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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

On Friday Apple sent an email to iTunes Radio listeners announcing that the free ad-supported version of the service will shut down January 29. Thereafter iTunes Radio will only be available to Apple Music subscribers, without any advertising. Beats 1 Radio will remain Apple’s only non-subscription music service.

This announcement follows news that Apple shut down its advertising division, which sold ads into iOS applications, as well as on iTunes Radio. Though iTunes Radio certainly had its acolytes, according to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2015 report the service still trailed internet radio leaders Pandora, iHeartRadio and Spotify in listenership. Put these together and it seems likely that the cost of operating ad supported iTunes Radio outweighed its revenue potential combined with Apple’s overhead for selling its own ads.

My own experience with iTunes Radio demonstrated it to be adequate at best, and derivative of services like Pandora and Spotify radio, but offering up little to recommend it to users of other streaming platforms. Principally, the service’s only advantage is that it’s preinstalled on devices with a 20% share of the global smartphone market.

As an iPhone user I found iTunes Radio principally to be an annoyance, as an unwanted appendage stuck in to the Music app that would show up uninvited periodically and begin playing when instead I want to hear music stored on my device. I won’t quite say “good by and good riddance,” but I also won’t find myself missing the free iTunes Radio.

This does appear to signal a further narrowing of the free, ad-supported online radio market, following the demise of Rdio late last year. However, Rdio’s woes seem to be brought on as much by poor strategy and management as by the high cost of doing business.

I also hesitate to lump the end of free iTunes Radio in with the uncertainty facing small and medium webcasters coming from the expiration of the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009. That’s because the scale of iTunes Music greatly outclasses that of these internet broadcasters. Moreover, the much more radio-like Beats 1 will remain free and ad supported.

A lesson one might take away is that in internet radio not all curation is created equal. While iTunes Radio offers up curated genre, artist and guest DJ stations, there is little to differentiate these from stations and playlists available on Spotify or Amazon Prime Music, for example. You might find one you particularly like, but I’m not sure a listener will find a critical mass of stations that causes iTunes Radio to win out–especially if you’re already a fan of another service. And while iTunes’ stations are customizable by the user, the experience doesn’t match that of industry-leader Pandora.

Yet, Apple does offer something different with Beats 1 Radio. While not at all interactive–listeners can’t thumbs up, favorite or skip tracks–the service does provide something that Spotify, Pandora and Amazon do not: real DJs. Amongst the top internet music radio providers in the US, only the ones with roots in terrestrial broadcasting–like iHeartRadio, CBS Radio and Cumulus–offer that “real radio” experience.

And, while I’m not overly impressed by Beats 1, I do have to acknowledge that its moderately eclectic global outlook is unique, making it a very strong alternative to 90% of the ultra-homogenized local station streams offered by iHeart, CBS and Cumulus. Perhaps due to the relative success of Beats 1, there are indications that Apple intends to grow the Beats family with additional stations.

Simply put, Beats 1 has personalities, while genre stations just have a stream of tunes. I’m sure that paid Apple Music subscribers will continue using iTunes Radio because it’s ad-free for them, giving it an edge over any ad-supported service. But that’s its only edge. Beats 1, on the other hand, lets you hear from the DJ who’s choosing some percentage of the tracks, depending on the show. Funny how old fashioned radio values thrive in the supposed on-demand era.

This only begs the question of how many more ad-supported automated multi-genre internet radio services are really needed. No doubt, there is room for innovation. But there’s not much call for Pandora or Spotify look-a-likes.

What is always needed is more stations with a distinct human touch, that don’t necessarily stick to strict genre definitions, or that focus on niches that fall far outside the popular music boundaries.

The post Apple Ends Free iTunes Radio – Not All Curation Is Created Equal appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The new performance royalty rates that internet radio will pay artists and record labels were released on December 16 and many small and mid-sized internet-only broadcasters are now fearing they’ll be put out of business. While there was a modest increase on the fee paid for each song played, the bigger concern is what’s missing.

Since 2009 webcasters with lower revenues have been able to pay rates based upon that income, rather than based on tracks played and audience size. Under the Webmaster Settlement Act of 2009 (WSA) stations with less than $1.25 million in revenue were able to pay a percentage of that in royalties ranging from 12% to 14%. That agreement was made between SoundExchange, which negotiates and collects performance royalties on behalf of copyright owners, and a group of internet radio stations. However, the WSA ended on December 31, 2015 and there is no new agreement to take its place.

This means that all internet broadcasters that qualified for revenue-based royalties in 2015 will now have to pay based upon the number of performances. This is calculated based upon the number of tracks played multiplied by the number of listeners to each track, which is then multiplied by the rate of $.0017 per performance. So, if a station averages 100 listeners at any given time and plays an average of 15 tracks an hour, then it has 1500 performances an hour, 36,000 per day, and 13,140,000 performances a year. This adds up to a royalty of $22,338 a year.

To understand how significant this change might be, consider that 100 average listeners isn’t a very big audience. So even if a webcaster were able to make $100,000 a year–equivalent to the budget of a small community radio station–the royalty obligation under the WSA would have only been $12,000. However, it’s more likely that a webcaster with that size audience would have a hard time making even $12,000 a year. For very small webcasters with little actual operating revenue the cost of doing business threatens to greatly outweigh actual income.

Impact on One Independent Internet Broadcaster

Rusty Hodge is the founder of San Francisco based internet radio group SomaFM, which operates 25 commercial-free, listener-supported music channels. Via email he said that given current listenership and use, he estimates that SomaFM’s royalty costs could increase by as much as 10 times, up to about $20,000 a month. He does caution that because the full text of the CRB’s ruling has yet to be published, the full impact on SomaFM is still unknown.

Hodge also explained that the station is considering a number of cost saving measures to limit the number of performances SomaFM has to pay for, like implementing two-hour connection limits. Such measures can help ensure that a stream is being actively listened to, rather than playing to an empty room. “We’ve already started dumping connections after four hours, and that’s lowered our usage (and hence royalties) by 10% already,” he said.

Because several SomaFM stations emphasize small labels and independent artists, another approach is working with those who are willing to allow their music to be streamed royalty-free in exchange for links to their website or other consideration. “We expect that we’ll have 95% of the content on Drone Zone be direct licenses, and that’s our 2nd most listened to channel,” Hodge said. He also predicts that SomaFM will be able to direct license at least half the music for the Groove Salad channel.

A Devastating Blow to Internet Radio Diversity

Nevertheless, strategies like these may not be sufficient for many webcasters to keep their operations going if no WSA replacement comes to fruition. Then, the all-too-realistic scenario is that thousands of US-based small webcasters will be forced to end broadcasts because they’ll be unable to pay the new performance royalty rates. Such a mass exodus may come as soon as the end of January because of the dire situation of the longstanding internet broadcasting platform Live365 which is facing the dual challenges of the royalty rate increase and a loss of investor funding. Live365 hosts thousands of streaming stations, most of which would go silent if the service shuts down.

The predicted loss of small and medium internet radio stations would be a devastating blow to the internet as a viable broadcasting alternative to terrestrial radio. In effect, launching a sustainable internet music station will require as much start up capital as building or buying a terrestrial radio station. David Porter, the founder of the 8tracks streaming platform, estimates that it will require at least $10 to $15 million to enter the internet radio market in the US.

Of course, there also would be a devastating reduction to the diversity of broadcasts available on the internet. While non-commercial terrestrial stations and internet-only college stations are unaffected by this change, the internet radio world is home to countless stations that cater to niches and interests that are barely ever heard even on the most cutting edge terrestrial signals.

Smooth Jazz Chicago is one internet broadcast that exists to fill a niche that is nearly gone from terrestrial radio. The three year-old station is one of the first casualties, having shut down operations on December 31. According to an open letter by founder Rick O’Dell, the station could not absorb the rate increases.

All Access reports that New York City-based Pulse87 is another station turning off its stream. Joel Salkowitz, owner of the dance music webcaster, told All Access, “Apparently, SoundExchange has decided, on behalf of the artists whose interests it purports to represent, that they would rather get 100% of NOTHING versus some reasonable percentage of SOMETHING!”

That line of reasoning has some resonance in the music community. The Future of Music Coalition advocates for musicians and therefore generally favors increased royalty rates. At the same time, in a statement CEO Casey Rae said,

“We are concerned, however, that there does not appear to be a distinction in rates for small commercial webcasters. Digital music benefits from diversity, and services with more modest operations often help developing talent and niche genres find audiences while contributing to the overall revenue pool. If there isn’t an option for new entrants to perform music from a broad range of artists, we may end up with a less diverse digital landscape.”

Opportunities for Relief?

Though it is reasonable for both listeners and internet broadcasters to be gravely concerned, the timing of the CRB’s decision coming so close to the end of the year and just before the holidays means that there may yet be opportunities for relief. The still upcoming release of the full text of the CRB’s ruling could open a window for a new WSA-like settlement from SoundExchange, though webcasters will probably have to organize quickly in order to make their case.

Broadcast attorney David Oxenford, whose firm represented small webcasters in the negotiation of the WSA, observes that the current situation resembles that of 2001, after the very first internet radio royalties went into effect. He writes on his blog that, “As after the 2001 and 2006 decisions, it is possible that there can be post-decision settlement agreements, but whether such deals can be negotiated and enacted remains to be seen.”

SomaFM’s Hodge said that he is working with a group of similarly-sized stations that has retained an attorney to pursue negotiations with the CRB and SoundExchange. “We are hoping we can get some kind of extension to the small webcasters agreement which ended in 2015. The first step will be getting the CRB to allow SoundExchange to enter into a side agreement with small webcasters.”

Webcasters also may look to their Congressional representatives to intervene and apply pressure on SoundExchange or the CRB. A petition to Congress started on December 27 currently has over 1,700 signatures. Yet, with new rates now going into effect, under current law neither SoundExchange nor the CRB are obligated to make any adjustment.

Small and mid-sized internet broadcasters and their listeners should hope that this looming threat is an oversight, or an unintended consequence, rather than a more concerted effort to quash independent webcasters. We’ll continue to watch the situation closely in the following weeks.

RAIN News has been doing an excellent job covering this issue, which is not surprising–though still greatly appreciated–given the publication’s focus on internet radio. Another site to watch is Net Radio Blog, run by internet radio advocate Robin Henderson.

The post Why American Independent Internet Radio May Go Extinct in 2016 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Podcasters wanting an inside look into how public radio and podcast experts evaluate new show ideas have an opportunity to peek under the hood of WNYC’s Podcast Accelerator Pitch Session. On Friday at 3:30 PM PDT the Online News Association will live stream the five Podcast Accelerator finalists giving their last pitches to the judges: Dean Cappello, Chief Content Officer and Senior Vice President of WNYC; Glynn Washington, host of the popular podcast and public radio show Snap Judgment; and Emily Botein, Vice President of On-Demand Content for WNYC.

While the judges deliberate, Anna Sale, from WNYC’s Death, Sex & Money podcast, will lead panel of well-known podcasters discussing how they discovered their unique podcasting voices. Panelists include: Sean Rameswaram, host of Sideshow from WNYC/PRI’s Studio 360; Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s Note to Self; Al Letson, host of Errthang Show and Reveal; and Lauren Lapkus of Earwolf’s With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus. The event is hosted by Anna Sale from WNYC’s Death, Sex & Money podcast.

The five accelerator finalists have been working with WNYC podcast producers who have been mentoring them and helping to hone their pitches. You can learn more about the finalists in this post from ONA.

Tune in Friday 3:30 PM Pacific to watch their pitches and find out who wins at: ona15.journalists.org/sessions/wnycpodcast/

Music Industry Revenues from Streaming up 6%

Many listeners love streaming music services, while many artists and other critics complain that the royalties paid to musicians are paltry, and don’t make up for declining sales in CDs and digital tracks. Yet, there’s no sign streaming is going away, so it helps to understand just how much money is at play.

The Recording Industry Association of America just released its mid-year revenue report [PDF], showing a 6% increase in streaming revenues over the first half of 2014, for a total of just over $1 billion. Making up 32% of all music revenues, streaming still trails digital downloads, which brought in $1.23 billion, although downloads declined 3.6%.

Ad-supported on-demand services, like Spotify’s free tier, brought in the smallest portion of streaming revenues, $163 million, but 27% more than last year. SoundExchange–which covers most online radio–paid out $387 million, which is 20% more than the first half of 2014. Not surprisingly, paid subscription services paid out the most, at $478 million, marking a pretty impressive 25% increase over the same period last year.

The post Digital Watch: Watch the Final Pitches in WNYC’s Podcast Accelerator Competition appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Terrestrial and satellite radio still lead music discovery in the U.S. according to Nielsen’s new 2015 Music 360 report, released this week. Although 75% of the population now reports listening to music online, 61% of Americans say they found out about new music from radio. Surprisingly, this represents a 7% increase over 2014.

Despite the growth in online listening, there are still challenges for streaming services. Only 9% of people say they are somewhat or very likely to subscribe to a paid service in the next 6 months, with the top reasons being that they are too expensive, music can be streamed for free, and that people don’t think they’ll use the service enough to justify the cost.

Those reasons reminded me of a recent blog post by music industry analyst Mark Mulligan who argues that the “all-you-can-eat” access to an enormous catalog of music provided by services like Spotify and Apple Music is actually more than what the average person wants. He says these services and the roughly $10/month price combination “constrains appeal to the aficionados and the upper end of the mainstream.”

Instead, Mulligan suggests that “mainstreamers” may be more interested in subscriptions costing $3 or $4 a month for access to apps serving up genre-specific apps that feature “a dozen curated playlists, a handful of featured albums and a couple of radio stations.”

I find myself agreeing with Mulligan, in spirit, if not in absolute specifics. Although I happen to really enjoy the deep catalog of my music subscription, I also recognize that I am–and always have been–an outlier. I’m a music nerd and and audiophile (a deadly combo, I know), who also owns thousands of CDs and hundreds of vinyl LPs. I suspect there are millions like me in the US, but probably not enough to make even just one of the paid music services float.

While ten years ago I might have bought several full-price albums a month–adding up to much more than the cost of a Spotify subscription–most people probably bought only a handful a year. Today that person–who may only buy individual song downloads now–may be willing to spend about $50 a year on music, which is roughly equivalent to what her music budget has always been. By that logic a $4/month service seems about right.

Where I differ with Mulligan is his supposition that people would be happy with genre-specific apps. My experience and intuition is that most music listeners like more than one genre of music. Someone who likes Taylor Swift probably likes country and pop music, for instance.

However, taking a cue from over-the-top video services, this average listener might be interested in something that is more like Netflix or Hulu. That is, a service that offers a much smaller catalog of music than Spotify or Apple Music, but which crosses genres and periods. Neither video service offers up a comprehensive catalog of films or television available in the U.S., but each has a decent mix of new releases, combined with classics and obscurities.

I could imagine a music service that emphasized on demand access to selected tracks and singles from the Billboard 200 for folks who want to keep up on what’s popular across genres, or a separate one that focuses on the Hot 100, for listeners most interested in the hottest tracks. Providing immediate access to these tracks–combined with a curated selection of older tunes–might be just the thing for listeners who would otherwise listen to contemporary hit radio, but would like more control, without commercials.

What I don’t know is if such a service would actually be less expensive to operate than a Spotify. However, it may just be a numbers game–if Spotify could offer more constrained, but cheaper, services to many more subscribers the influx of cash might might be plenty to offset the additional streaming hours. Such service could have listening limits, capping a subscriber at maybe 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month, which would also keep royalty costs in line with the subscription price.

Adding curated playlists and stations to the mix would probably also help attract listeners, though I think on demand access is critical feature. We have to imagine someone spending much of their music budget with streaming, and one of the main reasons to buy a track is to listen to it whenever you want. So even if the new service doesn’t offer every track someone might want, as long as it offers enough songs that someone wants to hear, whenever she wants, a $3 or $4 monthly price still will be attractive. It may also be a better gateway to an unlimited plan down the line.

Funnily enough, as I was writing this it occurred to me that I was sort of describing a service that already exists. Amazon Prime Music offers a much smaller catalog than Spotify or Pandora, but available on-demand and ad-free. It does feature new albums, along with curated genre and thematic playlists drawn from that catalog. I’ve described it as the bubble gum in the pack of baseball cards, since it’s unlike anyone subscribes to Amazon prime to get the music–they’re more typically after the free 2-day shipping.

Amazon Prime costs $99 a year, but also includes commercial free streaming movies and TV and free Kindle books. At just $20 less than a year of Spotify or Apple Music that hardly makes Amazon Prime Music a bargain on its own. However, it might be a hit as a stand-alone service if it were available for half as much.

Of course, it could also be the case that most people are satisfied with streaming songs from YouTube and putting up with ads from Spotify’s and Pandora’s free tiers. But if Spotify actually follows through in imposing rumored limits on its free commercial-supported tier–like reserving new releases only for paid subscribers–then the low-priced, limited access service starts looking pretty good.

Let me know what you think. Do you pay for a streaming music service? Would you pay for a cheaper service, even if it had a slimmer selection? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post Digital Watch: If Streaming Music Were Cheaper, but Limited, Would Listeners Buy? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

TuneIn Radio has been kind of a deceptively quiet player in the online radio wars that have heated to a boiling since Apple introduced Beats 1 Radio at the end of June. Yet the service claims a user base of 60 million monthly active users who clearly find value in the service’s single-platform access to millions of streaming radio stations and programs.

While TuneIn has been generating income with banner display ads and pre-roll audio ads ahead of streams, yesterday the company added a paid subscription tier, TuneIn Premium. That service adds access to live Major League Baseball games, European soccer in the Barclays Premier League and Bundesliga, 40,000 audiobooks and over 600 commercial-free music stations. TuneIn Premium costs $7.99 in the US, $8.99 in Canada and £5.99 in the UK.

