versions of Led Zeppelin’s classic rock warhorse “Stairway to Heaven,” and one from Ryan Maguire made from the sound that is removed from Neil Young’s “Tonight’s The Night” through being compressed into an MP3 file.

Coincidentally, earlier in the day I listened to Bang & Olufsen’s “Sound Matters” podcast, the newest episode of which concerns the topic of music and fidelity that is lost in different sound media, like MP3s. Maguire is interviewed, and his piece “A Ghost in the MP3” is featured. The funny thing is that when I fired up my podcast app, I hadn’t intended to dive into sound art, even though I planned to tune in to the Wave Farm’s “Twenty Performances for Twenty Years” live anniversary broadcast later in the day. It just so happened that the “Sound Matters” episode was at the top of my download queue.

Back to “New Adventures in Sound Art” — the online station is a project of NAISA, a non-profit based in South River, Ontario, a couple hours north of Toronto. The group puts on a host of annual sound art events, including the Deep Wireless Festival of Radio & Transmission Art in January/February, the NAISA Sound Bash Series in March, the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art in July/August and the SOUNDplay Festival in October/November, the latter of which is in progress. This past June NAISA opened its North Media Arts Centre that has a large exhibition space, a small café, a community gallery and workshop space.

I certainly recommend NAISA’s online radio station, and if I’m ever in that part of Ontario I definitely want to stop in.

The post Happy Coincidences in Sound Art Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Transmission arts organization and community broadcaster the Wave Farm celebrates its 20th anniversary this Saturday with an event at the Fridman Gallery in New York City, titled, “Wave Farm 1997–2017: Twenty Performances for Twenty Years.” From noon to 10 PM, 22 sound and transmission artists will perform, including Wave Farm artistic director Tom Roe and Jeff Kolar, whom I interviewed four-and-a-half years ago.

The Wave Farm is singularly unique in that it was founded to support the creation of art that uses transmission technologies and also operates a full-power non-commercial FM station, WGXC-FM (which, incidentally, just signed on to air our radio show), which can showcase that art and practice. The station is based in Acra, NY, sited on the titular farm, home to the Wave Farm Study Center. That’s where the organization hosts an artist residency program, research library, and site-specific installations by collaborating artists. Because the farm is in a rural area, the station primarily broadcasts out of a studio in the larger town of Hudson, about 18 miles east, and also broadcasts Tuesdays from the Catskill Public Library.

Wave Farm Radio is a Part 15 AM and internet station located on the farm that broadcasts transmission art and experimental sounds 24/7.

Over email I asked Tom to reflect on 20 years of community broadcasting. He corrected the record, noting that, “we have done radio art—more accurately, transmission art—for 20 years. We did ‘community broadcasting’ some during our micro radio period, and then later, when we got a full-power FM license we had to do ‘community broadcasting’ again because that was what we preached about (for) FM signals for our entire existence.”

The “micro radio period” he refers to is free103point9, a micropower radio arts collective that had its maiden broadcast on March 7, 1997 in Brooklyn. So, properly, Wave Farm’s 20 years date back to that first transmission, after which it evolved into an arts non-profit, later launching WGXC’s FM signal in 2011.

The late 90s was a time before low-power FM, which meant it was difficult to impossible to start a new community radio station in many places, especially crowded urban markets like New York or San Francisco. As Tom recalled, community radio activists were concerned about gaining access to the airwaves, “and we thought there should be some concern about the content, once that access was allowed.” Hence the focus on transmission art.

What’s transmission art? Tom elucidates:

“We believe weird things like the 60Hz hum of electrical lights in a radio studio is not silence, and that the word ‘podcast’ is an advertisement for Apple, not a type of audio show. Our ‘community broadcasting’ now includes a webstream/station that just plays the sounds from inside a pond in the community (from the artist Zach Poff), and a weather webstream/station that turns weather sounds into electronic music (from the artist Quintron).”

Charting the changes over the last 20 years, Tom observed, “technology makes community broadcasting easier now than in 1997.” Technology allows WGXC to have its remote studios in Hudson and Catskill, as well as to broadcast town meetings live.

“We have a new box at a bar in Catskill where the artists can open the box, open a laptop in that box, press the on button, and then they are on the air,” he said. “We teach folks attending local town meetings or events how to pull out their cell phones and record or stream meetings. I used to joke that we try to make 1940s radio with 2010s technology.”

If you can’t make it to the Fridman Gallery Saturday, you can hear it on WGXC on the air in the Hudson Valley and online. The station is also having its Fall Harvest pledge drive, so it’s a great occasion to support this truly singular enterprise that serves both the communities of Hudson and Greene Counties and the global transmission art community.

Also in New York City, Wave Farm is partnered with Jeff Kolar’s Radius for the Sonic Arcade exhibition, happening through Feb. 24, 2018 at the Museum of Arts and Design. On the fourth Saturday of the month museum visitors will experience a microradio broadcast of Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM programming via radios available at the exhibition. The exhibition features interactive installations, immersive environments, and performing objects that explore how the ephemeral and abstract nature of sound is made material.

The post Wave Farm Celebrates 20 Years of Transmission Art appeared first on Radio Survivor.

We are very happy to announce that our weekly radio show and podcast is now available for broadcast to all non-commercial broadcast and internet radio stations. The show is available at no charge every week for all qualified stations, including college, community, public and LPFM stations as well as non-commercial internet-only stations.

You do need to sign up to get access to broadcast-ready files—click here to learn more or sign up.

Airing Radio Survivor is a great way to help educate your listeners about the wider world of community media and the issues and policies that affect it. It’s also a great way to build awareness of community radio and media, and why your listeners should support your station.

Big thanks go to XRAY.fm in Portland, OR which became our first pilot affiliate earlier this year and helped us get into the rhythm of producing a broadcast-ready show every single week.

Each week’s episode is available Tuesday by 11:59 PM Pacific Time, and runs 58 minutes. The show is available as broadcast quality mono uncompressed WAV files and high bitrate MP3s that are compatible with most major automation and play-out systems. These files are only accessible through a password-protected affiliates’ page.

Please note that the broadcast version of Radio Survivor may differ from the podcast version, and that we guarantee that the broadcast version is fully FCC compliant. The podcast version may be longer or shorter than 1 hour, and may contain content that is not fully FCC compliant. That’s why we’re offering this special feed just for radio stations.

Click here to learn more, and to request access to our radio affiliates’ download page.

The post Broadcast the Radio Survivor Show on Your Station appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Apple recently announced the end for two more of its iPod music player models, the iPod Shuffle and the iPod Nano. The cancellation of the latter also eliminates Apple’s first, and only, radio receiver.

While the iPod Touch remains in production, it’s really just an iPhone without a cellular phone function. Nice as it is, as with an iPhone, the only radio stations you can hear with an iPod Touch are those that stream over the internet. For all the rumors that iPhones have a latent, unactivated FM receiver hidden inside, no evidence of it has ever come to light. This, despite the radio industry’s persistent efforts to get wireless carriers just to activate the receivers already inside of many Android phones, or cajole device makers (or the FCC) to include radios across the board.

Frankly, I haven’t much considered the iPod Nano since its radio feature was first announced nearly eight years ago. While I was intrigued by Apple’s relatively innovative implementation, which included a “live pause” and PVR-like rewind function, I was never moved to actually buy one.

Seems the rest of my audio playback needs have been satisfied by my smartphone. So, instead of dropping $150 on a Nano, if I want to hear a radio I just drop a $15 portable into my bag. I guess that makes me part of the problem.

Of course, what I really want is an FM receiver inside my iPhone. Sure, I could get any number of Android phones that have a radio—and cost less to boot&mdashbut I prefer iOS and radio reception is not a deciding factor, even for a nerd like me.