600 Commercial-Free Stations – Where Do They Come From?

The sheer number of music stations certainly got my attention. TuneIn says it struck deals with “the largest radio broadcasters,” to get the stations. Immediately I wondered how the company got big US commercial broadcasters like iHeartMedia and Cumulus to strip commercials out of their live stream. The answer is, they didn’t.

Instead, most of those 600 stations come from established internet-only broadcasters like 977 Radio, JazzRadio.com and RockRadio.com. Even if curated by humans, playback on all those stations is automated, which means the ads are inserted programmatically. That means each broadcaster just had to set up a separate, possibly identical, stream that just leaves out the commercials. TuneIn also offers its own premium genre stations.

So you won’t yet find commercial-free versions of your local terrestrial stations. A TuneIn spokesperson told me that the company plans to add terrestrial stations “in the coming months,” but was not able to speculate about how they would strip out ads. Ads in most commercial radio streams are also automated, but it would seem that live reads would be more difficult to tackle.

Listening to TuneIn Premium

I took TuneIn Premium for a spin using both a desktop browser and the mobile app to see what you get for your eight bucks a month.

First off, TuneIn Premium is not a great deal if all you’re after is baseball, since MLB.com sells its audio-only streaming service for just $20 a year. Clearly, TuneIn is hoping that everything available in Premium as a package might make it an attractive alternative to satellite radio or even an Audible audiobooks-only subscription, both of which cost a little more.

The value proposition for the music stations is a little less clear. While 600 is a lot of stations, there’s a lot of overlap within genres, where the difference between some stations isn’t obvious. For instance, under the Alternative Rock genre there are three “90s Alternative” stations–how does a listener know which to pick? On other hand, some genres, like Classical, have a paucity of options.

Also, these are strict streaming stations without any personalization or interactivity. There are no skips or giving songs the thumbs-down. That doesn’t matter if the stations themselves are well curated, and indeed that’s what TuneIn sees as a selling point.

Premium Sound Quality?

One of the advantages to paid subscriptions to competitors like Spotify and Pandora is that they deliver higher sound quality. I wanted to see if TuneIn Premium means you get premium sound quality. As far as I can tell, the answer is “no.” Now, this doesn’t mean there aren’t some good sounding stations available with Premium–there are. But most of these are delivered at the same quality as the broadcasters’ commercial, non-Premium streams.

JazzRadio.com offers a choice of 128kbps AAC and 320kbps MP3 streams, and both sound quite nice and are amongst the highest quality I’ve encountered on TuneIn Premium. Other broadcasters with premium stations like RockRadio.com and Radio Tunes also offer 128 kbps AAC and 320 kbps MP3 streams which all sounded better than the typical streaming terrestrial commercial station, both when listening over headphones and speakers.

I was a bit surprised to see that TuneIn’s own premium stations stream at much lower quality: 64kbps AAC and 128 kbps MP3. I find those to be the very lowest acceptable bitrates for music, better suited to background than for more focused listening. Over headphones distortion in the high end, especially with cymbals and other percussion, was very obvious and hard to ignore on TuneIn’s Infinite Indie and Classic Hip-Hop stations. Listening over speakers at low volume tamed these artifacts enough, but they became harder to ignore when I turned it up.

That’s a shame, because I enjoyed the mix of music on TuneIn’s own stations. Over the course of several hours I heard no repetition and a pleasingly broad array of tracks. I particularly like the balance of familiar favorites and more eclectic selections on the Punk Rock Radio station. For me a TuneIn Premium subscription would be much more attractive if all the commercial-free streams were streamed at higher bitrates.

The absolutely worst quality I encountered came from Big R Radio streams, which I truly found unlistenable. It sounds like Big R is using processing similar to big market top 40 broadcast stations, only they turn it up to 11. No matter which of Big R’s stations I tuned to, it was significantly louder and piercing than whatever station preceded it. Over headphones I had to take them off immediately because it was painful–and I didn’t even have the volume up loud. Big R offered up the opposite of a premium experience.

I spent less time with the sports channels and audiobooks. They definitely sounded compressed, though no worse than what I hear from the talk channels on satellite radio. I’m not a big audiobook listener, but could see how having access to them is a nice extra. However, it would be even better if you could download them for playback on road trips or airplanes when you have limited or no internet.

Interesting but Not Essential

On the whole TuneIn Premium is an interesting offering. Still, if I were going to subscribe to a commercial-free streaming radio service I would probably consider Pandora One first, at only $4.99 a month. For curated stations I would also take a hard look at Slacker Radio Plus at only $3.99. TuneIn Premium would only jump to the top of the list if the baseball and audiobooks were high priorities–but they’re not for me.

I am looking forward to seeing how TuneIn Premium brings terrestrial commercials stations on board, and how they get made commercial-free.

The post Digital Watch: Reviewing the New TuneIn Premium appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Last week, the D.C. Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals affirmed (see the full decision here) the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB)’s decision regarding the establishment of webcasting royalty rates, rejecting an appeal by college radio organization, the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS). These webcasting royalties are paid to musical performers who appear on the sound recordings played by any US radio station on its internet stream. In the decision, Chief Judge Garland writes,

Intercollegiate Broadcasting System, Inc., appeals a determination by the Copyright Royalty Board setting royalty rates for webcasting. Three years ago, we vacated and remanded the Board’s prior determination on this subject, concluding that its members had been appointed in violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. Thereafter, the Librarian of Congress appointed a new Board, which made the determination at issue here. Intercollegiate contends that the new Board’s determination again violated the Appointments Clause because it was tainted by the previous Board’s decision. The appellant also disputes the merits of the Board’s determination. For the reasons set forth below, we reject both challenges.”

In effect the IBS argued that because the previous incarnation of CRB was not properly constituted, any of its decisions required essentially a full and thorough re-review, including new hearings, in order to be constitutional. Instead, the new CRB had only done a review of the case before deciding to uphold the prior decision. However, the Court found that review to be adequate, therefore also upholding the board’s decision leaving the fees in place.

On Radio Survivor we’ve been covering the ins and outs of webcasting royalty rates. Back in December, 2010, the Copyright Royalty Board released its Initial Determination of Rates and Terms for the period 2011-2015 (these terms were finalized in 2011). Within those terms were rates for student broadcasters based on a settlement agreement made between another college radio organization, College Broadcasters Inc. (CBI) and SoundExchange (the third-party group that collects and distributes royalties to artists and copyright holders). Although both CBI and IBS work to advocate for college radio stations, the groups have different perspectives on webcasting rates. IBS expressed concerns about those rates and ultimately submitted a series of appeals.

In addition to IBS’ arguments about the procedures related to the appointment of the Copyright Royalty Board, the group also protested the rates set by the Board (a minimum flat fee for webcasting royalties of $500 a year), arguing that many college radio stations have tiny budgets and cannot afford that high a rate. According to the decision, IBS proposed lower rates for student broadcasters, specifically asking for “…two new categories of noncommercial webcasters: ‘small’ noncommercial webcasters (defined as noncommercial webcasters with usage up to 15,914 ATH [aggregate tuning hours] per month) and ‘very small’ noncommercial webcasters (defined as noncommercial webcasters with usage up to 6,365 ATH per month).”

Additionally, the U.S. Court of Appeals decision cites CBI’s agreement with SoundExchange as evidence that student broadcasters can afford the $500 a year rate. It also argues that SoundExchange’s own administrative fees are more than this minimum rate:

By contrast, the Board found affirmative evidence that noncommercial webcasters were indeed both ‘able and willing to pay the proposed fees.’ The most persuasive such evidence — as well as support for a $500 minimum fee as the amount that willing buyers and sellers would negotiate — was that College Broadcasters, an organization representing noncommercial educational broadcasters, had already reached a voluntary agreement with SoundExchange (the nonprofit entity that collects statutory royalties and distributes them to the copyright holders) that included the same fee.

…Finally, the Board also relied on testimony from SoundExchange’s chief operating officer, who testified that its average annual administrative cost per station or channel was approximately $825.”

This decision serves as a reminder that webcasters are required to pay the existing royalty rates. As Paul and I discussed in this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast, there has been some conflicting information about whether or not IBS stations needed to continue paying annual fees to SoundExchange while the case was being decided. It should now be clear that fees are required for all stations. In the meantime, College Broadcasters Inc. (CBI), has been operating under its existing agreement (in place until the end of 2015) and also penned a new settlement with SoundExchange last year, setting webcasting royalty rates and reporting requirements for its student broadcasters beginning in 2016.

It’s important for all webcasters to not only be aware of webcasting fees and regulations, but to also monitor any proposed changes on the horizon in order to plan for annual expenses and also to ensure compliance. In the early days of the Internet, it was a bit of the wild west and there was the perception that it was essentially free to run an online radio station. However, that’s not the case and anyone running an online radio station needs to be clear about responsibilities related to licensing fees. For more details, see SoundExchange’s website for a breakdown of the different fee structures for various types of webcasters.

The post U.S. Court of Appeals Rejects IBS’ Challenges to Copyright Royalty Board Webcasting Rates appeared first on Radio Survivor.

There has been quite a bit of action on the digital and internet radio front this past week, including more terrestrial radio in smartphones, the sign-off of a streaming radio service, and indications that free on-demand streaming music may have reached its peak, ready for an inevitable decline.

T-Mobile to Activate FM in Smartphones

FM radio chips will be lighting up in another carrier’s Android phones. Just a couple of weeks after AT&T’s announcement that it would activate the FM radios on new phones in 2016, the always colorful T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced on Twitter that his company will do likewise:

Hey @NextRadioApp – We heard you! We’re saying yes to FM chip and will push our OEM partners to support! #sayyestoFMchip

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 14, 2015

That leaves Verizon–the biggest wireless carrier–as the last holdout amongst the top four.

Though T-Mobile’s timeline isn’t known, Legere’s clearly indicates that the company will support the NextRadio listening app.

Mad Genius Bows Out

Less than a year ago I wrote about Mad Genius radio, an ad-free subscription streaming radio service that touted how it would pay much higher royalties to songwriters and artists than ad-supported services. When Mad Genius debuted founder Eric Neumann told me, “We’re profitable with a few hundred thousand paid subscribers. We don’t have to beat Pandora, or even be #5, in order to be profitable and pay the highest royalty rates.”

It turns out the market for the streaming music dollar was still too competitive for Mad Genius to reach that point of profitability. Neumann told RAIN News that the service is shutting down on Thursday. He said that despite the company’s best efforts their efforts, there was “so much noise that we are virtually unknown and untried.” Also, the company was unable to scare up investments because of the perception that the field was already too crowded by big players like Google, Apple, Pandora and Spotify.

Rdio Adds a Vowel with Terrestrial Radio

If you use the global #4 streaming music service Rdio now you have access to an additional 500 terrestrial broadcast stations owned by Cumulus, the second largest radio operator in the US and a Rdio stakeholder. Though I can’t imagine any Rdio user would object to having live radio streams available through the app, it’s also doubtful there was any strong demand for the feature either, since Rdio’s primary allure is on-demand listening, like Spotify.

Cumulus stations like San Francisco’s KFOG and Chicago’s WKQX are still available on competitor iHeartRadio’s app and platform, and the stations can still be streamed from their own websites. So it’s not like Rdio has any exclusivity to Cumulus stations.

Besides not having to switch apps to listen to live radio, the other main convenience is the ability to bookmark songs to add to a playlist. Paid users can download the songs for offline playback. That might have been a killer feature a decade ago, but now that the internet is primary medium used to discover new music, the added value of tagging songs as they’re played live is limited.

The Inevitable Decline of Free Streaming Music?

Rdio started out as a subscription-only service, but then added a free ad-supported tier two years ago, calling upon the ad sales expertise of its partner Cumulus. Obviously this was to keep up with Spotify and Pandora which gained market dominance with their own ad-supported free tiers.

However, the lower royalty rates paid to artists from the ad-supported services had brought them more scrutiny and criticism in the last year. More importantly, the major labels are pushing for more money, which may be leading Spotify to consider putting stricter limits on its free service.

A report by Digital Music News says that Spotify may be gating some music releases so that they are only available to paid subscribers, or only available to free users for short windows. Spotify’s contracts with the US major labels run out October 1, so the pressure is on.

While I certainly have enjoyed access to free, ad-supported streaming, in the back of mind I’ve also thought that the clock is ticking on the model. While the shift to streaming music services was inevitable, and the ad-supported model helped to jump-start its adoption in the US, the revenue limits for artists and labels have made it a bit of a devil’s bargain. Yet, because the streaming platforms, like Spotify, need the labels’ cooperation for continued success, the labels now have some leverage. This is no doubt aided by Apple Music and TIDAL both offering only paid subscription services.

Ad-supported on-demand streaming music isn’t going away, but I won’t be surprised if the free tiers become more limited, not just in terms of catalog but also in terms of listening hours. Personally, I think it’s reasonable to pay for on-demand access to music without ads, as long as both the terms and the sound quality are reasonable. Once I found a service that met those qualifications I subscribed, and I don’t mind paying that bill one bit.

The post Digital Watch: The Inevitable Decline of Free Streaming Music; FM in More Smartphones; Mad Genius Bows Out appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast, Paul Riismandel and I talked a bit about the release of Beats 1 Radio, giving our take on the brand new service. As part of the discussion I mentioned that some reviews of Beats 1 have been making comparisons with college radio. Aaron Lammer, the co-host of the LongForm podcast tweeted, “‘There has never been anything like Beats 1.’ Isn’t every college radio station almost exactly like Beats 1?” A Macgasm review states, “Apple has essentially created a celebrity run college radio station.”

Additionally, Ben Sisario writes about Beats 1 Radio announcer Zane Lowe in his review for the New York Times, saying,

Mr. Lowe has a kinetic style that is derived partly from hip-hop producers, and for American listeners it can come across as a slick and hyperactive version of a college-radio announcer who is eager to play all the coolest new tracks. (Although few college D.J.s have Mr. Lowe’s clout in music: On Tuesday, he teased listeners to tune in the next day for his interview with Eminem.

‘If you have ever had an inkling that you would enjoy Princeton’s very eclectic WPRB, but don’t have the time to tune in, or enough patience once you get there, it’s a more managed version of that experience,’ said Sean Ross, a radio analyst with Edison Research who pays close attention to station playlists. ‘But I imagine somebody in college radio right now saying, “Sheesh, I played Spring King ages ago”‘…”

And finally, on Consequence of Sound, Neg Raggett writes of some scrappy “college radio”-ish elements to Beats 1 Radio, saying, “Even the technical screwup…makes it all seem to feel more ‘real,’ a little college radio roughness amidst the glamour.”

So what exactly do all of these college radio references mean? On first listen, Beats 1 did not resemble a stereotypical college radio station to me. Promotional announcements are slick, I heard a plethora of mainstream artists like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, the playlist wasn’t all-encompassing, there were commercials, plus there was plenty of hype for Apple’s Beats service.

However, upon further listen, I guess that I have to admit that Beats 1 Radio is more diverse than mainstream radio. When I tuned in this week I heard a show with a guest artist DJ talking about his work and selecting tracks. That bit did remind me of college radio, as the host and DJ chatted about music. Later in the show I heard some retro tracks, including Outcast’s “Hey, Ya! (Radio Mix/Club Mix),” which was fun to hear after all these years, although the show host talked over the end of the piece. It’s definitely a pet peeve of mine to hear DJs talking over songs with lyrics, as it’s very distracting.

As others have mentioned, it’s clear that the DJs on Beats are hyping material in Apple’s catalog. Although that’s understandable, it’s probably one of the main reasons why I don’t think Beats 1 Radio is akin to most college radio stations. While on the surface it seems that the hosts have some say in the curation of their playlists, it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s a programmer’s hand at work behind the scenes. What I love about college radio stations that embrace the freeform philosophy, is that it’s obvious that DJs are selecting their own music and that typically leads to a different kind of airsound, which can be delightful, jarring, and eye-opening all at the same time.

If you’ve been test-driving Beats 1 Radio, what do you think? Does it remind you of college radio? Why or why not?

The post Is Beats 1 Radio Like College Radio? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On Monday Apple announced its much anticipated music service, called, appropriately enough, Apple Music. It essentially integrates Beats Music, which the company acquired last year, more closely with iTunes and iTunes Radio, and adds more celebrity-curated stations and playlists.

Apple Music doesn’t become available until June 30, so nobody has taken it for a spin yet. But looking at the feature list, frankly, the only thing that appears to make it special is that it comes from Apple. That means it will be instantly available on millions of iPhones, iPads and Macs, giving the service an immediate head start over every other streaming music platform. But I fail to see much else that rises above the heap.

It’s main service is on-demand access to some 30 million tracks, just like Spotify, Rdio, Deezer and Rhapsody. Features like artist-curated playlists also are found on other services. Certainly Apple’s deep pocketbooks mean well-known artists like Trent Reznor and Drake are participating, but Jay-Z’s TIDAL has also signed up big-name talent while Slacker has “artist takeover” stations curated by the likes of AWOLNATION, The Black Keys and Reba McEntire.

It’s also difficult to see anything innovative at all in Apple’s “Music Radio” stations, even the flagship “global station,” retaining the Beats name as “Beats 1.” Again, the only unique element is that Beats 1 is curated by three apparently well-known DJs based in LA, New York and London. There are thousands upon thousands of great internet stations out there, with dozens or hundreds curated by popular and famous DJs.

So, really, all Apple is bringing to the party is a service that is available by default on the most popular smartphones and tablets. That also means there’s a little less friction for the iPhone owner to sign up for Apple Music, since she has likely already set up an account with her credit card to buy apps or iTunes tracks.