Only a decade ago I didn’t think twice about carrying two different devices: a flip-phone for calls and texts, and a minidisc player for music on the go. That minidisc player even had an FM radio, and this set-up didn’t feel inconvenient at all. (In the pre-cellphone era my cassette walkmen usually had a radio, too.)

But a decade of smartphone use spoiled me with the joy of a single do-it-all (except terrestrial radio) device. Even though I might enjoy the higher resolution sound capabilities of today’s new breed digital audio players, the price of schlepping two gadgets is more than I want to pay.

Without a doubt, Apple’s cancellation of the iPod Nano (and Shuffle) has much more to do with getting out of the inexpensive MP3 player market than with getting out of the radio business. If you’re still in the market for a portable audio player it’s not hard to find one that also includes a radio, typically for a fraction of the Nano’s retail price. Now, these cheaper players won’t have the Nano’s cool pause and rewind functions, nor the Apple cache, but due to their cheapness you can also subject them to situations where you might not want to risk damaging your smartphone or iPod.

Unless the FCC is somehow convinced to make FM radios mandatory in smartphones (a very long shot) the Nano will go down as Apple’s first and only FM radio receiver.

The post Apple Kills Off Its First and Only FM Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

While exploring the music discovery and listening service TuneIn this week, I was pleased to find many of the radio stations that I was hoping to encounter, including college radio, new low power FM (LPFM) stations, high school radio, public radio, and commercial stations. In addition to traditional radio, TuneIn also has podcasts, audio books, sports, and original content, including live music performances. Digging a bit deeper, I ran across unexpected hidden gems and fell down many rabbit holes full of captivating sounds.

Scanners: Police, Fire, Rail

Perusing my “local” San Francisco stations, the “Internet-only” category was particularly intriguing, as it included scanners from the California Highway Patrol and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), as well as numerous police, fire, and rail streams. The voyeuristic journalist in me kicked into high gear, as I eavesdropped on police calls, mundane communications between BART employees, and chatter about a train staffer’s stolen credit card. A few options:

Railroad Radio San Francisco

San Mateo County Law Enforcement

Miami International Airport

Hospital Radio

For quite some time now, I’ve been fascinated by hospital radio, a mostly United Kingdom and Ireland-based radio category. Lore has it that many professional radio personalities got their start as DJs at hospital-based stations. Thanks to the internet, we can now catch some of these station streams even if we are not confined to a hospital bed.

Grampian Hospital Radio (Aberdeen, Scotland)

CUH fm Hospital Radio (Cork, Ireland)

Hospital Radio Ipswich (Ipswich, England)

Experimental Radio and Sound Art

On Radio Survivor Podcast #100, I declared that I hoped to do more coverage on radio art. With practitioners all over the world, radio art has a dedicated community of participants, fans, and even radio stations and podcasts.

NAISA Radio (New Adventures in Sound Art, Canada)

Cities and Memory Podcast – check out the episode featuring sounds from the Djupivogur oil drum sound art installation in Iceland

International Radio

To get an earful of radio from all over the world, one can browse TuneIn by location to find a mix of radio stations in various locales, including Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and Australasia.

Radio Universidad (Mar del Plata, Argentina)

Radio 1 FM (Tonga)

Mbabule FM (Uganda)

What am I missing? If you’ve run across some compelling audio online, be it quirky or thought-provoking, let me know in the comments.

The post Audio Treasures and Unexpected Radio on TuneIn appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today is the Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality. Radio Survivor is a supporter because we understand clearly how the internet is a powerful medium to disseminate diverse and independent voices. As an independent online publication and podcast Radio Survivor fundamentally relies on a free, unfiltered internet to exist and communicate with fellow radio lovers around the world.

But our support of net neutrality is about more than self interest. The distance between broadcast radio and internet radio gets narrower every day, as more people tune in on their computers and smartphones, even if they’re listening to the online stream of a terrestrial station. For many listeners public radio and podcasts are nearly synonymous, choosing to listen to “This American Life” on demand, at their own convenience, rather than when dictated by a broadcast schedule. Millions of other listeners turn to internet stations to hear music and genres that are almost impossible to receive over the air.

The internet’s low barrier to entry has resulted in an explosion of audio options, with a very long tail made up of independent broadcasters, podcasters, DJs and producers who each may only attract a few dozen listeners. But for each listener their artistry is a welcome escape or a needed entertainment, if not a lifeline, supplying music, information or ideas that would be nearly unfindable in the pre-internet era.

Net neutrality is the principle that every bit of legal data and content on the internet should be treated equally. Mapped onto radio, this means every internet radio listener should be able to access her local college radio stream as easily as iHeartRadio. Every podcast fan should be able to download an obscure show about tabletop games just as quickly as an ESPN show. Any online audio listener shouldn’t find it harder to get independent DJ mixes, shows or streams than content from a bigger company that paid for the privilege of disproportionate access to your ears.

Crucially, listeners and broadcasters alike should have equal access across both wired and wireless internet connections. Your listening choices shouldn’t me more constrained simply because you’re using a mobile device or smartphone.

The FCC has guaranteed and enforced these protections since February 2015 when it passed the Open Internet Order. But new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai intends to overturn these rules. That is why hundreds of organizations and thousands of internet users are coming together for this day of action.

You can do your part by submitting your comments to the FCC in support of net neutrality. As my colleague Matthew Lasar pointed out, public comments really do matter, because they are a part of the public record, which can be cited by lawmakers, in legal briefs and even in legal opinions.

It’s most effective if you can cite personal experience or testify to specific circumstances that are relevant in your community. For instance, Chairman Pai argues that the Open Internet Order has stunted the roll out of high speed internet across the country. But is that true in your community? I can attest that in my city both local ISPs have rolled out higher speed service in the last year, including a significant rollout of gigabit fiber.

Facts matter, especially to courts. If Pai succeeds in passing his ironically titled “Restoring Internet Freedom” order, undoing net neutrality protections, that decision will most definitely be challenged in court by public interest advocates. They will dive into the public comment record looking for facts and testimony that support net neutrality.

Resources to Take Action

BattleFortheNet.com and SaveTheInternet.com both make it easy to submit your comments.

As some background to help frame your comments, here are the protections that the Open Internet Order provides:

• No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
• No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
• No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no “fast lanes.” This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates.

Back in April Gizmodo did a handy rundown of “the worst lies” in a speech that Pai gave announcing his plan to undo net neutrality. In short, he claims that net neutrality is bad for online privacy, has harmed online investment, exacerbates “digital redlining” keeping access from disadvantaged communities, and that the there were no problems with blocking or throttling access prior to the Open Internet Order passing in 2015.

For your own comments, consider arguments and facts that disprove these arguments. How does net neutrality enhance, or at least not harm, privacy? Do you see evidence of broadband investment and rollout in the last two years?

To the last point—that there was no blocking or throttling prior to 2015—consult this handy list of pre–2015 net neutrality violations that Free Press logged. Perhaps you have some examples of your own?

The post Why Radio Survivor Supports the Day of Action for Net Neutrality appeared first on Radio Survivor.

After covering the comeback of the live streaming radio platform Live365 two episodes ago, listeners asked us to check out MixCloud, which offers free streaming of music radio shows, DJ sets, mixtapes and podcasts for anyone, including radio stations and independent producers. So this week we talk with Xanthe Fuller, Head of Community for Mixcloud. She explains the Mixcloud service, its community of creators and listeners, and how the company is able to offer its service for free.