If Apple Music’s major threat is to big, well-funded platforms like Spotify, Rdio and TIDAL, this begs the question of why Radio Survivor readers should care. The reason is Apple’s market power when it comes to online audio, and what affect it could have on internet radio as a whole, especially independent stations and networks.

For comparison, Apple’s embrace of podcasting, especially bundling its Podcasts app with iOS, helped spur the medium’s growth. It’s not a trivial thing that iTunes provides a pretty level platform for just about any podcast to be found. iTunes may highlight some podcasts and rank the most popular ones, but a surprising number of quirky and independent shows make their way onto the front page.

With Apple Music, the company is exercising this power, only to offer a closed platform. It’s too soon to tell how good, and therefore, how much of a threat the Apple Music stations will actually be. If iTunes Radio is any indicator, the threat level could be very low.

However, it’s easy money to bet that Apple Music Radio will exceed iTunes Radio’s low bar. So the real question is how much variety it offers, and how enjoyable it is to use. Because the on-demand service does not have an ad-supported free tier, this will push more listeners to try and use Music Radio. But, because it will be available free to any iOS user with an Apple ID, it’s likely that it will have commercials. The question is how frequent they are, and how annoying they’ll be. Keep in mind that online radio listeners appear to be less tolerant of ads than terrestrial radio listeners.

The commercial aspect alone reduces the threat, I think, since there are so many great non-commercial and commercial-free stations out there. I reckon a listener who has a favorite station has little incentive to ditch it in favor of Apple’s stations.

The big unknown lies with the thousands, or maybe millions of iPhone owners who don’t already use an internet radio app or platform. Will Apple Music Radio be good enough not only to lure them to listen, but to stay tuned?

In the same way that iTunes is in some ways synonymous with Podcasts, there’s the risk that Apple Music Radio could become synonymous with internet radio for too many people. Though I think that’s still a longshot, such an outcome would be detrimental to the medium as a whole. If Apple’s platform ends up being kind of crappy or too annoying with ads, then that might tarnish internet radio for a lot of new listeners. The more realistic threat is that Apple Music Radio is just good enough to capture millions of casual listeners who won’t be bothered to look for or try other stations.

That said, I’m more inclined to see a rising tide that raises all boats. While I’m certain some percentage of listeners will be happy to stick with whatever Apple Music provides, I think there will always be segment of people who, once they discover the medium, will seek out fresh and novel stations.

Despite being nearly 20 years old, internet radio still only makes up about 11% of all audio listening in US. There’s room for a lot more growth, and it’s hard for me to imagine that Apple can soak it all up.

However, that doesn’t mean we should take our eye off Apple, either. Market power does funny things to companies.

The post Digital Watch: Is Apple Music a Threat to Indie Internet Radio? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I received some constructive feedback on my post arguing that internet radio should retire MP3 streaming.

Twitter user Mark Mollineaux pointed out that browser-compatibility is a consideration:

@RadioSurvivor MP3 has by far the best cross-browser compatibility. I'd prefer an open standard like ogg, but many browser's won't play it–

— Mark Mollineaux (@bufordsharkley) May 11, 2015

This is important because having in-browser support for your stream’s codec means that the listener doesn’t have to download or install any kind of player app or plug-in. Even though plug-ins like Flash often seem ubiquitous, there are schools and work-places that prohibit adding any plug-ins. So, if your station’s stream requires one, then you won’t reach listeners in these places.

HTML5Test.com lets you compare browser feature sets, so I assembled a comparison of all major web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari) for their audio codec support. It turns out that both MP3 and AAC are supported by the most recent versions of all of them. Only users of much older versions, like Internet Explorer 8 (the current version is 11) are out of luck. This means that a station can safely switch over its primary stream to AAC stream with very little risk.

Nathan Moore, General Manager at WTJU-FM, let me know that his station uses the open source and royalty-free Ogg Opus codec as its streaming default. Opus can be seen as a more modern descendent of the Ogg Vorbis codec which was developed to provide an alternative to MP3 that wasn’t restricted by royalty fees.

I tuned in to WTJU’s 256kbps streams and found that they sound very good. The principal knock against Opus is that it is much less widely supported than AAC or MP3. Amongst major desktop browsers Chrome, Firefox and Opera will all play Opus streams, but the default browsers for Windows and MacOS, Internet Explorer and Safari, will not. Neither Android nor iOS support Opus natively, either. That said, Opus is the newest audio codec–version 1.0 was released in 2012.

The point still remains that there are very good alternatives to MP3 that provide superior quality at lower bitrates, and which are widely supported enough that MP3 can be made secondary, or even abandoned altogether.

The post Retiring MP3 Streaming – A Follow-Up appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The company behind RadioSearchEngine have ported some of its key features into a new mobile app, with a slightly different hook. Launched in 2013, RadioSearchEngine does what the name implies: it lets you search just about any streaming radio station for artists, songs or shows, and then plays it on demand.

The free 6 Seconds app brings similar live streaming music search to your mobile device with a slick, minimalist interface. When you start it up it presents you with its logo and indicators to swipe down to bring up “faves”–which is a shortcut to station formats and your favorite stations or songs–swipe down to search, and swipe left to skip songs. You can start listening right away by tapping the logo, which plays a random Top 40 station by default the first time you run the app, or on subsequent uses it plays the last format or favorite you listened to.

The name “6 Seconds” comes from the app’s promise to deliver most songs from within six seconds of its beginning, rather than starting you off after the second chorus. It’s other selling point is the ability to have unlimited skips, skipping songs as often as you like, as many times as you like. It’s aimed directly at Pandora, which limits skips to six times an hour (there’s that number again) up to 24 skips a day for free account users.

The 6 Second Test

First I took the 6-second-start feature for a ride, and I was impressed at how well it seems to work. Aside from songs that I am intimately familiar with it was difficult to judge if the six second mark had been strictly crossed, but when I did a search it rarely seemed as though more than a single verse had passed.

I decided to throw the app some curveballs by searching out artists that are less frequently heard on the radio, but not utterly obscure. Looking for King Crimson brought up only one station playing the band. The song was “In the Court of the Crimson King,” which was just in the midst of the opening mellotron line. Going with the royal theme I also looked for the rising young hard rock band Kyng, whose “Burn the Serum” was also playing on just one station. 6 Seconds joined in the middle of the first verse.

Picking current charting songs like Maroon 5’s “Sugar” or Mark Ronson’s and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk!” provided darn near-instant gratification while missing only a few beats. In most cases these songs were playing on three or more stations at any given time. They could be anywhere in the world–6 Seconds claims a database of 100,000 digital stations that are being continually indexed.

Once in a while the app appeared strangely prescient, streaming the station seconds before the song even started. I figure the cause is the station’s metadata (information about what it’s playing) is actually running ahead; sometimes a stations’ metadata can be delayed, too.

The Skip Experience

Skipping a track takes you to another song in the same genre or format, but playing on a different station. To some extent 6 Seconds is dependent on stations’ playlist and adherence to style. Skipping Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” brought me Human League’s 80s synth pop hit “Don’t You Want Me” coming from a soft rock station in Indianapolis that has both songs in it rotation. Of course, that was easily remedied by skipping again, bringing up Ariana Grande’s “Love Me Harder,” streaming from Radio Tau in Bologna, Italy.

Since these songs are streaming from actual stations, you may also encounter DJ patter, commercials, news and weather updates. Again, you can skip those anytime with left swipe.

The experience is kind of like having an infinite seek button. It’s addictive for the side of me that has a little bit of attention deficit. The app also seems much quicker than RSE was the last time I tried it. I can distinctly remember having a stream fail to start several times while using RSE. Over the course of dozens of searches and skips that didn’t happen to me once while using 6 Seconds.

Limitations

Despite the skip limitations, Pandora does have a couple of advantages over 6 Seconds. Building custom stations is not something 6 Seconds replicates. So if you’ve invested a lot of time getting your stations just right, you’re probably not going to be enticed by 6 Seconds. What 6 Seconds does let you do is favorite stations or songs for each access later.

The second limitation is minor: there’s no pause button, something that Pandora does have. Given that 6 Seconds is just playing live streams this makes sense. Though it would be kind of cool if the app had some kind of limited DVR feature, letting you pause a live stream. Even the iPod Nano lets you pause broadcast radio for fifteen minutes, and Robertson’s own DAR.fm supplies an online radio DVR service.

6 Seconds doesn’t sport all the functionality of its parent site. RSE lets you search for artists, genres, shows (including podcasts) and stations, while 6 Seconds is limited to searching artists. However, since the app is so streamlined this doesn’t feel like much of a limitation. I think I’d mind it more if songs didn’t start streaming so darn quickly.

Who’s It For?

The big question for 6 Seconds is similar to what I asked about RSE: who is this for? Despite the unlimited skip feature, I doubt it will pull away all but very casual Pandora users. I’m not sure it’s even a sure-fire replacement for users of free accounts with Spotify, Slacker, or iTunes Radio. I can certainly make a case for why someone might choose 6 Seconds instead–being able to skip commercials being one key advantage. But I’m not convinced that makes enough of a difference.

It can be a good alternative to a radio listening app for someone who doesn’t have a particular station in mind, but is in the mood for an artist or format. Compared to TuneIn or iHeartRadio it’s simply easier and faster to start streaming right away with 6 Seconds.

Like RSE I think 6 Seconds is an impressive feat of clever engineering. My question about who might use it aren’t a critique of its functionality, but rather an acknowledgement that it enters a very crowded and competitive field.

Then again, streaming radio and music is a growing sector, with new listeners to attract. The fact that it’s free and pretty much just works as promised are good reasons to try it.

The post Digital Watch: 6 Seconds Puts Radio Search w/ Unlimited Song Skips on Your Mobile appeared first on Radio Survivor.

One of my most eagerly anticipated radio station tours this year was to see ARTxFM in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve been friends with its founder, Sharon Scott, for several years and have been closely monitoring the station’s progress as a streaming radio station (it launched in 2012). In October 2014, ARTxFM was granted a construction permit for a new low power FM (LPFM) radio station and hopes to be on terrestrial radio soon (the station need to be on air by April, 2016).

Valentine at ARTxFM. Photo: J. Waits

Focused on the intersection between art and radio, ARTxFM is different from most radio stations in that it has deep connections with the local art community. During my visit to Louisville in February I was struck by the thriving art scene, with its wide array of local music festivals, arts organizations, and museums.

Wall of posters and flyers at ARTxFM. Photo: J. Waits

The ARTxFM website offers up a mission statement of sorts, speaking to its arts emphasis:

Committed to providing artists and community members access to the airwaves for creative and experimental use, ARTxFM employs sound, music, and conversation to explore the hidden properties of audio broadcasting.  Sculpting with frequency that is delivered in watts, ARTxFM amplifies contemporary art ideas and broadcasts international creative dialog.

Our definition of artist is broad.  It includes painters, performers, writers, athletes, filmmakers, philosophers, scientists, and more — the trained and untrained, the local and the superstar.  ARTxFM functions with the belief that the greatest forms of art, like the greatest forms of democracy, flourish within the free and unfettered exchange of ideas.”

Sharon Scott at ARTxFM. Photo: J. Waits

While in Louisville for the International Association of Popular Music (IASPM) conference, I took a break one day and snuck away to see ARTxFM with Scott. It was a bitterly cold day on Friday, February 20 and Scott’s son was home from school on his 5th snow day for the week. He and a friend tagged along as we drove to the station in Louisville’s growing arts neighborhood of NuLu (aka New Louisville). When we arrived, I was surprised to see snow-covered grape vines in front of the station’s building. Scott explained that the owners of the building have vineyards (Felice Vineyards) and make wine.

Snow-covered grape vines in front of ARTxFM building. Photo: J. Waits

After walking past the small vineyard, we entered the building that houses ARTxFM. The station has an open feel to it, with a large lobby, a couch, some desks, and a record library. The studio is carved out of one section of the space, with windows bordering the adjacent tenant. For sound dampening, curtains are positioned on poles surrounding the studio space. At the time of the my visit the space next door was empty, but Scott told me that a restaurant used to be there. Other building tenants include an architecture firm as well as private residences.

Scott’s son and a friend in the ARTxFM lobby. Photo: J. Waits

ARTxFM’s terrestrial call letters will be WXOX-LP (in a fascinating coincidence, WXOX was the name of a fictional college radio station in the movie A Matter of Degrees) and the station has embraced the association with love and heart-themed swag. I visited right after Valentine’s Day and the station had plenty of red, pink, and heart-emblazoned items on display, including heart-shaped key chains, Valentines, balloons, and membership cards with a Valentine-theme.

ARTxFM Valentine-themed membership card. Photo: J. Waits

Although it had been a tough week of snow days, with many DJs missing their shifts due to the weather, we arrived at the station just in time to see a bit of the Louisville Visual Art Association‘s show PUBLIC (it runs on Fridays from noon to 1pm). It was a nice surprise to see a live show, especially since Scott had been fielding calls from snowed-in DJs throughout my visit to Louisville.

DJs in ARTxFM studio. Photo: J. Waits

Generally there are live programs on ARTxFM from 8am to 2am every day, with some programmers sticking around into the graveyard shift hours. There are around 125 DJs/show hosts at ARTxFM and Scott told me that she’s been “blown away” by the work of all of the volunteers at the station. She added that it’s been gratifying to see all of the on-air guests as well, telling me that she feels like the station has helped to create community within the various art and music scenes in town. The importance of the local art scene is apparent as one looks around the station, as there are posters and flyers for an array of Louisville events.

Local music bin in ARTxFM studio. Photo: J. Waits

Scott said that a few bands and arts projects have arisen from connections made at ARTxFM, including international collaborations like SoundCamp’s 24-hour REVEIL broadcast for which ARTxFM provided a live recording from Derby Day. The event aired sounds of sunrise from all over the world, with the 24-hour broadcast following the sunrise.

Sharon Scott cues up vinyl in ARTxFM studio. Photo: J. Waits

I was excited to see that ARTxFM has a music library at the station, which includes vinyl, CDs, and cassettes. There’s a bin of local music inside the studio and a larger music library in the lobby. Scott said that DJs do play physical music and she told me that they’ve even had some all-tape programs. She mentioned that there are definitely some DJs who prefer playing vinyl, whereas others do their shows using 100% digital music played from iPhones or computers. A good percentage of DJs are somewhere in-between, playing a variety of music from various sources.

Cassettes at ARTxFM. Photo: J. Waits

When there isn’t a live DJ during the late night hours, ARTxFM airs a mix of instrumental and foreign language music overnight. Music shows are typically 2 hours in length and talk shows run for one hour. Scott explained that the station plays an incredibly broad range of music, with hosts who specialize in vintage recordings (including Alan Lomax Archive curator Nathan Salsburg, who does the “Root Hog or Die” show, which got its start on East Village Radio), Japanese experimental music, Spanish-language music, classical music, hip hop, Russian and Eastern European music, the blues, and reggae.

Vinyl records at ARTxFM. Photo: J. Waits

Local high school students also intern at the station and produce a show as part of their work in the journalism and communications program at school. Additionally, the Squallis Puppeteers do the Sunday morning kids show, “Art is for Everyone.”

PSA and Promo boxes in ARTxFM studio. Photo: J. Waits

In keeping with its focus on the arts, ARTxFM runs at least one art-themed talk show on weekdays at some point during the 10am until noon block of programming. Various arts organizations, including museums, host some of these shows. A few of the art-themed shows across the ARTxFM schedule include a film talk show (Film Fatale), a contemporary art program called “Audio Art 101” as well as “The Medium is Sound,” which does sound experimentation and brings in sound artists for live performances.

Promotional materials at ARTxFM. Photo: J. Waits

Scott explained that, “Artists haven’t had access to the airwaves” traditionally and told me, “That’s basically the idea behind ARTxFM.” As part of the station’s mission, she said that they encourage DJs to not only think about the medium of radio, but also to work on “pushing the medium.”

Vinyl record spinning at ARTxFM. Photo: J. Waits

Thanks so much to Sharon Scott for sharing not only ARTxFM with me, but also for touring me around Louisville and beyond (we went on some radio station road trips together). This is my 83rd station tour report. I have one more Kentucky field trip to go, as well as a few visits to stations in D.C., Virginia, and California. See my most recent field trips on Radio Survivor and see all of my station field trips on Spinning Indie.

The post Touring Future LPFM Radio Station ARTxFM in Louisville appeared first on Radio Survivor.

After putting up with painfully slow DSL Internet service for the past few years, my family just switched to cable and in the process moved to cable TV. I have always been a huge television consumer and was the master of my video cassette recorder (VCR) back in the day. Digital video recorders (DVRs) came on the scene just in time for me, as I had a frustrating period in the 1990s when my cable TV/VCR situation couldn’t handle heavy nights of taping multiple shows on different channels. I remember being addicted to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and having class at the same time and being frustrated by the limitations of VCRs at the time.

I got my first TiVo in 2002 and fell in love. Finally I could record multiple shows at the same time, search for shows by genre or channel, and so much more. After a few blissful years and an upgrade to HD TV, I had to abandon my TiVo for a few different (and inferior) DVRs. It was never quite the same.

This week I rekindled my relationship with TiVo. After setting up our new cable service, we installed the TiVo Roamio. When I perused our cable channel guide last night, I initially thought that we no longer had music channels like we did with our former satellite service. Curious about that, I started searching around and found a “music/photos” section on the TiVo menu.

It turns out that my TiVo Roamio is an Internet Radio! On the music menu, I have the option of tuning in to Live365, Pandora, and Spotify. I can also check out podcasts from the Podcaster menu.

So, today, my 9-year-old daughter and I took our new TiVo Internet Radio for a spin. Although I have been an early adopter as far as television, I’ve fallen behind when it comes to Internet music, being more of an old-school radio gal. Ironically, TiVo may change all that.

TiVo was my Gateway to Pandora Radio

It’s weird to admit that TiVo was my gateway to Pandora, as I set up my  first Pandora station today. Although I’ve always eschewed these computer-generated music playlists (how can they possibly compete with human-curated content?), my daughter and I had a lot of fun creating various Pandora stations.

The Pandora set up was super easy, as we were prompted with an on-screen sign up option. After retrieving a code listed on our TV screen, I was able to set up a free Pandora account on my computer. Moments later we got going through the TiVo interface. I started things off by building a station based on one of my favorite artists, Smog. The playlist launched with a Smog track and then transitioned into familiar (and expected) favorites by Neutral Milk Hotel, Cat Power, and Bonnie Prince Billy, before transitioning back to another Smog song (one of my favorites, “Bathysphere”). Although I didn’t discover any new music through this short stint with “Smog Radio,” it was a satisfying listen, taking me through music that I already like.

Growing impatient (because she wanted to take control of the TiVo), my daughter asked for a turn. Instead of letting her try out Pandora, I asked her to take a look at Live 365 for me.

Perusing Live 365’s Radio Options on TiVo

I’d taken a cursory look at TiVo’s Live 365 offerings last night and was pleased to see that I could tune in to a wide variety of stations, including some college radio stations (in the “alternative” and “freeform” sections). My daughter checked out the main menu and initially chose “classical.” After an unsatisfying listen to “All Relaxing Classics” (she said, “This looks weird” after seeing the album cover artwork), she changed her mind and said, “I want to listen to blues. Wait? Is there more? I want to listen to jazz.”

So then she did a survey of various jazz station options on Live 365. I had to laugh when she asked, “What’s the difference between soft and smooth jazz?” as I don’t see much of a distinction myself. After trying out “Soft Jazz FM,” “Smooth Jazz 247,” “Soft Jazz Mellow Blend,” “The Jazz Mix,” and “Jazz all the Time,” she came up with her answer, saying, “Clearly soft and smooth jazz are not good at all, they should be called bad jazz.” She liked “The Jazz Mix” a lot more and said, “Overall this is really awesome.” We both enjoyed “Jazz all the Time” the most, but by this point my daughter said, “I need to listen to something else besides jazz.”

We then switched over to the menu of Pop stations on Live 365 and my daughter selected “the Rhythm of the City” station. As we launched it we heard an ad for the Live 365 Android app and then a Geico ad, followed by yet another ad. My daughter grew frustrated with the whole endeavor, exiting the station before we even heard a track.

I asked her if we could try some college radio and she relented. We went to the Freeform category and chose SFCR/KUSF-in-Exile, our local San Francisco community radio station (which is made up of many former college radio DJs from KUSF-FM). I recognized the DJ’s name that popped up on our screen (Fari), but the interface was a bit confusing as it wouldn’t have been clear to most that we were looking at a show name as opposed to a track name. After listening to a track that “sounds very Spanish,” according to my daughter, she was ready to move on, saying, “Now, I want to make my own music one.”

Before steering her back to Pandora, I made my daughter take one more detour to Podcaster.

Podcaster – It’s Like Radio on TV!

On my initial look at TiVo’s Podcaster last night, I was amazed and amused that I could listen to radio podcasts through my TV. There’s popular stuff in the Featured section including “The Adam Carolla Show,” “the Moth Podcast,” “the Nerdist,” and “Radiolab.” You can also listen to sports, comedy, entertainment, and music podcasts, as well as to a bunch of NPR podcasts (I’m listening to a NPR “Pop Culture Happy Hour” podcast about Stan Freberg as I write this). There’s also an option to type in RSS feeds for other podcasts, so in theory you can listen to whatever you’d like through TiVo (is this what Paul dreamed of last year, when he wrote that podcasting needed to enter every room of the home?).

But what’s really surreal, is that from the Entertainment menu you can tune in to “Old Time Radio Suspense” and “Old Time Radio Thrillers.” Sadly, I got an error message for both podcasts (“Sorry, there was a problem accessing this podcast. Please try again later.”), but I can’t wait to check again to see if I can really listen to old time radio on my TV.

My daughter was pretty confused by Podcaster, saying, “I thought you were able to do podcasts on the TV. When you can do a video and put it online and it will be live.” She plowed through anyway and selected “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” She noticed an episode about a plane crash and asked if she could watch it. After listening for a bit she said, “It needs to have pictures.” I then broke the news to her that podcasts are just audio. After hearing that, my daughter told me, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” so I let her go back to Pandora.

My Daughter Learns that Pandora isn’t really On-Demand – Where’s “Skyfall” on “Skyfall Radio”?

After our brief tour of Podcaster, we returned to Pandora. My daughter was desperate to create her own station and decided to do one based on the Adele song “Skyfall.” The station launched with a James Newton Howard track (“The Hanging Tree”), which my daughter recognized, telling me, “It’s from the Hunger Games. I like it.” We then heard tracks by One Republic, Garbage, as well as some by Adele. Overall it was a mix of songs that my daughter knew and songs that she didn’t know. Ultimately, though, she was a bit frustrated because she really wanted to hear “Skyfall.” After skipping through a few tracks and still not hearing the song, she retreated to her room so that she could hear “Skyfall” on her own devices.

I Learn that Pandora Really Can Be a Discovery Tool

After my daughter left the room, the addictive nature of Pandora became apparent to me. I kept thinking about other stations that I wanted to create and was curious to hear what other tracks Pandora would come up with. For my next station, I picked another old favorite, the 1990s band Tiger Trap. Although the station started out with some familiar bands, including the Crabs, Heavenly, and Chin-Chin, I was also happy to hear some bands that I was less familiar with, including Veronica Falls and Cloud Nothings. I’m guessing that since I chose a more underground artist for my station, I was presented with some more adventurous options than my daughter’s more mainstream Pandora channel.

When in Doubt, There’s Always YouTube, even on TiVo

As I was finishing up this story, I was listening to a New York Times music review podcast through TiVo. My daughter wasn’t all that interested in listening to music critics chatting about Sleater-Kinney’s new album, so she grabbed the remote control and scrolled to the main TiVo menu in order to select “Find TV, music, and videos.” From that screen she had the option of searching on YouTube. Of course that’s now the ultimate music library for the 2000s, so she searched for “Skyfall” and finally had her moment of satisfaction, getting the chance to listen to the exact song that she wanted to hear when she wanted to hear it.

And Don’t Forget MusicChoice, Digital FM, and even Spotify….

After spending much of the day investigating our music/radio/podcasting options on TiVo, we still haven’t explored it all. In order to make use of Spotify we need to sign up for a Spotify Premium account. I think we’ll have to leave that for another day…

And, by the way, after checking out all of these newfangled online music options, I found out that our TV does actually have standard TV radio fare, including “Music Choice” stations across a range of genres, as well as some digital FM stations, where I can tune in to local San Francisco Bay Area stations like KQED, KSJO, KPFA, KOIT, KUFX, KFRC, KDFC, KFOG, KITS, KSAN, and more.

Who knew that there was so much radio on my TV.

The post My TiVo Roamio is an Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Just under eleven months ago pioneering internet radio station East Village Radio shut down after eleven years of operation. Station CEO Frank Prisinzano cited the costs of royalty payments and internet service as making it difficult for East Village Radio to even break even.

Now, the station is poised for a comeback, promising a return to the internet airwaves this month. This time around East Village Radio has the backing of an internet radio startup called Dash Radio. According to a recent Wired feature, Dash is the brainchild of former Los Angeles radio DJ Scott Keeney a/k/a DJ Skee who has the backing of funders like Epic Records CEO L.A. Reid, and even East Village Radio co-founder Peter Ferraro.

Dash has been broadcasting since last August and now serves up 56 stations that don’t look different from the kind of music offerings on SiriusXM, with ones dedicated to genres like funk, classic rock, electronica or hair metal, along with more eclectically curated stations like Odd Future Radio. Dash also will carry a Record Store Day station timed for that annual vinyl celebration on April 18.

Dash is available free on the web and through smartphone apps. The service is also commercial-free. That begs the question of exactly how Dash intends to generate revenue for its investors. I understand that there is or will be paid access to program archives, but I saw no sign of it on the web version. As a listener I won’t complain, though it begs yet another question of how long Dash and its stations–like East Village Radio–can serve listeners for free without some kind of commercial support.

Open Internet Lawsuits Go to the D.C. Circuit

The first lawsuits challenging the FCC’s new Open Internet Order were filed two weeks ago. Because they were filed in two different Appeals Court districts, there was a lottery held to decide which court will hear the cases. The winner turned out to be the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, right in the Commission’s back yard.

On its face this seems like a technicality, but the venue can have real consequences for any appeals case. Some circuits are regarded to lean more liberal or conservative, for instance. Not unsurprisingly, the D.C. Circuit tends to be a little deferential to government agencies, yet leans conservative.

In fact, the D.C. Circuit struck down the FCC’s previous Open Internet rules. That might look like a strike against the Commission in defending the new Order. However, with these new rules the FCC was pretty much following the instructions of the Court, which rebuked the Commission for having taken such pains to avoid Title II last time around.

Still, there’s a good chance that the D.C. Circuit won’t hear these challenges. That’s because, as I noted earlier, the suits were probably filed prematurely. In general regulatory orders are not open for legal challenges until they are published in the Federal Register–something that has yet to happen. Of course, it will be up to the First Circuit to determine if the suits will proceed or be dismissed. If they are dismissed, then the venue selection process will start over again when the next round of suits are inevitably filed.

The post Digital Watch: East Village Radio Stages a Comeback appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Yesterday morning I was taking a stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District when I spotted signage for RBMA Radio on a shop window. Intrigued, I crossed the street and wandered in to Dijitalfix to find out what was going on. In a corner of the funky audio store, bordered by a window facing busy Valencia Street, a vacant pop-up radio station was set up and awaiting its roster of afternoon DJs.

RBMA Radio storefront in San Francisco before its daily broadcast. (Photo: J. Waits)

Signage and a stack of schedules clued me in to the fact that I happened to stumble across this temporary radio station on the last day of its 15-day run. I peeked in to the studio and also spotted Polaroids of some familiar folks who had popped by the station, including a community radio DJ friend. Intrigued, I came back a few hours later in order to catch some of the live broadcast.

When I returned to RBMA Radio just before 4pm, the station was in full swing and its hosts, producers, and DJs were preparing to transition from one program to the next. An experimental metal label, Flenser Records, had been the focus on the 3pm hour and legendary club DJ Doc Martin was on the decks preparing to spin music and chat starting at 4pm. In the midst of it all, I was able to speak to two of the station’s hosts and producers, Shawn Reynaldo and Vivian Host, and they filled me in on the details about RBMA Radio.

Host Marke Bieschke in RBMA San Francisco studio. Photo: J. Waits

A project of the Red Bull Music Academy, RBMA Radio is a streaming radio station that’s been around for a decade as an on-demand station (it’s still on-demand in Europe), but just recently kicked off its new life in the United States as a streaming station with the 15-day pop up event in San Francisco. Host told me that the plan was for RBMA Radio to have one main channel, as well as an array of genre-specific sub-channels. The current offerings include “Heads and Tales” (interviews), “On Stage” (live performances), “Beat Suite” (hip hop, R&B), “Club Electric” (beats, electronic music), “In My House” (house music), and “Really Strange Music” (avant-garde, experimental, drone, etc.).

I didn’t know much about the Red Bull Music Academy, but Host gave me a nice run-down of its activities. The separate division of Red Bull runs an annual music academy for which it hand picks young musicians for an intensive training program.

According to its website,

In addition to the academy’s workshops, it also produces RBMA Radio as well as an online magazine. The radio station plays a range of material, including “interviews, mixes, feature documentaries, artist-curated playlists, and live recordings from some of the best festivals and clubs in the world,” according to the Red Bull Music Academy website. Host explained that since many prominent artists and musicians come through the academy, interviews with them are often featured on RBMA Radio.

View into RBMA Radio in San Francisco. Photo: J. Waits

Reynaldo and Host have San Francisco radio connections, having both worked in college radio at KALX-FM and in commercial radio at Live 105 (where they did the Subsonic show). Hired by RBMA Radio to help set up the temporary San Francisco station, they worked to program it, as well as produce and host various segments.

During its two week run, RBMA Radio San Francisco broadcast live from from 2pm to 10pm daily. The small studio was outfitted with turntables, microphones, mixers, computers, and even a couple of cassette decks. The lightweight walls and door were funky, but as a I found out, they weren’t necessarily soundproofed. A few folks chatting right next to the studio walls were asked to move, as they could be heard in the booth. On the flip side, during the broadcasts, passersby and shoppers could listen in via speakers in the store and on the street.

Doc Martin spinning music at RBMA Radio in San Francisco. Photo: J. Waits

Following the San Francisco pop-up, RBMA Radio will be heading to Miami later this month to do a live broadcast during Miami Music Week and the Winter Music Conference. Host told me that it’s exciting to do these pop-ups in various places as it gives “access to different people” in each city. She said that the live broadcasts have been fun in that guests and hosts have been hanging out and connecting over music. As an example of that, she told me that musician Tommy Guerrero came by to spin records and that following that some folks from Groove Merchant Records were in the studio, which prompted Guerrero to hang out even longer in order to check out their set. Host said, “that’s the ideal scenario” and added that the guests in San Francisco were “all over the map” and included “experimental electronic” artists, rappers and producers, as well as local club DJs.

RBMA Radio studio in San Francisco. Photo: J. Waits

A peek at the RBMA Radio schedule in San Francisco included programming from record stores and labels (Superior Viaduct, Aquarius, Amoeba, Vinyl Dreams, Slumberland, and Dark Entries) as well as an array of artists and DJs, including Maggi Payne, Dose One, Robert Rich, Wobbly, Holly Herndon, Dan the Automator, Wooden Shjips, DJ Stef, and Greg Ashley. Additionally, the station did some broadcasts from venues in San Francisco, including the End Up on the station’s closing night.

March 11th line-up for RBMA Radio in San Francisco. Photo: J. Waits

I was intrigued to hear about RBMA’s more experimental music focus, as that’s also the orientation of the station where I DJ and volunteer (KFJC-FM). She said that RBMA is “trying to highlight…pioneers in their genre” with an emphasis on people who are “left of center” or “special” in some way. She joked that the staff is comprised of a bunch of “music nerds.”

The RBMA offices also have radio studios in New York and Los Angeles and they have done some live radio events in the past from festivals. I asked if they’d ever partnered with local radio stations (in part because I knew that the temporary RBMA pop-up in San Francisco was within a few blocks of two other streaming radio stations) and Host mentioned that they had partnered with a station in Tokyo during last year’s RBMA in Japan and that they had also done some projects with East Village Radio and Dub Lab.

RBMA Radio studio in San Francisco during broadcast. Photo: J. Waits

Thanks so much to the RBMA Radio crew for the inside scoop on the San Francisco station and for allowing me to pop in during yesterday’s live broadcast. Some of the San Francisco programming will stream again on the station’s website, so check back if there are shows that you want to hear again (I’d love to catch the Bay Area Rap History special that ran a few days ago).

This was an unexpected addition to my Spinning Indie Radio Station Field Trip series (my 79th visit, for those keeping track), so watch this space for more reports from my recent radio station visits in Kentucky. See my most recent field trips on Radio Survivor and see all of my station field trips on Spinning Indie.

The post RBMA Radio’s Pop-Up Broadcast Concludes in San Francisco appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The most significant digital radio news this week is the FCC’s vote on Open Internet rules happening at Thursday’s open meeting. The proceedings begin at 10:30 AM EST, and will be streamed live.

I posted an overview on Tuesday, and things haven’t changed much since then. The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee held a hearing Wednesday where Republican lawmakers warned that the new rules will be tested in court and fail. But that was mostly smoke, with no fire.

Subcommittee Chair Greg Walden and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton have introduced a bill that would prohibit many of the things targeted by the Open Internet proposal, like paid prioritization of content (a/k/a internet fast lanes), but at the expense of giving the FCC less authority over internet service providers. House Democrats are unlikely to sign on, and according to the New York Times senior congressional Republicans concede that without Democratic support no alternative net neutrality legislation is going to pass.

All five commissioners have a few hours left to work behind the scenes on edits they would like to see introduced into the final proposal, so the rules aren’t written in stone yet. We’ll be watching the FCC tomorrow to learn what the future of internet will be.

Slate Debuts Panoply Podcast Network

On the podcasting front, The Slate Group announced a new podcast network called Panoply with media partners like The New York Times Magazine, HBO Documentary Films and The Huffington Post. Right now the company says it has “12 commitments from a total of 18 shows,” and is adding a new Slate podcast, Whistlestop with John Dickerson. These join Slate’s fifteen existing podcasts, like Political Gabfest.

Slate has been producing podcasts for a decade, upping its investment last year with new shows like The Gist with Pike Pesca, Slate Money and Lexicon Valley, primarily featuring personalities already on or recruited to the company’s roster. The new network is a big move, and represents a branching out to assist other companies in creating podcasts featuring their own talent, and then co-branding them under the Panoply name.

The podcasting train blasts forward, full-speed ahead.

BBC Internet Changes Upset Listeners

Apparently, many listeners are upset because their internet radios will no longer play some BBC stations. According to a blog post from the BBC’s Head of Media Services Henry Webster, this situation is due to a couple changes, mostly having to do with updating infrastructure to use more modern formats and protocols. Formats are the kind of file, like MP3 or AAC, which the audio is encoded in. Protocols are the way these streams are delivered to players.