Then we talk to a producer who uses Mixcloud, Doug Hoepker. His Little Records podcast focuses on music from the classic era of college radio in the 1980s and 1990s, all sourced from vinyl. The project started as a live streaming radio station, which he transitioned to ta podcast on Mixcloud. Doug tells us about Little Records and what motivated the transition from a live stream to an on-demand show.

Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways:

Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign.

Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal.

Show Notes:

• Mixcloud
• Xanthe Fuller’s show on East London Radio
• The Audio Culture podcast by Mixcloud
• Little Records

The post Podcast #95 – Mixcloud Can Be Community Radio, Too appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Independent internet radio was devastated in January 2016 when music royalty rates shot up and long-time webcasting company Live365 went out of business. Now Live365 is back under new ownership, and CEO Jon Stephenson joins the show to tell us how the company is ready to help small webcasters get back to broadcasting online affordably, despite the tremendously higher royalty rates.

Community radio people: this is your last chance to score a $50 discount to attend this year’s National Federation of Community Broadcast Conference in Denver, CO, July 17 – 19. Listen to this episode to get your coupon code.

Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways:

Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign.

Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal.

Show Notes

• Eric’s radio documentary: Web Radio in Peril
• Live365 to Broadcasters: We’re Shutting Down Jan. 31 (Jan. 20, 2016)
• Live365 and the importance of the revenue percentage option (Jan. 2, 2016)
• Why American Independent Internet Radio May Go Extinct in 2016
• Podcast #29 – Will 2016 Be the End of Indie Internet Radio?
• Podcast #31 – It’s the 13th Hour for Small Webcasters, includes interview with Paul Merrell from StreamLicensing.com

The post Podcast #93 – The Return of Live365 Boosts Indie Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On May 18, by a strict 2 to 1 party-line vote, the FCC decided to begin a proceeding to undo the 2015 Open Internet Order, rescinding the network neutrality protections that have been in place for more than two years. It’s something that Chairman Ajit Pai promised to do not long after taking office, and he appears intent on pushing new rules through at full speed.

The 123 page text of the unintentionally ironically named “Restoring Internet Freedom” proposal was just released Tuesday. We’ll be digging in to pull out the most important details, and asking our friend Prof. Christopher Terry from the University of Minnesota help us discern what’s most important. The release of the text opens up the public comment period, which lasts until July 17. This is followed by a reply comment period where anyone can respond to, criticize or laud comments that were submitted.

Given how some congresspeople right now are actively avoiding contact with their constituents so as not to face their concerns about the American Health Care Act, it’s understandable that one might assume that public comments on an FCC proceeding are simply pro forma and don’t carry much weight. Yet, they can make a significant difference, even if the current FCC administration decides to plow ahead in the exact opposite direction of public sentiment.

My colleague Matthew Lasar is an historian who has been watching the FCC closely for decades. He explained clearly why public comments are important on episode #92 of our podcast.

To begin with, “once the FCC makes its decision the chances are pretty good that there will be lawsuits and challenges.”

Given this, the Administrative Procedures Act becomes important. As Matthew puts it, the Act dictates that if a federal agency changes its rules, there has to be a "good, clear and adequate reason for why you changed them. You cannot arbitrarily change them.

“And, in fact, when the FCC changed these indecency rules, the Supreme Court, not too long ago, basically said that the FCC didn’t come up with a good enough rationale… and told them they had to do it again.”

Then, if the Pai led FCC decides to roll back network neutrality protections, it will be up to a federal Appeals Court to decide if the reasons the FCC gave have some logical basis in the law and policy, and, Matthew points out, "whether the facts they offer are worthy.

“And what I think is really important with this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, is to look at the facts that (the FCC is) using…. to overturn these rules.”

Putting this in practical terms, we can consider Chairman Pai’s argument that the deployment of broadband services has been stunted since the Open Internet Order passed in February 2015. Is this actually true?

As a citizen, you can report on what you see in your community. Have you seen new broadband services offered, or have you been offered services with increased speed? I know that in my neighborhood, just last year one of the local ISPs started offering fiber connections with speeds some 10 to 20 times faster than available in 2015. That’s something I can attest to in my comments.

Of course, there are many more claims of fact the FCC is making that require close scrutiny. Please check back with us as we pull them out of the proposed rule making.

Matthew also observes that proposing to undo the 2015 Open Internet Order
“is a big pivot.” The fact the FCC is making a 180 turn in policy, just two years in, means the FCC “to going to have to make a very very strong case in front of the courts,” to prove that “the previous FCC just got everything all wrong.”

Moreover, “the FCC is compelled to take these comments seriously and integrate them into the written record if they contain detailed information about what’s going on in your local community.” That written record, containing publicly submitted testimony, will come under judicial scrutiny when a lawsuit challenges the Commission’s decision.

Matthew also suggests that you can add gravitas to your comments by filing your comments jointly with other like-minded folks and name yourselves a committee, group or alliance. “I’ve seen this for years,” he attests. “They (the FCC) take those kinds of things very seriously.”

You can submit your own comments and read others’ comment with the shortcut URL GoFCCYourself.com. Free Press’ Save The Internet site also has tools for action. Keep reading Radio Survivor and listening to our podcast for more insight on what to pay attention to.

Image credit: Maria Merkulova / Free Press (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The post How and Why Public Comments on Net Neutrality Make a Difference appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The MP3 is dead, we’re to believe. That’s because the technology’s inventor, the Fraunhofer Institute, has ended licensing of the patented technologies needed for the encoding and decoding of MP3 files.

Reality, of course, it a little more complicated. As Fraunhofer itself clarified in a blog post this past week, the licensing program ended because the last patent expired April 23, not because they somehow pulled the plug on MP3 altogether. That’s the thing with patents, they have a defined lifespan, after which they expire. Then anyone is free to implement the technology described in the patent, without owing royalties to the original patent holder.

The MP3 isn’t quite dead, its owner just doesn’t really own it anymore.

Dead Like Betamax?

Still, I keep reading the headline that “MP3 is dead.” But what exactly would it mean for MP3 to be dead? Would all of our MP3 players suddenly cease to work? Would our smartphones start choking on that Fleetwood Mac CD you ripped in 2005? Would iTunes refuse to play that Radiohead bootleg you downloaded a decade ago?

While declarations like “the MP3 is dead” seem familiar to other cries of obsolescence like, “vinyl is dead,” “cassettes are dead,” or “the CD is dead,” the MP3 is not a physical format like a record, tape or disc. A physical media format begins its decline when manufacturers quit making the media itself, and goes on life support when playback equipment is no longer made. We can consider it dead when finding working players becomes difficult to near impossible, and so nearly entirely impractical to use at all.

Of course, rumors of the death of the three physical formats I just cited are exaggerated, since you can still buy new media and playback devices. A Betamax videocassette is much closer to dead, even if you might still scout the occasional working VCR on eBay or at a thrift store.

But as a file format, rather than a physical format, at what point is MP3 dead? Already, as its creators note, the format has been surpassed in quality by AAC files, which give better fidelity in the same file size. Moreover, as most people’s digital storage capacity and internet bandwidth have increased, we’re seeing the rise of uncompressed audio formats, like ALAC and FLAC. As well, high resolution, better-than-CD-quality files are growing in popularity.

Yet, if you find a 15 year-old MP3 file on an old hard drive you’ll still have no problem listening to it on your smartphone or computer. It will sound as good (or bad) as it did when it was first encoded.

You Can’t Kill MP3

So, really, MP3 will probably never die, at least not in the way Betamax will. The technology to encode and decode MP3 files is out there, and much of it is now free of any licensing constraints. Programmers and engineers can continue to include it in software and hardware forever, if they see fit.

I don’t make this argument as an MP3 fanboy. While it was a truly revolutionary technology that came at the precisely right time when home internet because just fast enough to transfer music files, and computers became just fast enough to decode a file like an MP3 in real-time, it is imperfect and has been superseded in terms of fidelity. As I’ve written before, I wish internet radio stations would move away from MP3 to formats that sound better, even over slow connections. Many do offer AAC streams alongside their MP3 streams, but still too many only offer MP3.

Why Would You Want MP3 Dead, Anyway?

I’m not necessarily arguing that internet radio or record labels abandon MP3 wholesale. There are still players and other devices that don’t support newer formats, and I’m not a fan of forced obsolescence. Offering an MP3 option for an internet radio stream or song download costs very little extra, especially when compared to offering an album or movie in multiple physical formats.

Why would you want MP3 dead, anyway? I get tired of tech media triumphalism, always looking for wins and fails, ready to declare some media, format, platform or device dead, only then doing a 180 when some trend-spotter realizes the kids these days are listening to records and their iPhones.

The nice thing about digital technologies is that they don’t necessarily have to die in the same way as Betamax or laserdisc. Just take for example old home computers, like the Apple II or Commodore 64. They haven’t been manufactured in nearly a generation. But because the stuff of a computer is really software, emulators exist which let experimenters and enthusiasts run a virtual home computer on their Windows PC or Mac. In fact, thanks to the hard work of volunteer programmers and software archivists, at the Internet Archive you can even run software from dozens of vintage home computers and video game consoles right in your browser.

Long Live MP3, Though I May Not Choose It Any More

The MP3 is not dead, and probably will never die in any meaningful way. That said, if I’m ripping a CD today, I’m going to choose AAC if I need to optimize for storage. If I’m ripping it so I don’t have to use the physical media, then I’ll choose FLAC or ALAC, because they’ll be bit-perfect identical copies of that original CD. I won’t choose MP3 because today it’s too much of a compromise.

The great thing about an uncompressed FLAC or ALAC file is that, should I need an MP3 of it somewhere down the line, I can easily make one. But if all I have is an MP3, there’s no restoring the data and quality that was lost. Like a photocopy of a painting you threw away, there’s no restoring the original.

That doesn’t mean I don’t listen to the archive of MP3s I still own. Buying music on MP3 made sense fifteen years ago, and those files don’t sound terrible at all, even if a CD copy (or high-res version) likely would sound better. I hate being on the audiophile treadmill of rebuying music every time a new version or format comes out. I’d rather enjoy those old MP3s than anxiously shop around trying to upgrade.

Got lots of MP3s? Relax, don’t worry. They’ll be dead long after you are.

The post Even Its Creator Can’t Kill MP3 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

John Oliver is the hero the internet needs right now. Just when new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has targeted net neutrality again–a mere two years after the Commission passed the Open Internet Order–the HBO host brought the subject back into the spotlight again Sunday night for a sharp, incisive and hilarious dissection of Pai’s intention, and a much-needed examination of his ridiculously large coffee mug.

Let’s hop in the Wayback Machine to 2014. Barack Obama was president, and Tom Wheeler, a former cable industry lobbyist, was FCC Chair. Wheeler proposed a set of half-baked rules under the pretense of protecting network neutrality, while also preposterously bending over backwards to allow for what he called “commercially reasonable” discrimination of internet traffic.

While the idea of an internet that is free of any content discrimination, where every audio or video stream is treated equally, isn’t a hard concept to grasp, the wonky details of jargon like “Title II” can make even the biggest nerd’s eyes glaze over. Enter John Oliver.

Fresh off a stint on “The Daily Show,” Oliver was just five episodes into his new HBO show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” when he decided to break down net neutrality for America, turning otherwise turgid policy points into a sparklingly clear and rivetingly funny monologue that anyone could understand. Calling upon his viewers (on HBO and YouTube) to make their displeasure with Wheeler’s half-baked open internet proposal known to the FCC, Oliver effectively broke the FCC’s website. In the end more than 4 million public comments were filed, setting a record, and forcing Wheeler to go back to the drawing board to come up with something real.

Sunday night Oliver broke the FCC website again, by again calling on viewers to give the Commission a piece of their minds, and by providing a shortcut URL that takes you directly to the right page to comment on Chairman Pai’s new anti net-neturality proposal: GoFCCYourself.com

One of the worries that many public interest and net neutrality advocates have had is that this latest attack on net neutrality might get lost in the mix. With so many political jeremiads to worry about, and with the issue returning to the floor only two years later, the concern is that folks will just be too tired and overwhelmed to mobilize in the kind of numbers they did in 2014. So it sure doesn’t hurt to have a popular comedy host create a viral-ready rant in support of the cause.

As I write this Oliver’s net neutrality segment already has over 2 million views. And that’s because, on top of breaking down the policy implications of net neutrality and Title II with aplomb, it’s also funny as hell. Zeroing in on Chairman Pai’s geeky pride in using an absurdly large Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup mug serves as a stark contrast to his free-marketeering history as a Verizon lobbyist.

Watch the segment for yourself. It’s NSFW because of lots of four-letter-words (but who–besides priests and elementary school teachers–doesn’t use these words at work these days, anyway?)

The post John Oliver Is the Hero the Internet Needs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

If there were any doubts that new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai would fall in lockstep with the Trump Administration, wonder no more. Last week Pai revealed his plans to undo the Commission’s Open Internet Order, passed just a little more than two years ago.

In particular, he vows to strip internet service of so-called Title II protection, which classifies it as a common carrier service or utility, like telephones. Although previous FCC Chairmen tried all sorts of maneuvers to implement protections for internet users without invoking Title II—including Chairman Wheeler, who authored the current Open Internet rules—the DC Circuit Court of Appeals court made it pretty much unavoidable. Effectively, the Court ruled that the FCC could apply anti-blocking and nondiscrimination rules to internet service while it remained classified as an “information service.”

But it’s not as if this idea came out of nowhere. Internet service was classified as common carrier under Title II from the very beginning. It was only during the last Bush administration that the Commission decided to reclassify it as an information service. The Appeals Court said that classification doesn’t support a strong open internet regime, basically advising the FCC to reclassify internet service as common carrier, which it finally did in 2015.

In the speech announcing his plan Pai claimed that, “Nothing about the Internet was broken in 2015. Nothing about the law had changed. And there wasn’t a rash of Internet service providers blocking customers from accessing the content, applications, or services of their choice.” The media reform organization Free Press disputes this assertion. In fact, outside the Newseum in Washington, DC, where Pai gave his speech, staff handed out copies of a pamphlet outlining about a dozen Open Internet violations occurring before 2015.

Pai also claimed that the current Open Internet rules harm internet privacy, have held back investment in broadband infrastructure, and also encourage redlining low-income areas, keeping them from getting high-speed service. Gizmodo has a sharp fact-check of these claims in a subtly titled post, “The worst lies from yesterday’s anti-net neutrality speech.”

Prof. Tim Wu of Columbia University, who coined the term “network neutrality,” penned an op-ed in The New York Times, entitled, “The ‘Fix’ for Net Neutrality That Consumers Don’t Need.”

The curious thing about Pai’s speech is that he went to great pains to single out network neutrality advocates for scorn, accusing them of actually wanting a government take-over of the internet. He specifically targeted the Free Press by going after “its cofounder and current board member,” whom he does not name, by repeating some relatively obscure quotes about capitalism and Venezuelan media (from 2009)—though not about network neutrality. Not coincidentally, these quotes have circulated in “alt right” circles for a while, and most recently were published in a Breitbart piece a week prior. That unnamed co-founder is Prof. Robert McChesney, whom Free Press notes is now an emeritus board member. Free Press also says that, “Neither of these articles involved Free Press staff, and they weren’t published on our website.”