First, the broadcaster has ended support for Windows Media Audio (WMA) streaming, a standard that dates back to the 90s which Webster says accounted for 2–5% of the Beeb’s online listening. Complicating the situation was the fact that there was no way to know what devices were accessing the WMA streams, making it difficult to know which manufacturers to contact ahead of the change, resulting in some radios losing these broadcasts.

Second, the BBC changed the way it served SHOUTcast MP3 streams, also relied upon by many devices, causing inconsistent playback for some. These are now defaulted to deliver 128kbps MP3 streams, whereas before many stations were available in a higher quality and higher bitrate 320kbps stream. The high quality versions are now only offered in a 320kbps AAC stream in a protocol that isn’t supported universally. In particular users of the Logitech Squeezebox or Sonos system are only receiving the lower bitrate MP3 stream.

The downgrade to the the Radio 3 classical music service, particularly rankled many listeners. Due to the outcry the MP3 version of Radio 3 has now been restored.

The BBC says it is working with device manufacturers, like Logitech, to resolve the problems so that more devices can access the high quality AAC streams. Listeners who use the BBC’s website or apps are not affected.

Problems like these affect plenty of other internet broadcasters. It’s just that most don’t offer 57 different streams to such an enormous global audience, so we rarely hear about them. However, the situation does highlight an enormous difference between terrestrial and internet radio. Broadcast standards change only about every 25 years or so, and so far these updates–like adding stereo or HD Radio–have been backwards compatible. Your 1960s transistor radio receives local FM stations just as well as a new one fresh out of the box.

By contrast, there is no single standard for internet radio, and no single standards body to define one. Now, the situation is better than in the early 2000s when there were competing and incompatible formats like RealAudio and Windows Media Audio alongside MP3, often forcing broadcasters to offer up three or more separate feeds. Nevertheless, the SHOUTcast MP3 standard that the BBC is moving away from is some fifteen years old, which seems ancient in internet terms.

The flip side is that internet radio can innovate, adding features and improving sound quality, more quickly than terrestrial broadcast. The only caveat is that migrating to new formats or protocols threatens to leave some percentage of listeners behind.

Because it is perhaps the world’s predominant radio broadcaster, the BBC’s experience likely will serve as a case study for other broadcasters. Thinking optimistically, it might even provoke a little more collaboration between internet broadcasters and device manufacturers. That would be nice.

The post Digital Watch: Net Neutrality Ready for Vote, Slate Debuts Podcast Network, BBC Upsets Internet Listeners appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In honor of Sunday’s 4-year anniversary of the shutdown of University of San Francisco’s college radio station KUSF’s 90.3 FM signal, it seemed like the perfect occasion to visit KUSF-in-Exile/San Francisco Community Radio (SFCR).

LP at KUSF-in-Exile. Photo: J. Waits

But first, a little bit of background…

January 18, 2011 Shutdown of KUSF 90.3 FM

Just before 10am on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, KUSF’s DJ Schmeejay got a tap on the shoulder and was directed to leave the studio. Unbeknownst to him, the college radio station (see my 2009 tour) was about to be taken off the air in preparation for its transfer to new owners.

We soon learned that University of San Francisco planned to sell the 90.3 FM license to Classical Public Radio Network as part of a complicated deal that would move formerly commercial classical music station KDFC to non-commercial 90.3 FM.

Signage at KUSF in Exile. Photo: J. Waits

KUSF volunteers, fans, and supporters were outraged and a long battle ensued (which we chronicled) over the future of 90.3 FM. Protests, public meetings, letter writing campaigns, rallies at San Francisco’s City Hall, and legal filings were just part of the overall effort to keep KUSF over the terrestrial airwaves.

KUSF-in-Exile Launches in March, 2011

By March, 2011, in order to keep the radio spark going, KUSF-in-Exile launched from an off-campus location at Light Rail Studios in San Francisco’s Bayview District. Originally supported by WFMU (which offered to host the webstream initially), KUSF-in-Exile was a tangible way for KUSFers to continue doing radio.

Save KUSF sign at KUSF-in-Exile. Photo: J. Waits

After the old KUSF studio was demolished in May, 2011, students were without a radio station of any form on campus until the relaunch of student radio station KUSF.org in October 2012. Some traveled to KUSF-in-Exile in order to keep doing radio. In June, 2012, the FCC granted the assignment of the KUSF 90.3 FM license to Classical Public Radio Network, but not without chastising them for some misdeeds (to the tune of a collective $50,000 penalty). Today, Classical Public Radio Network airs KDFC-branded programming over 90.3 FM, with new official letters of KOSC.

Following the license transfer, legal appeals continued.

Touring KUSF-in-Exile/San Francisco Community Radio in 2015

I’d visited KUSF-in-Exile a number of times over the past 4 years, but never wrote up an official “field trip” post. So, inspired by the anniversary of the KUSF shutdown, I stopped by KUSF-in-Exile/San Francisco Community Radio in order to see a bit of DJ Schmeejay’s guest stint of the “Sunday Night Spotlight” program.

SFCR/KUSF in Exile studio. Photo: J. Waits

As mentioned earlier, DJ Schmeejay was on the air when KUSF was shut down on January 18, 2011, so it was only fitting to have him return to the studio for the anniversary. He’d been a regular DJ on KUSF-in-Exile in the past, but, until Sunday night, hadn’t done a show there since June, 2013.

Vinyl spinning during Terry Dactyl’s show at KUSF-in-Exile. Photo: J. Waits

I got to KUSF-in-Exile/SFCR on Sunday, January 18, 2015 at around 5:30pm, soon after DJ Schmeejay had arrived to prepare for his show. DJ Terry Dactyl was on the air, doing her “Soul Shakedown” program. We all chatted for a bit in the studio and were then rousted by the sound of the loud studio phone ringing during one of Terry Dactyl’s mic breaks. I was told that they have explicit instructions to not turn the ringer down or off, as there are fears that DJs won’t notice phone calls coming in.

DJ Schmeejay at KUSF-in-Exile in 2015. Photo: J. Waits

It turns out that the phone call was from another visitor, who was at the door of the station. Jeff, a long-time KUSF listener, was just stopping by to show his support for the station. He mentioned that he had every KUSF promotional item ever produced and shared memories of listening to the station back when he was a student at USF.

Records and CDs at KUSF in Exile/San Francisco Community Radio. Photo: J. Waits

I hadn’t been to KUSF-in-Exile for a few years, but it was largely the same, although it seemed a bit cozier with more artwork on the walls. There are a couple of couches, some sticker-covered cabinets from the KUSF days, shelves housing CDs, LPs, and 7″ records, and some fun pop culture artifacts (including the often-spied radio station skull).

KUSF in Exile/San Francisco Community Radio studio. Photo: J. Waits

The station is housed in an open studio that connects with the rehearsal/recording space Light Rail Studios (which is the station’s landlord). Because of that, there’s often an opportunity for recording bands to pop in to the station to do an interview or live set.

The last album played on KUSF 90.3 FM. Photo: J. Waits

At 6pm DJ Schmeejay launched into his show, starting things off with the very track by Vangelis that was cut off mid-way through on January 18, 2011. Following that, he played a slowed down version of George Michael’s “Father Figure,” playing the 45rpm single at 33rpm. It was a spooky take on the song and he dedicated it to former USF President Father Privett.

I asked DJ Schmeejay how it felt to be on the air 4 years after the shutdown and if he was thinking about that day. He told me that despite his snarky on-air dedication, he really wasn’t dwelling too much on the past. He said, “I’m not bitter anymore,” adding, “I’m not really hung up on that day 4 years ago.”

DJ Schmeejay’s records. Photo: J. Waits

Getting back into the swing of things after an 18 month absence from radio, DJ Schmeejay talked about his love of radio. He said that it felt “strangely familiar” to be back and told me that he was excited to pull records for his show and said he was “happy to bring them out of the house.” On Sunday night’s show he played nothing but vinyl records, ranging from a lovely vintage French 45rpm by a child pop prodigy to Buffalo Bill’s Barbershop Quartet to some pieces by more familiar names like Ofra Haza and Bow Wow Wow.

DJ Schmeejay’s paper playlist at KUSF-in-Exile. Photo: J. Waits

Having been off the air for awhile, DJ Schmeejay arrived to find that his computer log-in credentials had expired. Because of that, he kept an old-school paper playlist of his tracks, although most KUSF-in-Exile playlists are archived on Spinitron.

San Francisco Community Radio’s memo board. Photo: J. Waits

Although initially known as KUSF-in-Exile, the station is also called San Francisco Community Radio (SFCR), the official name of the non-profit group that is hoping to be awarded a new low power FM (LPFM) license in San Francisco.

San Francisco Community Radio Forum Q&A

There was wide-ranging discussion about the station during a 2-hour “Forum Q&A” (listen to a podcast of it here) that aired right after DJ Schmeejay’s show. I tuned in after leaving the station and heard a bit more about the station’s LPFM plans and about the current state of the station.

During the forum, the participants talked about how there were a total of 8 groups that applied for the same LPFM frequency of 102.5 FM (see more details about the original applicants in our post from 2013) in San Francisco and that it’s now down to 4 groups in competition.

In addition to applying for LPFM, KUSF-in-Exilers are still exploring other options to get back on the air. A legal petition to stop the KUSF sale is still in limbo and there’s also the chance that they could acquire another full power frequency in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Programming schedule for January 18, 2015. Photo: J. Waits

San Francisco Community Radio’s Chief Engineer Bill Ruck (who was at KUSF since its beginnings in the 1970s) said during the forum that right now they are simply trying to encourage more people to join the station. He pointed out that there are still “holes in the schedule” and said, “we’re looking for people to come and join us.”

Sticker-covered cabinet at KUSF-in-Exile/SFCR. Note the “I listen to Carolyn” sticker! Photo: J. Waits

As far as the current lack of a terrestrial signal for KUSF-in-Exile, DJ Carolyn Keddy mentioned during the forum that it’s definitely cut down on the number of phone calls from listeners. In the KUSF 90.3 FM days, she would get calls throughout her show and said that now she’ll “…get a few calls” and that it’s “nothing like it used to be.” Despite that, she said, “I think people are listening” and she shared some anecdotes about getting more in-person feedback these days about her shows.

Sign at KUSF in Exile/SFCR. Photo: J. Waits

I’ve been confused about what to call the station, as it’s referred to as both KUSF-in-Exile and San Francisco Community Radio. Additionally, the website SaveKUSF.org is still the portal to the station’s live stream and there are multiple Twitter handles in use (including @kusf). During the forum, DJ Irwin Swirnoff asked whether or not there were obstacles associated with using the KUSF name still.

SFCR member Damin Esper acknowledged that “it’s hard to build a new brand again,” saying that “Save KUSF” is more well-known than SFCR. He said that they are trying to build awareness of the SFCR name both on-air and at station events.

Donation sign at San Francisco Community Radio. Photo: J. Waits

As they wrapped up the forum, the group shared a collective hope that SFCR/KUSF-in-Exile will receive a construction permit for a new LPFM station by the end of this year.

Thanks so much to DJ Schmeejay for letting me crash his show. It was great to be back at the station. It’s hard to believe, but this is my 72nd radio station field trip report, with more to come soon (three more in the Seattle area, plus a college radio station in San Francisco). See my most recent field trips on Radio Survivor and see all of my station field trips on Spinning Indie.

The post Visiting KUSF-in-Exile aka San Francisco Community Radio Four Years after the KUSF Shutdown appeared first on Radio Survivor.

If you received a new Sonos then you’ve got a great portal for listening to radio, music and podcasts with nice sound quality. This is our recommendation guide to the sources available on the system. I’ve tried every one of them and provide a short capsule review for each.

In addition to sound quality and convenient operation, I particularly like how the Sonos system connects seamlessly to most major streaming radio and music services. To me, the killer feature is the ability to create playlists that combine tracks from different services, like Spotify, along with tracks from your own library.

These are my recommendations for getting started with Sonos for listening to music, radio and podcasts.

Broadcast and Satellite Radio

These include both free and subscription services for getting your radio fix.

• DAR.fm – DAR stands for Digital Audio Recorder, and it’s essentially a cloud-based DVR for radio. While podcasts give you on demand access to many popular radio shows, not every show out there is podcasted, especially music shows and many local and national commercial talk shows. DAR lets you record their live streams for later playback, just a like a radio TiVo. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. Learn more in our review of the service.
• SiriusXM – Get access to hundreds of satellite radio stations, including Howard Stern’s channels and commercial-free music channels without using a satellite radio receiver. This service costs $14.99 a month for internet-only, or you can add the internet service to a satellite radio plan for $4.00 a month.
• TuneIn Radio – TuneIn is nearly ubiquitous across all sorts of devices, and its availability on Sonos means you have access to an enormous catalog of broadcast and internet-only streaming radio for free.

Lossless Streaming Music

In September Deezer Elite introduced the first lossless, full CD-quality streaming music service in the US. A little more than a month later Tidal debuted, offering a competing uncompressed service. Both of these services offer on-demand access to an enormous catalog of music, and are now available on Sonos. Here’s an overview.

• Deezer Elite – I reviewed this service in November and found that a real sound quality advantage compared to MP3s and other compressed music services. That said, this is most obvious with critical listening, and less important for background music. Deezer Elite is only available on Sonos, though subscribers can access the compressed premium service on web browser and mobile apps. With an introductory price of $9.99 a month the service is a great value, costing the same as compressed services like Spotify and Rhapsody.
• Tidal – I’ve just started listening to Tidal, and my initial impressions are that its fidelity is comparable to Deezer Elite. Tidal’s primary advantage is that the full uncompressed service is available on multiple platforms, including web browsers and mobile apps. The disadvantage is that it costs $19.99 a month–twice as much as Deezer Elite (at the introductory price), Spotify and other competitors.

Podcasts

You can stream any podcasts stored on your mobile device or computer directly to your Sonos, which is likely the easiest way to listen to podcasts on the system. These apps are also good choices.

• Soundcloud – Soundcloud is becoming a big podcast host, so you’ll be able to find many of the most popular shows here. A nice feature is that if you encounter episodes while browsing the web you can easily tag them for listening later without having to go through the rigmarole of subscribing.
• Stitcher – This popular platform gives you free access to nearly every podcast out there, along with other talk radio programming. If you use Stitcher on your mobile device or computer your listening will be synchronized with your Sonos.
• TuneIn – TuneIn now offers podcasts, although it’\s catalog isn’t as extensive as Stitcher or iTunes.

Streaming Music Radio

All of these services are free or offer free tiers, which make them solid ways to get started listening right away without using your credit card.

• 8tracks – Another free ad-supported service with human curated playlists, many contributed by outside experts and publications. A commercial-free subscription is $25 for six months. For some listening suggestions, Matthew recommends classical playlists and ones inspired by Welcome to Night Vale.
• Pandora – Unlike many other streaming music services, Pandora lets you use its free, ad-supported service with Sonos and other devices. It’s the most popular streaming music service because it’s easy to get started building stations customized to your music tastes. One advantage to Pandora is access to some artists–like the Beatles and King Crimson–who don’t make their music available on Spotify, although you won’t be able to listen to tracks on demand.
• Slacker – Also offers human-curated stations in a wide variety of genres and styles, along with talk programming from ABC News, American Public Media and ESPN. Many stations are artist curated or decade focused. The subscription Plus goes ad-free and gives you unlimited song skips as well as the option to add ABC headline news and Weather Channel updates, while Premium gives you on demand access to tracks, like Spotify.
• Songza – This is a free service that offers human curated playlists tailored for different moods and activities. It’s a nice alternative to Pandora, especially when your stations start to get a little repetitive and you want to shake things up.

Streaming On Demand Music (Compressed)

All of the major on demand streaming music providers are available on your Sonos: Beats Music, Rhapsody, Rdio, Spotify and Google Play Music All Access. They all require a subscription, although Rhapsody offers a free 30-day trial to Sonos users that doesn’t require a credit card. I find all four services to be more-or-less equivalent, and so your choice likely depends on which you’ve used before or if your mobile carrier offers discounts.

Streaming Music You Bought

These services let you stream music that you’ve bought from the cloud, without ads.

• Amazon Music – Amazon has a big MP3 music store, but the company also gives you MP3s of nearly every CD or vinyl LP that you buy from them, too. It’s a convenient way to add tracks from your CDs or LPs to playlists without having to rip them yourself.
• Bandcamp – I’m a big fan of Bandcamp because it lets me buy high quality digital tracks and albums directly from artists and labels, often including music that’s not available on Amazon, Google Play or iTunes. Many albums are available in lossless CD-quality files, in addition to MP3 and AAC. On Sonos you can stream any music you’ve bought on Bandcamp, though it isn’t specified what quality they stream at.
• Google Play Music – If you buy music from Google’s Play store, then you can access it to stream from the cloud on your Sonos. It also includes any music that you’ve uploaded to Google. You can store up to 20,000 tracks for free, and subscribe to store even more.

A Little Bit of Everything

• Soundcloud – This platform is turning into the YouTube of audio, hosting a wide gamut of music, mixes, playlists, radio shows, podcasts, audiobooks and other kinds of audio. It’s free to listen, and a fine choice to dig in to some unique and independent sounds. Check out Matthew’s recommendations for classical music, world music, dance music and space music on SoundCloud.

Are you a Sonos user? Are there other services or platforms you like to us on your Sonos system? Let us know in the comments.

The post Radio, Music and Podcast Recommendations for Your Sonos appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today, if you’re a radio, music or podcast enthusiast who just got a Chromecast then you’re in great shape. The device is a fantastically simple way to turn your TV into an internet radio that can do much more than that.