Shifting our attention again to the courts, regardless of Chairman Pai’s opinion, on Monday the DC Circuit rejected a request to review an earlier decision upholding the Title II provisions of the FCC’s Open Internet Order. The USTelecom trade group that brought the suit could still try to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. However, Pai may just beat them to the punch by leading his three-commissioner FCC to nix the rules (likely by a 2 to 1 majority).

Pai’s route is to open a proposed rulemaking procedure, which will have a public comment period. Recall that the last time around some four million people submitted comments to the FCC, breaking records. The vast majority of those comments supported net neutrality. Does Chairman Pai expect a different outcome this time around?

We cover network neutrality here at Radio Survivor because radio is not just about airwaves. Thousands of terrestrial and online-only stations depend on the internet to reach millions of listeners, as do an untold number of podcasters. Moreover the internet is used to move sound files and important data around, connecting journalists to producers, connecting stations to programming, keeping the wheels of modern broadcasting turning.

It’s a very real concern that without network neutrality provisions some internet broadcasts and podcasts could find speedbumps in their route to listeners, while larger, more well-resourced broadcasters get an express lane. This could harm independent broadcasters and podcasters, community and college radio stations, and potentially impede innovative and new internet audio services. Three years ago, while the Open Internet debate was raging, Matthew Lasar detailed “four reasons why net neutrality matters for mobile radio,” which is just as, or more, relevant today.

We briefly reviewed this development on this week’s podcast. We’ll take a much deeper dive next week, when our reliable FCC watcher Prof. Christoper Terry from the University of Minnesota will be our guest.

The post Open Internet Back in the Crosshairs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Your broadcast station–LPFM, community, college–needs to have its programming on the internet, one way or another. Now.

Why? Because you risk missing a generation of listeners whose media intake is primarily online. YouTube is where they hang out the most, but online radio is also a destination. Where they’re moving away from is your AM or FM broadcast.

That’s the big takeaway from the 2017 Infinite Dial survey of American online listening habits conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital.

The results are stark. 87% of young people aged 12 to 24 listen to online radio every month, yet only 50% say that AM/FM radio is important for keeping up with new music.

The number one way young people keep up with new music: YouTube. Amongst the 70% of people aged 12 – 24 who say it’s somewhat or very important to keep up with new music, 80% say YouTube is their first choice, followed closely by friends and family (77%), and then Spotify (59%) and Pandora (53%).

Radio is the fifth choice for those aged 12–24, compared to ranking third amongst all Americans who keep up with new music, ranking just behind friends and family at 68% and YouTube at 64%. So, even if YouTube isn’t beating radio with all ages, it’s neck-and-neck.

These results aren’t too different from last year’s report–which we discussed then on our podcast–yet the trend towards YouTube and internet listening only becomes clearer and clearer.

The point of this post is not to scare monger or to play Chicken Little. I’m also not claiming that young people don’t listen to broadcast radio or listen to your station. However, my own unscientific poll of college students I’ve talked to in the last five years tells me that if they listen to terrestrial radio they only really listen in the car. If they listen to radio at home or in the office they’re listening online.

Luckily for non-commercial broadcast stations, live online streaming is much less costly than it is for unaffiliated internet-only stations, which means a large percentage of college and community stations have active online streams. However, it’s understandable that the added cost and resources are still a challenge for many smaller stations and new LPFMs. This means that they have to delay being online for a while, or even indefinitely.

YouTube Is a Resource, Not a Rival

That’s why YouTube is a boon for non-comm stations, not a competitor. All that content on YouTube, it’s got to come from somewhere. Why not your station?

I’m not talking about posting your regular music shows played from CDs, records and MP3s. It probably isn’t worth the effort, and copyright challenges will complicate the effort.

Instead, take advantage of the music already happening at your station. Being artist-friendly is one of community and college radio’s greatest strengths. The planned or impromptu in-studio performance is a hallmark of great non-commercial radio. So when those happen, get them recorded and post them on YouTube, ASAP.

I have no illusion that a teenager looking for the newest Drake track is going to inadvertently discover your station this way. However, there are probably teenagers who follow bands in your community, or who play in those bands. If you have those artists live on air and post their performances on YouTube those young fans will look for and find those videos.

By no means is this a new idea. Radio Survivor contributor Ann Alquist made the argument for video in a post more than two years ago. She also pointed out that videos serve as marketing, and are something that grabs the attention of local funders and underwriters.

Make It Easy On Your Station

When we discussed this on our latest podcast, my co-host Eric Klein cautioned that it’s better to edit that audio together with the board feed, for better sound. The audiophile in me agrees wholeheartedly with that sentiment. But the part of me that wants your station on YouTube now doesn’t want that extra effort to get in the way of it happening in the first place. Plus, judging from many live videos I see on YouTube (not just of famous musicians) that have tens of thousands of hits, the quality of the performance matters more than the quality of the recording.

So, when a singer-songwriter sits down behind your mic to share a quick tune, take a moment to whip out a smart phone and shoot it on video. As soon as she’s finished, upload that sucker!

To me, this is a case where perfect threatens to be the enemy of finished. I’ve been part of too many prolonged discussions at stations where well-meaning staff members’ and volunteers’ nitpicking to make things better ultimately mean things don’t get done. Don’t let this happen to your station’s YouTube efforts.

Over time you can improve your videos. Wouldn’t it be great if a young video whiz checked out your channel to see her favorite local artists and decided she could do a better job, and then decided to volunteer? That’s how I’ve seen so many projects move forward in volunteer-driven radio – less than perfect execution often attracts that person who can make it one or two notches better.

Consider partnering with your local public access cable channel, or a high school, college or university that has a video production program.

To be clear: if your station isn’t able to live stream now, be sure to start a YouTube channel and upload all the musical moments that happen on or off-mic. If your station is streaming but not using YouTube, get to it.

Even if there isn’t much live music happening, upload short profiles or interviews with DJs talking about their favorite music, or even videos of your talk programming. Anything is better than nothing!

Make Your Mixes On-Demand with Mixcloud

Another option I want to point out is Mixcloud, which is a free service for posting and sharing DJ mixes. And what is your average music show, but a long DJ mix? Mixcloud only streams shows, so downloading isn’t allowed. But this is why it’s free for both your station and the listener. Mixcloud covers the royalties and the hosting; you just have to upload the shows.

Did I mention it’s free?

Mixcloud isn’t nearly as well known as YouTube or the major online radio platforms, whether Spotify or iHeartRadio, so fewer people browse it. Yet the folks who do are true music lovers. Plus, just like YouTube videos, you can embed them on your station’s website.

I can’t emphasize it enough – the key is to just get started. Whether it’s posting a few shows to Mixcloud or videoing your first in-studio performance for YouTube.

Inspiration

For some inspiration, here are some college and community radio YouTube and Mixcloud channels to check out:

YouTube

The Lounge from WKNC at North Carolina State University

KCR at San Diego State University shares news and other highlights.

Community Radio WEFT in Champaign, IL partners with local public access TV channel UPTV for WEFT Sessions in-studio performances.

Community Radio WMNF posts performances from Live Music Showcase

MixCloud

WERW Real College Radio at Syracuse University

KBGA at the University of Montana

Limerick City (Ireland) Community Radio

KVWV-LP Community Radio, Bellingham, WA

The post Station not on the Internet? You’re Losing Young Listeners, Big Time appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Looking for info on how to listen to this 2021’s Super Bowl LV? Click here.

This year fans who want or need to hear Super Bowl LI on the radio can listen in to the usual suspects, at least in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. There are all sorts of good reasons to listen to the game, whether you’re driving, at work, or are visually impaired.