Chromecast has come a long way since it was first introduced eighteen months ago. In fact, when I first wrote about how my Chromecast is an internet radio there were only two radio apps. Now there are more than ninety.

Below are my recommendations for Chromecast radio and music apps. Because you control your Chromecast using a mobile device or computer, using these apps means either installing them on your device or using the associated website in your computer’s Chrome browser, which should give you the option to send audio directly to your Chromecast.

Using the Chrome browser on your computer or using an Android device running version 4.4.2 or later you can simply mirror any browser tab or app directly to your Chromecast. However, doing this requires you keep that tab or app open. When using a Chromecast-compatible app, your Chromecast takes over the audio stream directly, freeing up your browser or device to do other things.

Recommended Chromecast Apps for Radio Listening

• Pandora – Still one of the best and most popular ways to create and share custom stations of music based on what you like.
• TuneIn Radio – Arguably the most comprehensive database of radio stations available online, it includes broadcast stations, internet-only stations and podcasts.
• 8tracks – This service focuses on human-curated playlists and stations. The 8tracks mobile app is Android-only, but you can play 8tracks Radio from your Chrome browser. For some listening suggestions, Matthew recommends classical playlists and ones inspired by Welcome to Night Vale.
• NPR One – This app is great for when you want to get a stream of updated news and talk programming. Learn more about NPR One in my review.
• last.soma – Soma.fm is a great independent internet radio broadcaster in San Francisco that offers 32 eclectic and interesting commercial-free music stations. Learn more about Soma.fm in Matthew’s review.
• Songza – Another great service for human-curated music stations that was one of the original two radio apps on Chromecast.

Recommended Chromecast Apps for Podcast Listening

• Beyondpod – This is one of the most popular podcast apps for Android, but it is Android-only.
• Pocket Casts – This one is available on both Android and iOS, and is also a perennial favorite.
• TuneIn Radio – Also lets you search for and play a wide selection of podcasts, although its catalog is smaller than the other podcast apps.

Recommended Chromecast Apps for Streaming Music

There aren’t a lot of choices in this category. The world’s most popular service, Spotify, is notable for not having Chromecast app support. Last April Rhapsody announced Chromecast support, but it’s not currently listed by Google, and I’m not a user, so I can’t confirm. However, the two choices here are solid, and a good choice if you don’t already subscribe to another service.

• Rdio – This is a fine service, and a particularly good choice if Chromecast support is important to you.
• Google Play Music – This service should come as no surprise, and it’s a good choice if you’re a big user of Google services.

Not Really Radio

• YouTube – Obviously, this really isn’t radio. But because YouTube has become the internet’s default depository for all manner of media content, there’s a ton of great music and concerts, as well as podcasts, interviews and other stuff that is really more auditory than visual. Much of it comes from radio stations. It’s all on YouTube simply because the platform is still the easiest place to upload and share.
• Vevo – This is the MTV of our time, with both curated playlists of music video and the ability to make your own selections.

The post Your New Chromecast Is an Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Interested in CD-quality uncompressed streaming? Also check out our review of TIDAL.

In September European music streaming platform Deezer entered the US with its Deezer Elite service which delivers true CD-quality uncompressed sound. Currently Deezer Elite is only available to owners of Sonos wireless audio systems.

The Sonos system has been around more than a decade. It consists of speakers and audio components that connect wirelessly to play music stored on your computer or mobile device, or to stream internet music and radio services. Sonos uses wi-fi rather than Bluetooth, which permits the system to handle the uncompressed audio streams of Deezer Elite that require five times the data.

I had the opportunity to audition the service for a couple of weeks using a Sonos Connect and a Sonos Play:1 wireless speaker. The Connect is essentially a component that you connect to an existing hi-fi to use the Sonos system with your own speakers and amplifier, while the Play:1 is a standalone powered speaker that connects to your wi-fi or wired network.

In this review I am focusing on the sound quality and fidelity of Deezer Elite, since that is the chief advantage of the service compared to its major competitors, like Spotify. Recently another uncompressed streaming music service, Tidal, also debuted in the US (check out our review). To the best of my knowledge these are the only two uncompressed subscription music services available in the US.

This was my first time using Sonos. The Deezer Elite experience is presently tied to the system, so my review will also cover some aspects of it. In a separate post I will review other more general aspects of the overall Sonos system. In that review I will cover the Sonos Play:1 speaker.

For the purposes of clarity and transparency there’s quite a bit of detail to this review. You can jump right to my testing results and conclusion if you’d prefer.

The Argument for Uncompressed Music

I am a music lover, and I also appreciate high fidelity music reproduction. One quibble I’ve had with the shift to digital music files and streaming is the reliance on lossy compression technology, like MP3. Such compression reduces the size of a file by throwing data away that theoretically is not perceived by the human ear.

Now, the best implementations of lossy codecs, as they’re called, indeed can sound very good. At the same time, in my experience that gain in data efficiency comes at some sonic cost, that can range from very subtle to annoying and glaring, compared to an uncompressed CD version of the same music.

It is true that CD itself is a compromise–as every music storage and playback medium is–but one that works well and is capable of very realistic sound reproduction. It is, in most cases, the standard by which we compare most commercially available digital music.

At this point in time, my primary complaint with compressed music is that lossy compression is increasingly unnecessary. When MP3 first gained popularity in the early 2000s most computer hard drives were less than 1/10 the size of today, iPods and smart phones did not exist, and most households used dial-up to connect to the internet.

With such constraints in downloading, storage and streaming lossy codecs were a good solution. But today computers routinely come with a terabyte of storage, capable of storing more than 1,500 uncompressed CDs, while home broadband connections easily can handle the data rates required for uncompressed music streaming.

I also have an economic complaint. When buying digital music I think it’s absurd to pay nearly the same price for an MP3 or iTunes version as the CD, when I’m getting only about 25% of the data, and at a sonic compromise.

That’s why I think the time has come for uncompressed digital music to become more broadly available, and why I was interested in trying out Deezer Elite. I wanted to hear for myself if uncompressed streaming audio offers a perceptible advantage over the more common compressed services.

Testing Conditions

When I talked with Deezer US CEO Tyler Goldman he told me that his company chose Sonos as the exclusive partner for Elite because he believes it offers the best end-to-end solution. Ostensibly, this means Deezer can better ensure that subscribers are listening using equipment able to deliver the requisite fidelity. That should also avoid complaints from listeners using tinny laptop speakers or cheap bluetooth speakers.

Now, one can use the Sonos Connect with any amplifier and speakers. But given its $349 price there’s likely little risk that someone would bother connecting it to a cheap, substandard stereo.

For most of my listening I connected the Connect to my main system, which is based around a Yamaha Aventage RX-A1000 receiver and Polk RT600i tower speakers. For comparison purposes I also used my Yamaha Aventage BD-A1010 blu-ray player, which handles most high-resolution formats and to my ear plays CDs very well, with involving and detailed sound. While not necessarily high-end equipment, I would characterize this gear as solidly high quality and quite capable of revealing the nuances of most music sources.

The Sonos Connect has both analog and digital outputs, and comes with a set of stereo RCA cables included. My best advice to anyone who buys a Connect is to immediately replace these cables with something better. I used a pair of high-quality, but inexpensive 22-gauge Monoprice cables and experienced an immediate improvement in detail, especially in the low and mid bass. You could spend more, but even this modest upgrade made significant improvements.

I also tested the Connect using its optical digital output connected to my Aventage receiver’s digital input. The Aventage has very nice Burr-Brown digital-to-analog converters (DACs) capable of resolutions up to 24 bits at 192 KHz sampling. CDs and Deezer Elite have a resolution of 16 bits at 44.1 KHz sampling, which means the receiver is more than capable of handing this audio data. I wanted to see what, if any difference, bypassing the Connect’s own digital-to-analog converters would make in the sound.

For all listening I put the receiver into “Pure Direct” mode. This disables all tone control, EQ and DSP settings, which should provide the most uncolored amplified sound that is closest in quality and character to the input signal.

Using Deezer Elite means using the Sonos system, which requires using the Sonos app on a Windows or MacOS computer, or on an Android or iOS device. The documentation for setting up the system was straightforward, and I was able to get both devices connected to my home wi-fi and up and streaming music within about 15 minutes.

Sonos supports more than two dozen major online radio and streaming services, including 8tracks, Slacker, Pandora, Spotify, DAR.fm, iHeartRadio, TuneIn Radio, Rhapsody and SiriusXM. Sonos also plays music from your device, or from a music server. Each service requires a one-time setup to authorize Sonos to access your account. Many services with both free and paid options, like Spotify, will only stream to Sonos for paid subscribers.

I connected Sonos to my Amazon Music account and a Spotify Premium account for the sake of making comparisons to Deezer Elite.

But How Does It Sound?

Ease of use counts for a lot, but for me, at least, it’s not enough if the system doesn’t sound good. In short, listening to Deezer Elite over the Sonos Connect sounds very good. Most of the time I can hear an improvement with Elite compared to listening to MP3s, AAC tracks from iTunes, or compressed music from Spotify. The degree of difference depends on the source material. Some MP3s or Spotify tracks are more poorly encoded, while some original recordings suffer more from MP3 or AAC compression than others.

I listened to tracks using both the analog RCA output on the Connect and over its optical digital connection direct to the DACs in my Aventage receiver. By and large I had a slight preference for the digital output, finding the placement of individual instruments in the soundstage to be just a touch more precise while still sounding integrated. I’m not necessarily surprised by this, since the receiver had a retail price of about $1100 when new–nearly four times the cost of the Sonos Connect.

At the same time I have to stress that this preference is slight, and really only important when doing focused, close listening. When putting on music as a background to reading or other activities the difference pretty much fades away for me.

Listening to Music

Steely Dan is one of my favorite classic rock bands. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s meticulously orchestrated and recorded albums make good examples for testing. I listened to tracks off the well-mastered “Citizen Steely Dan” box set, released in 1993, to compare Deezer Elite with my own CDs.

Listening to “Kid Charlemagne” on Deezer over the Sonos’ analog output I was immediately drawn into the track, with good timing, clear unmarred sound and a nice three-dimensional soundstage. Switching to the digital output, the soundstage got a little deeper, a little more like a live studio performance.

By comparison, the CD on my Aventage blu-ray player had even more definition. Drum fills sweeping across the kit were precise; with my eyes closed I could more clearly imagine hear where each drum was located in space. With Deezer the sweep was still quite lively and 3-D, just a touch less precise.

I chalk up this difference primarily to the excellent DACs in the blu-ray player, which I prefer over those in the receiver. If I were able to connect the Sonos to use the blu-ray’s analog output I suspect I would hear a slight improvement.

I then auditioned the same track on Spotify Premium through the Sonos Connect. That service delivers 320 Kbps Ogg Vorbis audio, generally regarded to be at least as good as MP3 at the same bitrate.

With Spotify the soundstage seemed to collapse, almost as if the speakers moved closer together. Instruments panned more strongly to either side, like the hi-hat, remained firmly planted, but there seemed to be less space in between the left and right speakers. To Spotify’s credit I didn’t detect much high-end shimmer or graininess. However, the difference in quality between Deezer Elite and Spotify Premium was much more obvious than the delta between Deezer and the CD.

Moving to a more contemporary album, I checked out Arcade Fire’s “Reflektor” from 2013. While I really like the music on this record, I feel like it suffers from too much dynamic range compression, all too common on recordings from the last decade. So I was particularly interested in how this might affect my listening tests.

I started with an MP3 of the title track that purchased from Amazon that I played from Amazon Music through the Connect. This is the version of the album I’m most familiar with, and it sounds good, though it can be a little fatiguing when listening at higher volume because of there’s so little dynamic range.

Moving to Deezer Elite, once again the soundstage opened up a bit, the placement of instruments became more precise, creating less muddiness than the MP3, especially in the midrange where vocals, guitars and synth battle it out. In particular the tenor saxophone line is much more defined and clear with Deezer. Still, the difference between Deezer and MP3 was less pronounced with this track than the difference between Deezer and Spotify with “Kid Charlemagne.”

Shifting to something entirely acoustic, I chose “So What,” from the Legacy Edition of Miles Davis’ iconic album “Kind of Blue.” Listening to Deezer Elite the soundstage had both good depth and height. Miles’ trumpet is on the same side as Paul Chambers’ bass, yet both are distinct and don’t compete. Things get more challenging when John Coltrane comes in for his solo, accompanied by Bill Evans’ piano. Despite Coltrane’s powerful blowing, it doesn’t overcome the piano, with Evans’ comps ringing with clarity and natural timbre.

Compared to the CD I was hard pressed to hear a difference. There was a touch more air with the CD, and a tiny bit more definition to the brushes hitting cymbals. But that’s about it.

Moving to Spotify Premium the bass gets a little more tubby, and Miles’ trumpet seems to get smeared in space, becoming less distinct. Coltrane’s sax seems to mask the piano, losing the attack of some of Evans’ notes. I had no difficulty hearing a significant difference between the Deezer Elite and Spotify Premium versions with this track.

Summing Up Results

On the whole Deezer Elite really does deliver CD quality streaming music, and the Sonos Connect plays it well. The Connect’s analog output is the system’s biggest constraint, but the one most easily overcome, especially now that very high quality standalone DACs are available, and many amplifiers and receivers have digital inputs. And, again, I have to emphasize that the analog output’s limitation isn’t a major concern to me, but may be more critical to some audiophiles.

I hear a definite improvement in overall sound with Deezer Elite compared to compressed music files or compressed streaming services, like Spotify. Across the entire frequency spectrum there is more definition, allowing individual instruments and voices to be more distinct, with more three-dimensional depth.

The difference is less pronounced at lower volumes or with background listening. But folks who enjoy just listening to music as a foreground activity should appreciate the boost in quality.

Since Deezer Elite is only available through Sonos, my interaction with it was primarily through the Sonos app, which makes it operationally similar to Spotify and other services. At least for the music I am interested in, the Deezer catalog was roughly equal to Spotify. There are bands I wanted to hear–The Beatles, Metallica and King Crimson–that I could not find on Deezer, but they are also not available on Spotify. Though her music is not my cup of tea, I should note that Taylor Swift’s first four albums are on Deezer, while she has pulled her entire catalog from Spotify.

Elite subscribers can also use Deezer via smartphone app and web interface, but these methods access only the Premium Plus service, which delivers 320 Kbps MP3s.

Final Conclusions

If you’re a Sonos user who has resisted subscribing to a streaming music because you don’t want the compromise of lossy compressing, then Deezer Elite most certainly deserves an audition. It is also merits a trial even if you’re already a subscriber to another streaming service. At a price of $9.99 a month with a full-year commitment there’s no price premium compared to competitors. The month-to-month price of $14.99 is still pretty reasonable.

The bigger question is if Deezer Elite is enough of a draw to entice someone to buy into the Sonos system. Frankly, I find myself more convinced than I anticipated. I enjoyed how the service sounds, but also how seamlessly it works with Sonos. Of course, it works no more or less smoothly than Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio or Slacker. But those services don’t offer uncompressed audio.

With the debut of Tidal there is now a competitor to Deezer Elite that is not tied to one brand of hardware. Given that Tidal offers the same uncompressed music format as Deezer, I have no reason to believe that there will be significant fidelity differences between the two.

Your choice would more likely depend on whether or not you have a Sonos component, and how willing you are to buy one. I also understand that Tidal may soon be available on Sonos, too. That equipment flexibility comes at a cost, however. Tidal costs $19.99 a month, which is twice that of Deezer Elite with a year commitment, and still $5.00 more than paying for Deezer month-to-month.

In the end I’m pleased to see uncompressed streaming audio become a viable and serious option for music lovers and audiophiles who don’t want to be limited to lossy compressed files in order to enjoy the benefits of near-instant access to catalogs of millions of tracks.

If you have a Sonos system or are considering one I would seriously consider a Deezer Elite subscription. If you don’t have a Sonos but have your interest is piqued by Deezer Elite I would definitely recommend visiting a dealer to audition it for yourself.

The post Streaming Uncompressed Music Is Here: A Review of Deezer Elite appeared first on Radio Survivor.

A new streaming music radio platform launched today, Mad Genius Radio. Entering into an increasingly crowded space, Mad Genius differentiates itself by customizing each station to the individual listener rather than relying on data correlated and aggregated across audiences to program music choices.

Founder Eric Neumann is a radio industry veteran with more than twenty years of experience. According to him, “Musical tastes ebb and flow over time. It’s best to have an app flow with a user.” Mad Genius does this by giving users more fine-grained control over songs and artists. They can rate tracks on a 0 to 5 slider, not just by a thumbs-up or down.

Curated genre stations on Mad Genius are based on a rotation, similar to terrestrial radio, but with deeper catalogs. Listeners control the rotation frequency with the slider. “You can lean back and let songs play, and then rate those songs you want to hear more or less of,” Neumann explained.

Listeners can also ban an artist, “but I can un-ban them later, when I haven’t heard them in a while.”

Neumann highlighted Mad Genius’ 140 460 “Time Machine” stations, which are based on actual charts from the era. “You can go back to a season for a particular year and hear it as it was played at the time, such as hip-hop or alternative rock in the spring of ’96,” Neumann said. “You’ll hear songs you forgot about, [and ones] that didn’t become hits. It brings back memories.”

Mad Genius is ad-free and available for a free trial period right now on the web and in iOS and Android apps. Beginning in December the service will be available only via subscription for $5 a month or $48 a year. Neumann said that making it a paid service, without ads, “pays out better royalty rates to performers and songwriters. It’s more fair to the people who create the content.”

He continued to explain that as a subscription service Mad Genius pays “79% more per song than any ad-based model. We pay songwriters 53% 530% more on a per-song basis. And we’re glad to do it.” According to Neumann the rates subscription services pay are 14 – 18 cents per listener hour, compared to 4.6 cents for ad-supported services.