While not as popular as the television broadcast, in 2012 (the last year radio ratings were reported) 23.1 million people in the U.S. tuned in on the radio. That’s why every year we compile this guide.

U.S. Terrestrial Radio

Westwood One is the exclusive radio network of Super Bowl 51, with enough affiliates that nearly everyone in the continental U.S. can probably find the game on their local dial. However, NFL games, including the Super Bowl, are usually not broadcast online by Westwood One affiliates.

U.S. Internet Radio

Update 2/5/17: A reader emailed to let us know that WJQX-FM is streaming the game right now via their website and iHeartRadio.

I’ve also confirmed that Boston’s WBZ-FM and Atlanta’s 98.5 FM are streaming the game via their websites, though not via TuneIn.

If you’re somewhere without good terrestrial radio reception, but have an internet connection, the game is carried on TuneIn Premium’s NFL station, which is part of TuneIn’s subscription service. You get a 7-day free trial if you sign up, so if all you want to get is this Sunday’s big game you could conceivably hear it for free.

The NFL also has it’s own GamePass streaming service, which also has a 7-day free trial.

However, each team’s home station will have special coverage that’s different from the national Westwood One feed, featuring their own local sportscasters. Because of this, I’ve found these stations usually don’t black out their internet feed of the Super Bowl, potentially making them good streaming radio choices. The only hiccup is that this isn’t guaranteed, and you won’t know the situation until game day.

WBZ-FM in Boston is the Patriots’ flagship station. The Falcons’ station is 92.9 FM WZGC-FM in Atlanta.

FOX television is also streaming the game online for free, but only to computers and tablets. Verizon customers can also stream it to their smartphones. Of course this is a video feed, which you can listen to, but isn’t as good as radio is you’re not in a situation where you can watch, like if you’re driving or doing other visual work. That’s because radio sportscasters will describe much more of the action than TV, where they expect you can see more for yourself.

Update 2/5/17:
Unfortunately, all of these links below are dead on Super Bowl Sunday

2/3/17:

I received an email from a radio office on a container ship currently at sea, where they have internet, but can’t use any browser plug-ins or extensions. He asked how they might listen to the Super Bowl on Sunday. Assuming that the local radio feeds in Boston and Atlanta will not be blacked out, my recommendation is to try the WBZ or WZGC on TuneIn, which I think has a non-Flash player option. Also, I was able to discover links directly to these stations’ streams that will open a play natively in Chrome. Here they are:

WBZ Boston:

• http://16943.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WBZFMAAC_SC
• http://16943.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/WBZFMAAC_SC
• http://17453.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WBZFMAAC_SC
• http://17453.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/WBZFMAAC_SC
• http://16883.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WBZFMAAC_SC
• http://16883.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/WBZFMAAC_SC
• http://17513.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WBZFMAAC_SC
• http://17513.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/WBZFMAAC_SC

WZGC Atlanta:

• http://16843.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WZGCFMAAC_SC
• http://16843.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/WZGCFMAAC_SC
• http://18763.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WZGCFMAAC_SC
• http://18763.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/WZGCFMAAC_SC
• http://16883.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WZGCFMAAC_SC
• http://16883.live.streamtheworld.com:3690/WZGCFMAAC_SC

Satellite Radio

SiriusXM satellite radio subscribers can hear Super Bowl LI over the internet service or via their satellite radios, both in the U.S. and Canada. You can hear the Westwood One national feed, the Atlanta or New England home feeds, or hear the game called in Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Hungarian or Flemish. SiriusXM offers a 30-day free trial. So, again, you might be able to hear the game for free if you don’t want to stay subscribed for more than 30 days.

Canada Terrestrial Radio

Canada’s TSN network is that country’s Super Bowl carrier. In years past the TSN Radio network has carried the Super Bowl, but this year I haven’t been able to find any explicit mention of it.

U.K.

BBC Radio 5 will broadcast Super Bowl 51 on FM and DAB radio across the U.K. This should include Radio 5’s internet stream for listeners in the U.K.

Everywhere Else

The irony is that it’s easier to watch the Super Bowl on TV in the rest of the world than it is to hear it on the radio, even though radio is the less expensive technology. Of course, outside the English speaking world the added cost of having the game called in other languages may be just cost prohibitive enough, whereas on television the ad revenue is likely sufficient to justify the expense.

In the four years I’ve been charting Super Bowl radio broadcasts I haven’t found any outside the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Please do let us know if you find one.

The post How To Listen to Super Bowl LI on the Radio this Sunday appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Just after the new year, the news hit that steaming radio service Live365 is preparing to come back from dead. The company is under completely new ownership. In fact, the new boss is a young entrepreneur and recent University of Pittsburgh graduate who already runs another streaming media company by himself, along with the help of 14 independent contractors.

Live365 was the highest profile online radio platform to close in the wake of the massive increase in music royalty rates paid by internet radio stations that aren’t run by a terrestrial broadcast station or a non-profit. While Live365 was having financial difficulties before the new royalty rates were put into effect–the company had already lost key investors–the threat of having royalty payments multiply several times over put the final nail in the coffin.

The company hosted approximately 5,000 of internet stations, many of them small or hobby projects without little or no commercial revenue. Thus the shutdown on January 31, 2016 had a devastating effect on American internet radio as a whole.

According to a profile in the The Herald of Sharon, Pennsylvania, the new owner, Jon Stephenson (who is from nearby Hermitage), picked up Live365 in bankruptcy court. He started his other company, Empire Streaming, while still in high school. Empire provides hosting for streaming audio and video, as well as ad insertion services.

Stephenson told The Herald that “Live 365 focuses on what we call microcasters, so very small radio stations,” which should be music to the ears of many webcasters who were left hanging a year ago.

But the biggest question for any internet radio platform that will also cover royalty obligations is how it can price its service in a way that it is accessible to these small webcasters, while still covering all its costs. The new Live365 website indicates that the company will cover U.S. music licensing under all of its plans, beginning at $59 a month for 1,500 total listening hours (equaling the number of listeners multiplied by the number of hours they listen). That music licensing includes songwriting royalties (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) and recording royalties (SoundExchange).

(Those recording royalties, in particular, are based upon total listening hours. That means the more listeners a station has, the more royalties it owes, regardless of any income.)

By comparison, as recently as July, 2015, the old Live365 charged $39 a month for a similar tier of service that covered music licensing fees, but with 500 fewer listening hours. The new Live365’s $99 a month plan is actually more generous than the old company’s $109 plan, offering 500 more listening hours for $10 less.

Given the relative similarity between the old pricing and the new pricing of Live365, it stands to question how the new company will better cover costs than the old one. Of course, without actually having insight into the old company’s books, we can only conjecture that royalty costs were a significant or primary problem.

Another point of comparison is StreamLicensing.com, a prominent service that stepped in to help small webcasters cover royalty payments. The company only offers royalty coverage to go along with a broadcaster’s existing streaming host, starting at $59 a month for up to 4,000 listening hours, provided the station has less than $20 a month in revenue.

Pricing of internet radio hosting without royalty coverage varies quite a bit, but it seems like plans run from about $10 – $30 a month for service that will match any of the new Live365’s plans. Adding the top end of that fee onto StreamLicensing’s entry level plan brings us pretty close to Live365’s $99 tier in terms of both pricing ($89 vs. $99) and coverage (4,000 listening hours vs. 3,500). Given this, it’s quite plausible that Live365’s new pricing is sustainable, at the very least.

Right now the revived Live365 isn’t yet signing up new customers; there’s a waitlist to reserve a spot. Though I’m not ready to start my own station (yet), I am anxious to learn more about Live365 and see it get off the ground.