Being a subscription service “leaves us more room,” he said. “We’re profitable with a few hundred thousand paid subscribers. We don’t have to beat Pandora, or even be #5, in order to be profitable and pay the highest royalty rates.”

The post Mad Genius Radio Debuts Personalized Ad-Free Subscription Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This morning the global #2 streaming music service Deezer announced that it is acquiring Stitcher, the audio platform focused on talk, entertainment and podcasts.

In an interview Deezer Chief Marketing Officer Beth Murphy explained that the deal is intended to help introduce more talk listeners to streaming music, while also provide music listeners with talk and entertainment options. She noted that 35% of terrestrial radio listening is to talk, explaining that “we think this segment is underserved by traditional music streaming services.”

Deezer introduced itself to the US market in September with an uncompressed audiophile-oriented service exclusively available with Sonos wireless audio systems, followed up by its Premium Plus service, tied to Bose SoundTouch systems. With these introductions Murphy said the company is trying to differentiate itself by focusing on the audiophile segment. The Stitcher acquisition will allow them to “further differentiate by serving talk and entertainment listeners.”

I asked Murphy if this move is a shot at broadcast radio. She said that “it’s both a competitor and an opportunity for terrestrial radio.” It’s a competitor in the sense that streaming music and podcasting are both newer categories where people spend their listening time. But it’s also an opportunity because Stitcher carries broadcast radio content. “That’s where we see mainstream consumers are still spending their time, in those channels,” Murphy said.

Because Deezer has a global reach to over 180 countries, she said that this is an opportunity for Stitcher and its content providers to expand their reach. The company anticipates expanding program offerings into less common “long tail languages and markets.”

Murphy also said that the company will look at ways to expand Stitcher’s content platform, such as streaming live content or adding premium content. She said Deezer offers more options for the latter, in particular, because it is already a paid, premium service.

As an observer and fan of podcasting, I wanted to know what effect the acquisition will have on current Stitcher users and content providers, especially small and independent podcasters.

“We think it’s great for content providers. We’re just going to offer them more reach, 16 million active users in a global audience,” Murphy said.

She assured me that, “Stitcher will remain intact, as a free service with ad support.” She also noted, “the ad supported model is working for podcasting,” and has also been successful for Stitcher.

For the future, “As we integrate the Deezer experience there likely will be a free and paid model.” That’s one place where premium content may come in. Murphy also said that the company will work with content providers who want to offer premium, subscription content. She pointed to SiriusXM as a “great example of a service with exclusive content,” saying “we want to do that as well.”

My take is that having a single smartphone or smart dashboard app to access both on-demand streaming music and talk programming has the potential to be a very strong competitor to SiriusXM, in particular, as well as terrestrial radio. In a way iHeartRadio offers a similar experience for live streaming music and talk, both broadcast and digital-first. It also offers access to custom music stations and a selection of on-demand shows, including podcasts.

What differentiates the Deezer-Stitcher combination is the sheer size of catalog–Stitcher has 35,000 shows from 12,000 providers, and Deezer has 35 million tracks.

At the moment there doesn’t seem to be a downside for podcasters, with the upside being the opportunity to reach a much wider audience. Murphy also told me that Deezer will use Stitcher’s listening data to fine tune its recommendation platform in order to offer both talk and music recommendations. These would be tailored to a listeners’ habits, like for a commuter who likes news and talk in the morning, but prefers music for the drive home.

A chance for podcasters–especially independent podcasters–to make money through premium and subscription content is also a real potential upside. Right now there really isn’t a good, widely-available third-party platform or aggregator for an audio producer to offer subscriptions. Most have to cobble together a number of tools and can only offer the subscriptions through their own site. Having a portal with a substantial user base to offer premium audio shows could make this a viable funding option for some podcasters.

The post Deezer Buys Stitcher – What It Means for Podcasting appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Last month the world’s #2 music stream service Deezer introduced itself to the US with a new high-fidelity, uncompressed service called Deezer Elite. Now the company is bringing its compressed Premium Plus service stateside.

Like Elite, at launch Premium Plus is tied to specific hardware. The service is only available to users of Bose SoundTouch Wi-Fi music systems, with set-up available through the platform’s app. The Elite service is only available on the Sonos system.

The regular price for Deezer Premium Plus is $9.99/month, which is comparable to Spotify Premium, Beats Music and Rhapsody Premiere. However, Deezer is offering a free 30-day trial, followed by an introductory price of half-off, or $4.99 a month, to current SoundTouch users.

Deezer seems to be taking a slow rollout approach in the US, which likely gives the company an opportunity to ensure reliable and high quality results for its new subscribers, while avoiding the kind of unexpected problems that can arise when facing the onslaught of new customers that can happen when you open up a service to all comers. While Deezer is available in some 182 countries, the US is the most populous. So it makes sense to have a steady, targeted rollout.

Of course, the slow approach is frustrating to music fans who don’t use Sonos or SoundLink. I suppose that Deezer access might be a selling point for those platforms. But, without taking Deezer for a spin, it’s difficult to know if it’s worth making a hardware purchase just to get it, compared to simply subscribing to one of the service’s competitors. For folks who already own a Sonos or SoundTouch device, the equation is simpler.

The post Deezer Makes 2nd Foray into the US with Premium Plus appeared first on Radio Survivor.

One reason why many music enthusiasts and audiophiles have eschewed streaming music services is that they don’t want to be limited to the compressed files that platforms like Spotify and Rdio deliver. While compressed MP3 and AAC files have taken over digital music, there’s a growing segment of listeners who still prefer buying uncompressed files from specialty online stores or ripping their own CDs to FLAC or other lossless formats.

The world’s number 2 streaming music service, Deezer, has not been available in the U.S. but is aiming to seduce these discriminating listeners with its entry into the market. Rather than taking chief competitor Spotify head-on, today Deezer is introducing itself to America with Deezer Elite, offering a catalog of 325 million full CD-quality tracks streaming in the uncompressed FLAC format.

I recently talked with Deezer US CEO Tyler Goldman who told me that there are an estimated 20 million people in this country who are audio enthusiasts and audiophiles, investing in better playback hardware and focused on improving their listening experience. He said that these listeners are underserved, since audio quality has gone backward over time, from vinyl to CD to MP3. Obviously, the company is betting that even more listeners will be tempted.

Deezer Elite’s music will stream at five times the highest bit rate delivered by its competitors, which top out at the MP3 maximum of 320 kbps.

While this is exciting news for many audiophiles, there is one big limitation, at least right now. The service is debuting exclusively on the Sonos wireless Hi-Fi system and through home integrators. Goldman explained that this is because the company believes Sonos offers a “best in breed” end-to-end solution and home integrators can ensure that their first customers have a good experience that matches the quality of the service. Effectively, that means Deezer doesn’t want any early subscribers to be listening on tinny laptop speakers and then reporting that the sound quality isn’t any better.

Bandwidth is also a consideration, since Deezer Elite subscriber will be consuming five times the data of a Spotify or Rhapsody user. Rolling out only to Sonos subscribers and home integration customers should help ensure there are no bottlenecks early on.

The introductory price for Deezer Elite is very competitive at $9.99 a month when you sign up for a full year of service. It’s $14.99 for a month-to-month plan. This compares favorably with Spotify Premium or Beats Music, which both offer compressed music at $9.99 a month.

Deezer Elite is available beginning September 15. Sonos users are eligible for a 30-day free trial.

I haven’t yet heard the service, though I am anxious to. While compressed music files can be quite adequate, for more focused listening I still prefer CDs, vinyl and uncompressed music. I’m definitely one of those audiophiles who hasn’t subscribed to a streaming service in part because I don’t want to be limited to MP3 quality.

With the runaway Kickstarter success of Neil Young’s high resolution Pono music player, it does appear that there is a growing number of music fans keenly interested in higher quality digital sound. However, I do think that the introductory limitation to Sonos users will still count out a pretty decent number of audiophiles who have higher-end systems but aren’t Sonos owners. I’m one of them.

At the same time, it can’t be a bad thing to have customers clamoring for your service.

The post Deezer Debuts in U.S. with High Fidelity ‘Elite’ Service appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Attention all social media music playlist mavens: are you posting your own personal favorite tunes, or are you really favoring content based on how you want others to see you? If it’s the latter choice, you are not alone. An Aalto University (Helsinki, Finland) user study concludes that “being authentic is very important for social media users. At the same time, users also admitted faking parts of their online image in order to conform to social norms and expectations.”

This was particularly true for Last.fm subscribers, the authors of the survey say.

“We found that it was not uncommon for some users to purposely choose to listen to, or indeed not listen to, particular music according to the image that that individual wants to portray to others,” one of the researchers explained in an interview.

This revelation makes me want to break open my old copy of The Presentation of Self in Every Day Life by Erving Goffman, who famously argued that most behavior is performative. “The very obligation and profitability . . . of being a socialized character,” Goffman’s tome concluded, “forces us to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of the stage.” I always thought that Goffman’s analysis was a bit extreme. But here it is with a vengeance.

Speaking of questions of authenticity, the Bandcamp blog reports that someone named “Michael Cera” posted an album to the service, and Bandcamp’s proprietors did not believe it was really him at first:

“Confirming this was the Michael Cera, the amiably awkward, witty, and dapper dude from Arrested Development , Youth in Revolt , Superbad , Scott Pilgrim vs. the World , Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Juno , was no easy feat. But thanks to Cera’s persuasive emails, a call from his management, and a  Jonah Hill  tweet, we established that this was not the work of an attention-seeking crackpot.”

Having convinced themselves of Cera’s authenticity, the Bandcampers appear to be quite smitten with his music. I enjoyed the album, too. Some of the doodlesque content strikes me as Paul Simon Lite, but maybe by the second of third album Cera will find a more original voice. In any event, it is great that there is a place like Bandcamp where things like this can happen.

Next, it is once again time for us to visit the Radio Survivor OMG-what’s-going-to-happen-to-Pandora Department. At the beginning of last week Dealreporter.com suggested that Pandora was becoming excellent buyout bait, and everyone got excited and the company’s stock went up. And then nothing happened and the streamer’s CFO Mike Herring said that Pandora “does not spend any time wondering if we’re going to be a takeover target.” So everyone should calm down already.

“We’re really good at this stuff,” Herring declared on Wednesday. “We’ve got the best economists and lawyers in the world. We feel good about it, but it’s a big unknown.”

This reminds me of a joke. It is 1986 and Ronald Reagan, Francois Mitterand, and Mikhail Gorbachev are having a drink after a big summit.

“I have one hundred security guards, and one of them is a KGB agent,” Reagan admits. “And I don’t know which.”

“That’s nothing,” Mitterand says. “I have 100 lovers and one of them has a sexually transmittable disease, and I don’t know which.”

“Forget your troubles,” Gorbachev chimes in. “I have one hundred advisers, and one of them is an economist, and I don’t know which.”

Meanwhile The Trichordist has been having a silly-dilly party with the revelation that various key players on the Pandora team have given money to Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and generic homophobic jerk.  “I think with this many high level Pandora insiders donating money to this candidate it’s a reasonable question to ask whether the company has an anti-gay bias,” Trichordist claims. I beg to differ. I think reasonability requires one to consider the simplest possibility first: Pandora is supporting this guy solely because he sponsored a bill that would lower Internet radio performance fees down to what they are for cable and satellite radio. Shouldn’t we acknowledge that before we post a piece titled “Pandora Hates Gay People” . . . ?

Partisan tomfoolery aside, how exactly did Chaffetz get to be a point dude on this issue in the House anyway? I think his bill is dead at this stage in the game, but it was co-sponsored by Jared Polis (D-CO) and uber-liberal Ron Wyden of Oregon in the Senate. Copyright law makes for the weirdest bedfellows.

Last-but-not-leasts:

The RAIN semifinalists for international Internet radio are out, and they include a Ukrainian”underground bunker” streamer, a spoken word Irish station, and radiohhh.com: “Three music channels here: RED (upbeat), BLUE (downlbeat), and WHITE (somewhere in the middle).” Glad they’re keeping things simple.

The Blue Music Group has left Spotify. It pays too little, a representative for the label told a Swedish radio host. “The entire record label’s catalog, containing music collections, among others Bach , Alice Tegnér and Eddie Jefferson, will now be removed from the [Spotify] music service,” a summary of the interview says.

But on the positive side, Spotify is sending out invitations to Canadians!

We cover social music sharing communities  every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.

The post Internet DJ week: are you being your true self or Michael Cera? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The blog EV Grieve is reporting that streaming radio station East Village Radio will cease operations next week. According to the blog, live programs will conclude on Friday, May 23. DJs at the New York City station learned of the news last night. EV Grieve writes, “…the 11-year-old Internet radio station with a tiny storefront studio on First Avenue, is shutting down operations next week. ‘Every time we get a new listener, it costs us more money with licensing fees and Internet costs,’ East Village Radio CEO Frank Prisinzano said in a phone interview. ‘After doing some projections, we see that it is going to be very, very difficult for us to continue to break even.'”

It’s an interesting (and sad) case where popularity proved to be challenging for the station, as it increased the amount of fees it had to pay for its online broadcasts. According to EV Grieve,

…East Village Radio…counted more than 1 million listeners worldwide a month…’We pay a higher rate for royalties and licensing than Pandora pays. We live in a world where these behemouth music-streaming services keep going in for more capital,’ said Peter Ferraro, the general manager/head of programming at East Village Radio. ‘It’s almost like we are being penalized for our growth.’

East Village Radio began in summer 2003 and was notable not only for its interesting programming, but also for its miniscule storefront space in the East Village of New York. I visited the station in 2008 and loved seeing how much could be accomplished in a tiny space, including live performances.

As we hear more and more stories about colleges taking FM stations off of terrestrial radio (often to cut down on costs), the closure of East Village Radio is a reminder that Internet broadcasting can be an expensive endeavor as well.

The post East Village Radio to Close, Cites Costs of Internet Broadcasting appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Late last week the news broke that Apple is buying Beats Audio for $3.2 billion. As most observers have noted, this is an unusually large acquisition for Apple, which tends not to buy companies that already have such prominent brands, for so much money.

With the Beats acquisition Apple gets a successful audio company selling trendy and profitable headphones and bluetooth speakers, along with a very young streaming music service in Beats Audio. Apple’s own iTunes Radio hasn’t exactly been a blockbuster, in part because it’s a pretty lackluster service to begin with. While Apple could build its own subscription service, it’s probably more efficient to simply buy an existing one, especially when it’s bundled with a profitable electronics brand.

However, if Apple wants Beats Music to compete head-to-head with the likes of Spotify or Pandora, the company will have to embrace one key aspect of their business models. Apple must create a free, ad supported version of the service. Right now, Beats has no ads, and is subscription only, with only a free trial to whet customers’ appetites.

I argue that Spotify’s fee ad-supported service is a critical component to its success in the US. The same is true of Pandora. Abstractly, it’s easy to grasp the value proposition of either service, but at the same time it can be difficult to justify shelling out another $5 – $12 a month for a music service when there’s already plenty of broadcast and internet radio out there for free.

But both Spotify and Pandora get more desirable the more you use them. With Spotify, in particular, you start mining obscure albums you want to sample, or get used to listening to much of the latest music, on-demand, without paying per-song. Once you’re accustomed to this convenience on your computer, it’s an easier sell to get you to pay a little bit to get the full experience ad-free, or on your mobile device.

Beats Music’s problem right now is that the free trial isn’t long enough to hook a lot of people. To really get the value of a music subscription service you have to live with it for a while, not just have a quick sample.

Now, Beats does offer a longer trial for AT&T users–up to 90 days. But the fact that not everyone can enjoy that length of trial works against it. One of Spotify’s and Pandora’s other strengths is social–you can share a song or playlist with any friend as long as she’s willing to sign up for a free account, no trial or credit card necessary. You simply can’t share that easily with Beats Music.

Understandably, not everyone is crazy about ads. Even though they’re much less frequent than those on broadcast radio, you still hear plenty of complaints about the ads on Spotify and Pandora. Of course, if you hate them that much both services offer a pretty simple way to turn them off, something you can’t have with terrestrial radio. Therefore, offering an ad-supported version of Beats Music is a small compromise that only enhances the apparent value of the ad-free paid service.

However, to really compete with Spotify, Apple has to do it one better and offer the full Beats experience on mobile with ads. Right now, Spotify doesn’t give free mobile users on-demand access, just shuffle play. That tactic is sensible, because it gives mobile users an incentive to go paid. But it also means that mobile users who don’t use Spotify on a computer aren’t getting to taste the full service; they don’t know entirely what they’re missing. Every day there are more folks whose principal internet device is a smartphone, and those are the customers Apple needs to win over to Beats.

To make this even clearer, let’s look at the numbers. Spotify racked up its first million paid subscribers within about a year of being available in the US. Beats would need to quadruple its subscriptions in about twice the amount of time it took to rack up the first 200k. That’s not an improbable feat, though I wouldn’t bet money on it.

For comparison, let’s look at another subscription music service that’s more like Beats, in that it doesn’t offer a free ad-supported version: Rhapsody. It’s actually been around for more than a dozen years, and it took about a decade to reach 1 million paid subscribers.

Though Spotify has not released subscriber numbers recently, analysts estimate it has about 2.5 million paid subscribers now. If true, that indicates it’s keeping up its rate of subscriber acquisition.

It shouldn’t be difficult for Apple to bring ad support to Beats Music. The company has already rolled out an ad sales force for iTunes Radio, a move that has caused many in the broadcast industry to look nervously over their shoulders. It’s my guess that Apple isn’t planning on losing with ads, it just needs a better service to wrap around them. Beats Music is that service.