The post Live365 to Return with Service for ‘Microcasters’ appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Jennifer Waits brings us the voices of three programmers at a mysterious and chaotic community station with deep connections to the Los Angeles art scene. KCHUNG is an unlicensed part 15 AM radio station with about 40 station managers and extremely eclectic programming.

Paul Riismandel wrote a series of articles, offering strongly worded advice for struggling community radio stations. He lays out his arguments in detail on the podcast and discusses the ideas and issues with his co-hosts. Read what all the fuss is about in the show notes links below.

Contributions from listeners and readers like you allow us not to rely on click-bait ads. We greatly appreciate the 36 people who support Radio Survivor with a monthly contribution to our Patreon campaign, but more contributions are needed to keep this project sustainable and grow what we do. Even a monthly pledge of $1 makes a big difference. Please contribute at http://patreon.com/radio-survivor

Show Notes

• KCHUNG
• LA’s KCHUNG Radio Demonstrates the Power of Part 15 Broadcasting from 2014
• “Riffin” a KCHUNG talk show hosted by Max Maslansky
• Trapped in the Grid: Why Community Radio Risks Irrelevance
• Public Access vs. Public Service – Addressing the Biggest Hidden Tension in Community Radio

Editor’s note: This episode was originally titled “Radio Anarchy vs Order” but then we decided that it was a bit misleading. Learn why on episode #75.

The post Podcast #74 – Station or Static? KCHUNG Is L.A.’s Underground Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Happy anniversary number ten to Think Twice Radio, the online talk cornucopia that invites you to think many times, actually. TTR is basically a matrix of interesting people who cogitate out loud about everything from dating to the origins of rock and roll to the BDSM scene in Buffalo, New York. A lot of the participants come from Buffalo, it seems, including its founder Richard Wicka. He wrote to me in response to an interview I did with KPFA in Berkeley, about my new book Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium.

Wicka started Think Twice in 2006:

“As you said [in the interview] streaming is expensive, so I set it up as download on demand. Over the past 10 years about 75 people have had radio shows on Think Twice Radio covering a huge range of topics. For example, one fellow, Russell Link, is 83 and his show is all about musical theater from the 1920’s and 30’s. Another, Michael Hoffert, does his show about comic books. There is a show for the kink community called BDSM in Buffalo, a sports talk program, a program about the local theater scene, a program for the Zen community called ‘Unraveling Religion’. One of my favorite programs is called ‘Baby I’m Amazed’ in which a very talkative 70 year old, Tom Mazur, simply wants me to sit down with him and listen while he goes on a stream of consciousness.”

Good to know something as purposely thoughtful as TTR is out there. Here’s to many more birthdays . . .

The post Think Twice Radio is ten years old appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Are you working abroad? Do you now live in some wonderful city that is fascinating and different, but also pretty difficult to navigate through, socially speaking? Well, one solution is to do what Michael Egerton, now an expat resident of Hong Kong did: start an Internet radio station.

Egerton hails from the Netherlands. He lives on Hong Kong’s biggest island: Lantau. Hence no surprise that he dubbed his station Radio Lantau. The South China Morning Post has a great profile of the operation. It caters to around 12,000 listeners, many of whom miss the kind of tunes they heard back home. Comments from Egerton’s fans attest to this:

“His show is pretty much the only Hong Kong programme I listen to. Old school hip hop on Hong Kong radio is really not happening.”

“A lot of music he plays, I would say he plays for western listeners … stuff that reminds me of back home, back in the day.”

Having spent some weeks in Hong Kong not that long ago, I can corroborate these quotes. Hong Kong AM/FM listeners are really into talk radio. No surprise there. The place is so intensely political because of its fraught relationship with the People’s Republic of China, hence the yearning for 24/7 commentary. The other radio genre they love is (obviously) “Cantopop” (or HK pop as it’s also called), which is lots of fun but very idiosyncratic.

So if you are looking for the latest western stuff, music-wise, you are going to have to resort to your own devices, figuratively and literally in Radio Lantau’s case.

The post Lonely in Hong Kong (or elsewhere)? Start an Internet radio station appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Paul: Here’s one of the big headlines about and it kind of actually blew me away a little bit. It’s a little scary.

Eric: Drumroll . . .

Paul: 21 percent of American households no longer own a radio.

Eric: Hmmm [nota bene – very dark sounding hmmm].

Paul: So that’s a radio receiver.

Eric: In the house. Not in the car.

Paul: In the house. That’s an important point. No longer have a radio in the house. If we break it down by age group 32 percent of Americans 18 to 34 do not have a radio receiver in the household.

Eric: Yeah. That makes sense to me. I had to go out of my way to buy my son a radio recently . . . We bought a used boom box. I don’t think he even uses it to listen to radio, though . . .

As I was listening to this discussion, I realized that I don’t use a home AM/FM radio receiver any more. I mean, I’ve got a boom box somewhere too, but I never listen to it at all. And I am most certainly not 18 to 34, that’s for sure.

How do I listen to radio at home? Overwhelmingly on my desktop computer. My two rave fave radio stations are WQXR-FM in New York City and KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz, California. They’re both mainly music stations (classical and Adult Album Alternative, respectively). I guess I’m still listening to the broadcast signal, but of course I’m listening to it streamed over The Internets, as Dubya used to say.

The place where I still listen to pure old school AM/FM is, as implied above, in my car. As I drive around Santa Cruz, I’m almost always tuned to KUSP or the University of California’s station KZSC-FM. Do I listen to music or radio stations over my mobile? Rarely. The last time I tried to use QXR’s mobile app, it worked so badly I gave up. And frankly, I have come to really detest the small mobile Internet device in general, but that’s another story.

Thank you Eric and Paul for noticing how much my radio listening life has changed! Jennifer Waits, by the way, is also on the podcast with an interesting response to a recently published critique of college radio for its generic “self-imposed smallness.”

Jennifer:

“I don’t think small is bad at all. And in fact when I have a choice, you know there are some colleges that have a big, well financed radio station in addition to a small underfunded basement station. I will visit the small station before I will visit the large station. I like the underdogs. I like stations where students have more control, have creative control, and often that’s the case when a station is small and doesn’t have a lot of oversight. So that’s why I gravitate towards those stations.”

Jennifer also notes that quite a few colleges have won Low Power FM permits over the last year. There’s another interesting trend, I might add, and that is student run online radio stations that don’t seem to be formally affiliated with any particular college or university. They’re sort of forged out of an alliance of students from various institutions. See my profile on n10.as radio out of Montreal as an example.

The post Doh! I forgot to own an AM/FM radio receiver! appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I am enjoying listening to live and archived shows out of n10.as radio in Montreal (n10.as = “antennas”; get it?). Musically speaking, the station is roughly comparable to an online stream just started in Brooklyn called The Lot Radio. But while The Lot’s main draw is its Williamsburg storage compartment live studio, n10.as’s attraction, at least to me, is its command line web interface.

For example, while listening to the live show “brunch club,” you just login on the main page and the next thing you know you’re gossiping with other listeners and the hosts about Tia Tequila and Ben Higgins or whoever:

You can also find out more about the station via a set of line commands:

I really love radio stations that offer command line chat interfaces. There’s something quick and easy about it. I feel much more connected to the broadcast chatting on a web command line portal than I do trying to interface via Twitter or Facebook.

Thump, Vice’s electronic and culture news blog, has a nice profile of n10.as. A group of students, some (but not all) affiliated with Concordia University, run the station out of the HQ of Arbutus Records.

“We wanted to be aware of different subcultures and try to touch upon everybody,” one told Thump. “Right from the beginning, you have to setup a groundwork where people feel welcome.” So far it seems to be working.

The post n10.as radio: gossiping on the command line appeared first on Radio Survivor.

My third book about radio is scheduled to be released on March 31 by its publisher, ABC-CLIO. It is titled Radio 2.0: uploading the first broadcast medium. The writer Susie Bright has already noticed its release via her Twitter account. The press has a very nice page for the small tome on its website. I thought I’d write up something for it here.

The whole “2.0” trope is, admittedly, a bit of a cliche. But I use it in this instance in a dialectical sense. First I make the case for the historical existence of “Radio 1.0” – a stretch of around sixty years in which AM/FM broadcasters streamed to something called “audiences.” These I define as large groups of people who took in radio content immediately and simultaneously, often conscious of themselves as such. The book contends that this was good for the United States. Radio 1.0 contributed to the forging of a national consciousness sufficiently coherent and self-confident to permit the greater integration of women, minorities, and working class people into the social structure. It is no coincidence, I argue, that broadcast radio’s greatest years coincide with 1920s feminism, the New Deal, and the civil rights struggles of the 1940s, fifties, and sixties.

Beginning in the 1970s, however, our government made a series of “constitutive choices,” to borrow Paul Starr’s noted phrase, that undermined not just some of the hallowed underpinnings of twentieth century broadcasting, such as localism, but the very concept of the audience itself. The audience now played a back seat to something called “competition,” which somehow would be furthered by breaking down media ownership barriers. This ironically led to the rise of the Clear Channel empire, whose principals very purposefully turned away from an audience based business model. Now conglomeration, informercialism, and maniacal cost cutting ruled the day.

As this new approach prevailed, a sort of vast audience technological diaspora followed. Its earliest manifestation predated the Internet by two decades. The SONY Walkman led the way towards the “personalization” of listening, followed by Discmen and CD-ROM men and subsequent digital men who created audio “pods” and then colonized the gadget once discouraged by government regulators from getting too far into radio, the telephone, now proudly wireless and digitized. Listening was now “asynchronous,” declared Internet radio pioneer Carl Malamud, for “asynchronous times.”

For those of you worried that from this point of departure my book descends into a sort of liberal Luddite narrative of decline, fear not. I spend quite a few pages celebratorily exploring all the audio techno-marvels of our age, many of which I have immensely enjoyed, among them Live 365, the grand legion of SHOUTcasters, Pandora, Spotify (and things within Spotify), Last.fm, podcasting, and the Turntable.fm phenomenon, which I dub a form of “deejay texting.”

I also note that one of the earliest visionaries of radio anticipated all this. Back in the 1920s, informed by German experimentalism and the wireless Morse code phenomenon, Bertold Brecht wondered out loud about the possibilities of a radio broadcasting system that allowed the listener to “speak as well as hear” and to bring this person into a “relationship instead of isolating him.” How, I ask, can Radio 2.0, which fulfills these tasks so well, merge in our time with the socially cohesive virtues of Radio 1.0? In answering this question, my lamplight shines on various examples: among them pioneering online community based broadcasters in the United States and the United Kingdom’s World Have Your Say service.

How can we synthesize the best of Radio 2.0 with its historical predecessor? Let’s stop speculating about the future of radio, I suggest, and start proactively thinking about what we want radio to be – even considering what the word “radio” means in the most virtuous social sense. That is what my book aspires to say.

I should add that I could not have written this book without continuously reading the words of my excellent teachers, Paul Riismandel and Jennifer Waits, here on the pages of Radio Survivor. They educated me about so many more radio possibilities than I knew of back when I spent my days narrating Pacifica radio’s accomplishments and troubles. I also have benefitted greatly from recent scholarship on radio produced by John Nathan Anderson, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Daniel Gilfillan, among others.

Anyway, Radio 2.0 will be out soon enough. It’s in the pre-order stage at Amazon and all the usual other places. I’m glad it’s done and hope it is of some use to somebody. That, of course, will be decided by others, perhaps even you.

The post Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Another major threat to small and medium sized internet radio stations has surfaced. As Torrent Freak first reported Tuesday, on February 26 four major recording labels filed suit in federal court against internet radio platform Radionomy, charging that the company engaged in copyright infringement.

The plaintiffs–Arista Records, LaFace Records, Sony Music and Zomba Records–allege that stations hosted by Radionomy have played music owned by them but have not paid statutory performance royalties in the US since “late 2014.” The suit also alleges that some stations available on Radionomy would not qualify for statutory licensing because they stream the music of a single artist, which is prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

All the more curious, the plaintiffs add that Radionomy admits to not paying royalties. In the complaint they write,

“In fact, however, Defendants do not – and have admitted to Plaintiffs that they do not – comply with any such requirements: they have no license or authorization to reproduce, publicly perform, and/or display Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works in the U.S. Moreover, Defendants have refused to comply with Plaintiffs’ requests and demands to remove the infringing works from Defendants’ service and/or to cease streaming or allowing their users to stream, reproduce, publicly perform, or display Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works on Defendants’ service.”

The labels are asking both for unspecified monetary damages as well as a permanent injunction against Radionomy from streaming without payment of royalties.

Since the demise of Live365 on January 31, an untold number of small and mid-sized webcasters moved their stations over to Radionomy. The service is attractive because it is completely free for broadcasters who have a minimum audience size. In exchange broadcasters agree to air commercials supplied by Radionomy.

From Radionomy’s “Producer’s News” blog

For webcasters faced with shutting down their streams as a result of new, much higher performance royalty rates, Radionomy’s deal seems irresistible. Yet, for many it also seemed too good to be true. I’ve fielded several emails from Radio Survivor readers asking us to look into Radionomy and find out how it could afford to cover both bandwidth and music royalties without charging webcasters anything. I also wondered, and have made several inquiries to Radionomy in the last month or so which have gone unanswered.

This suit from the four major recording labels would seem to indicate that the Radionomy deal for US webcasters, at the very least, may indeed be too good to be true. In fact, the complaint specifically cites Radionomy’s own marketing, charging that the company,

“assisted and encouraged others to engage in, massive reproduction, public performance, and/or display of hundreds, if not thousands, of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings and cover art images in the U.S., in violation of the U.S. Copyright Act and California state law.”

A strange twist to the story is that Radionomy itself is majority owned by the French multinational Vivendi, which also owns the Universal Music Group, claimed to be the world’s largest recording company. That an online radio business owned by one of the world’s largest entertainment companies–and therefore a company built on intellectual property–would willfully choose not to pay copyright royalties is difficult to fathom. It would be a delicious sort of irony if there weren’t so many well-meaning small broadcasters caught up in the mix.

For better or worse, this suit answers one of my biggest questions: who, if anyone, would go after internet stations that don’t pay performance royalties? The answer is: the record labels will. However, at least at this stage, the labels are choosing to pursue a very big fish, rather than chase down schools of minnows. By suing Radionomy the labels are effectively threatening thousands of stations, but it remains to be seen if they are up to spending the necessary resources to go after individual small hobby stations that decide to go “pirate” because they can no longer afford to stay legal with royalty payment.

Radionomy also owns Winamp and the Shoutcast streaming radio technology and platform, which it purchased from AOL in 2014, saving them from imminent demise. This leads many in the internet radio community to wonder if Winamp and Shoutcast are again under threat. Shoutcast, in particular, remains important as one of the most popular streaming audio server technologies, while Shoutcast.com remains one of the most comprehensive directories of internet radio stations. It would be regrettable to see a repeat of December 2013, when AOL announced that these services would close at the end of the year.

Stay tuned, as we await a statement of some kind from Radionomy.

The post Major Labels Sue Internet Radio Platform Radionomy for Copyright Infringement appeared first on Radio Survivor.