The post What Apple Should Do To Make Beats Music Successful appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Pandora is now experimenting with channels sponsored by Kleenex, Taco Bell, and Sketchers. These are called Promoted Stations. Here’s the dope straight from the source:

“Listeners that are part of the beta launch will have these stations auto-populate, one station at a time, in the ‘Stations You Might Like’ sections of their playlists. This allows listeners browsing for their next listening experience to consider a brand’s content alongside existing and other recommended stations.”

A Pandora Kleenex station? . . . yes, the imagination goes wild. Possible song playlist: Cry Me a River, by Arthur Hamilton, Wipe Out by The Sufaris, Red Peters’ Blow Me, You Hardly Know Me, Hilltop Hood’s The Nosebleed Section, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer and, of course, Judy’s Turn to Cry.

Apparently ten percent of Pandora listeners are already subjected to these Promoted Stations. Here’s an ain’t-this-grand quote from Lizzie Widhelm, Vice President for Digital Advertising at Pandora:

“We are relentlessly focused on advertising solutions that enhance both the listener and advertiser experiences. Promoted Stations make it easier for listeners to explore the unique content we create with brands and give advertisers the opportunity to extend the reach of their content, as well as the time spent with their brand.”

Your welcome, Pandora listeners. If Radio Survivor readers have any additions for my playlist, please post them in the comment section below. As for a Taco Bell playlist, sorry, but I’m not going there.

This glorious news makes me further desirous of Pandora alternatives. Sometime around the middle of last week I read that Tunein aspires to become the Twitter of web radio. I love Tunein and this idea and immediately revisited the web/desktop interface to see what’s cooking. Upon signing up I discovered that I can now “follow” stations. But there are problems:

First, Tunein doesn’t make following stations very intuitive. I see that I can click a “+” symbol next to a station, but when I hover over the symbol in my Chrome browser, it doesn’t say follow. So I just guessed that that’s the follow sign. Happily, I was right.

Second, once I follow a station, where is it now on my Tunein account? After some futzing around, I realized that I have to go to my profile page (http://tunein.com/me/). Sure enough, there in the “my library” section I found the stations that I’m following.

Third, I saw that I can create subfolders in my library. So I created folder titled “classical.” But how do I move my classical stations to that folder? I sat around for a spell and then tried the “edit” option. This allowed me to drag my stations in the “general” folder to the “classical” folder.

Yes, there’s a help section that explains most of these things. But at present the software presents casually interested users with two choices: a learning curve that many busy consumers might not have the time or patience to drive around, or a preliminary review of the help pages (same problem).

On top of all this, you can’t really do many Twitteresque things with Tunein at this point. Or at least I couldn’t make them work. I can’t figure out how to share my library with the public. Tunein lets you make comments about the stations, but I can’t cipher how to share them either. I could Tweet comments, of course, and Tunein has Twitter sharing mechanisms. But that’s Twitter, not Tunein.

Bottom line: great concept that needs more upfront help tips and stronger sharing mechanisms. Can’t happen too soon as far as I’m concerned.

We cover social music sharing communities every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.

The post Blowing in the wind? Pandora to launch Kleenex music channel appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Rhapsody is the often overlooked veteran of streaming music world. While frequently overshadowed by the likes of Spotify, the service reminds us that it’s still here after more than a decade, announcing on Friday that it now supports Chromecast via its Android app. iOS support will happen later this month, the company says.

So, make that one more reason why Chromecast makes a darn good internet radio (at least if you own an Android device).

Rhapsody, which acquired the reborn Napster service in 2011, also announced that it has reached 1.7 million paying subscribers worldwide. That’s less than a third of Spotify’s paid subscriber base, however Rhapsody is the #2 streaming service worldwide. This also marks a 63% increase over the last year.

I probably first tried out Rhapsody with a six-month free subscription I received back in 2006. I enjoyed the service during that time. And even though this was the pre-smartphone era, I believe you could take some music off-line with certain authorized MP3 players. Yet, I wasn’t sold enough on the idea of subscription music to continue after my free period ended. (For what it’s worth, I also haven’t subscribed to another service in the interim.)

I’d guess that at least one reason behind Rhapsody’s much slower growth probably has to do with the fact that it only offers paid subscriptions. Unlike Spotify, and now Rdio, there are no ad supported free plans to get listeners hooked.

While Rhapsody does offer a 30 day free trial, signing up requires handing over a credit card number first. Those sorts of free trials tend to deter me from signing up because I’m afraid I’ll forget to cancel on time and end up being charged for a service that either I don’t want or am not using. I don’t imagine I’m alone in this. Hence, I will not be offering a review of the Rhapsody on Chromecast experience.

None the less, Rhapsody still beat Spotify and Beats Music onto Chromecast, which might drive a few more subscriptions for users who haven’t yet committed to a music service.

The post More Music on Chromecast with the Addition of Rhapsody appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On April 28, Last.fm will shut down its subscription radio stream. That means the company won’t be streaming content through its own servers, just third party stuff, mostly from YouTube and Spotify. “We understand that many of you will not like this decision,” a Last.fm forum post announced on Wednesday. A flood of Last.fm users agreed.

“You’re complete screwing over Canadian listeners,” one complained:

“We don’t have access to Spotify or Pandora, etc. Last.Fm was the only decent service available. As an American living in Canada where everything is off limits or more expensive for some inexplicable reason (other than the CTRC), this is an especially low blow.

I’m really sad. I’m going to have to figure out where I’m going to listen to music. I will no longer subscribe after this month, what is the point? I guess I’ll try Deezer or get an American IP.”

The “get an American IP” generically refers to availing oneself of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) server to make Spotify or Pandora think that it is in the United States or somewhere else where it is available. Why no Pandora in Canada? “Astronomical” royalty fees, says Pandora founder Tim Westergren. Thus there are websites like “How to Get It In Canada” which offer instructions on how to use VPN sites like “Hide My Ass” to access Pandora, Spotify, and other Internet audio/video goodies (I’m not endorsing or recommending these services, just noting their existence).

Canadians are understandably tetchy about all this. Late last year The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about Spotify expansion in 20 countries. Somehow the article included Canada. “You might want to fact check the claim that Canada is one of Spotify’s largest markets,” one reader quickly chimed in. “Spotify is not currently nor has ever been available in Canada. The only way to access Spotify from Canada is to use a VPN or proxy to hide the fact you are in Canada.”

What’s particularly unfortunate about all this is that Last.fm is still popular. Last week we noted a music sharing application tweet counter that placed Last.fm at number three in Twitter mention popularity over the last year and a half or so. This further confirms my already fairly strong perception that copyright and performance royalty rates are the lead ceiling hanging over Internet radio’s head—to some extent a form of protectionism for AM/FM radio.

In a related development, Digital Music News (or as I affectionately call the site, “Rightsholder Music News”) reports that SoundCloud is involved “in serious licensing discussions with major labels and publishers.” Sources? They will “remain confidential,” DMN says. This disclosure was followed by some venting over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

“The rules are pretty simple: as long as a process exists to eliminate content that is flagged by the content owner, SoundCloud steers clear of any legal entanglements.  The only problem is that rights owners are responsible for notifying SoundCloud each and every time an infraction occurs, which is essentially impossible .

But sources insist there are serious steps that labels can take, and according to one of the sources, major labels are not at all comfortable with the ‘DMCA funny business’ arrangement anymore.  ‘Their [catalog] is all over SoundCloud, and it’s essentially too hard to police but that doesn’t mean they won’t start ,’ the source relayed.  ‘If you look at what’s happening over at Google and YouTube, you have [groups like] the [British recording trade group] BPI flooding Google and YouTube with takedown notices’.”

Unlike YouTube, with its considerable staff, SoundCloud doesn’t have the personnel to handle a DMCA takedown notice flood, DMN’s source added: “They aren’t pulling from a pile of billions, which means everything in legal terms,” and so “they can be touched.”

Meanwhile, for those of you unsympathetic to my sympathies for the Internet music streamers, here’s your story. The Street‘s Rocco Pendola has a rant over Pandora as its CTO Tom Conrad prepares to leave. Pendola calculates that since April of 2012 Conrad has “generated proceeds of $43,332,556 mainly by exercising his Pandora employee stock options”—the number estimated via repeated automatic sales over the last two years.

“I’ve never been one to cry a river for musicians and a record industry that claims Pandora’s ripping them off,” Pendola opines:

“I tend to agree with Pandora—the music industrial complex focuses too squarely on royalties, ignoring how the exposure Pandora provides and the data it collects can help market and monetize music in unprecedented and prolific ways.

But what rubs me the wrong away is that, as Conrad, Westergren and others enrich themselves as individuals, they cry poor speaking on behalf of Pandora the company.”

And if that wasn’t enough to get your juices flowing, check out Andrew Leonard’s piece in Salon: “Big Brother is in your Spotify: How music became the surveillance state’s Trojan horse.” Or don’t. After all, the title sort of says it all. Happy listening folks!

We cover social music sharing communities  every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.

The post With Last.fm radio gone, it’s back to Pandora/Spotify VPN tricks for Canada appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Pandora fans (and presumably Pandora) breathed a sigh of relief on Friday when a federal judge left the music streamer’s copyright tithe percentage unchanged. From back in 2011 through next year (2015) Pandora must fork over 1.85 percent of its revenue to ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), which represent copyright holders. ASCAP had sued for more. Pandora wanted to pay less.

A stalemate of sorts, but there’s more litigation in the offing between Pandora and BMI. And then there’s the question of performance royalties, always a sticky wicket. These fees place a big question mark not only over the future of Pandora, but the entire online music streaming business.

“Pandora’s business model can’t and won’t work,” concludes Generator Research, a United Kingdom based industry assessment firm. It’s pretty simple says Generator: royalties eat up a huge percentage of the company’s advertising revenue, its biggest source of income. The service earns about $0.0072 per advertisement delivered to its listeners. Royalties account for $0.0046 per advertisement, or 63 percent of “ad revenue that is royalty.”

Generator Research

This means that Pandora operates with a much tighter cash flow than, say, Google, or even Sirius XM Satellite radio. Then there are streaming costs. Then there is the difficulty of effectively serving ads on mobile devices.

Bottom line: “Pandora is a really wonderful service, but it is very hard to see anything wonderful about the company’s business model, or even its future prospects if it carries on as it is,” concludes Generator Research’s Andrew Sheehy.

Despite this, Pandora’s stock continues to do well. Its shares jumped almost 150 percent over the last year; up almost a third this year.

“The bulls are hoping for a quick pop in Pandora Media,” noted the OptionMonster stock watching site yesterday. “The stock made an all-time high of $40.44 earlier this month before pulling back, so the bullish spread is looking for a quick rebound from the recent drop.”

Generator Research scratches its head at all this. The market has “not fully understood just how precarious Pandora’s business really is,” the company says, or thinks that Pandora will soon pull something new out of its sleeve.

I don’t pretend to understand this phenomenon. Maybe lots of people are relying on the “buy stock in things you love” wisdom. In any event, here’s hoping that love will find a way.

The post Copyright, stocks, and the Pandora mystique appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Starting this weekend, Austin, Texas will be teeming with techies and music fans, as the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) event kicks off on Friday, March 7. The Interactive and Film portions hit first, with the music festival running March 11-16. Numerous panel discussion will explore the topic of radio in some way, shape or form and many radio stations and radio-related companies will be on hand promoting their wares in conference rooms and on concert stages. SXSW also has its own online radio channel, SXSWfm, which includes features about many of the musicians performing this year. Additionally, I was surprised to see that several bands (RAMS’ Pocket Radio, Bronze Radio Return and Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio) performing this year have the word “radio” in their names. Could it be? Is radio attracting the attention of musician hipsters too?

Here’s an overview of some of the radio-themed happenings this year.

Saturday, March 8:

3:30-4:30pm: Notre Dame & Spotify: Our Playlist, Our Story. This panel will provide a case study of how Notre Dame Athletics used Spotify to boost its “social media content strategy” and in turn attracted more attention for its teams. (Driskill Hotel, Maximilian, 604 Brazos Street)

6:00-9:00pm: UT RTF @ SXSW Mixer. Alumni, Grad Students, & Friends of the University of Texas, Austin Department of Radio-TV-Film are invited to the annual SXSW mixer. More info on the mixer here. (Brew and Brew, 500 San Marcos Street)

Tuesday, March 11:

9:30-10:30am: Delivering Music Recommendations to Millions. Two Spotify software engineers will talk about “the scalability lessons…learned building Spotify’s Discover system. This system generates terabytes of music recommendations that need to be delivered to tens of millions of users every day.” (Austin Convention Center, Ballroom BC)

12:30-1:30pm: Good Music Club Meet Up. A discussion of the Good Music Club, a series showcasing Austin Bands and hosted by KUTX-FM DJ Laurie Gallardo. (Proof Annex, 711 E 6th Street)

9:30-11:00pm: The Imaginary Radio Program. This live, on-stage comedy show will present “songs and sketches” led by Drennon Davis from Last Comic Standing. (The Hideout, 617 Congress Avenue)

Wednesday, March 12:

11:00am-12:00noon: Compulsory Licenses and Online Music. Representatives from Public Knowledge, the Digital Media Association, and Pandora will discuss online music service royalties.  (Austin Convention Center, Room 18D)

12:30-1:30pm: Create Your Own Mobile Radio Experience Meet Up. Avenue Live, “a new voice-powered mobile music platform” is hosting a Meet Up in order to talk about how its service allows music lovers (including college radio stations) to “curate” their own “mobile radio experience(s)” (Austin Convention Center, Meet Up Pavilion EH 3/4)

2:00-3:00pm: The Insights Evolution: Why Only Obsessing about Music Sales is Holding You Back. Panelists from Nielsen, KROQ, and Spotify will talk about how “sales, radio airplay and streaming activity are connected.” (Austin Convention Center, Room 12AB)

2:00-3:00pm: Internet Radio is on Top Again: Why? Panelists from Billboard, Samsung, Clear Channel, and Pandora will delve into the state of Internet radio. (Austin Convention Center, Room 17A)

5:00-6:00pm: Getting Your Music Heard in the Streaming Age. Panelists from Slacker, Beats Music, WPRB-FM, and Rovi discuss “the most effective strategies for developing artists to be heard in this streaming age.” (Austin Convention Center, Room 11AB)

Thursday, March 13:

12:30-1:30pm: The Death of Music Podcasting Has Been Exaggerated. “Podcasting vets share strategies they’ve used in growing their audiences, the best way for musicians to get their music featured in this modern version of radio, and how musicians can use podcasting themselves to develop their relationship with their audience.” Panelists include the host of the MetalSucks podcast. (Austin Convention Center, Room 10A)

12:30-1:30pm: Be Your Own Tastemaker: Music Discovery in 2014. Panelists from KCRW, Bandcamp, Rawkblog, and Angry Mob Music Group will talk about the state of music discovery amid all of the current music channels, from satellite radio to streaming services. (Austin Convention Center, Room 18D)

3:30-4:30: Adult Rock Music Meeting. Radio professionals from Songlines, WXRT, KCMP-The Current, WXPN, WRNR, WFUV (as well as audience members) will listen to and rate unreleased music and debate each song’s “potential for radio airplay.” (Austin Convention Center, Room 9ABC)

Friday, March 14:

12:30-1:30pm: College Buyers/College Radio Peer Meet Up. This is a networking event for “like-minded professionals to meet and exchange ideas and suggestions.” (Austin Convention Center, Austin Suite)

2:00-3:00pm: Satellite of Love (Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial Radio). Mike Jacobs moderates a discussion about the “radio landscape of 2014 and beyond.” Panelists hail from Entercom, Cumulus, Milwaukee Radio Alliance, and Glassnote. (Austin Convention Center)

3:30-4:30: If TV is the New Radio, Brands are the New A&R… Although this panel is focused on brands, music licensing, and music partnerships, the reference to radio in the title might make for an intriguing discussion about how visual media is increasingly curating sound experiences too. (Austin Convention Center, Room 17B)

5:00-6:00pm: In-Store Radio: 200M Potential Fans. Panelists will “explore the impact of in-store radio on customer’s shopping experiences and how this exposure can lead to fan acquisition for emerging acts.” (Austin Convention Center, Room 15)

5:00-6:00pm: Women Who Conquered the Music Business. Execs from Beats Music, Island Def Jam, KROQ, Monotone, and Z100 New York will share stories and will talk about equality in the workplace. (Austin Convention Center, Room 11AB)

The post Radio Guide to SXSW 2014: Part One- Panels and Meet Ups appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Some days earlier, news surfaced of another innovation. Last.fm is developing a beta player that accesses music on YouTube for its subscribers. A rather amusing Last.fm YouTube explains the feature, to the bemusement of at least one follower. “So what’s the point of paying a subscription fee if all I get is a YouTube video?” asks Reloaded 211. “I can just go to YouTube and look it up myself. This makes Last.fm pretty much useless.”

Well, not exactly. One gets a very different listening experience at Last.fm than ones does wandering about YouTubeland, and of course the company is experimenting with all kinds of content (e.g., Spotify). Brad Hill over at the Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN) notes that the YouTube move will save financially struggling Last.fm money.

“The tactical product change saves in the content-cost department, as YouTube handles rights management and royalty payments on the back end,” Hill writes.

But it appears that one ought not to traverse this route without some experience and support. A lone high school student named Luke Li decided that he would just up and develop a listening application that tapped into YouTube and investor beloved SoundCloud, and he got a little tap on the shoulder from the Recording Industry Association of America late last year.

“We demand that you immediately cease making this application available for distribution,” the RIAA wrote to Li. He quickly complied.

“I’m 18 years old, and I definitely do not want to get sued,” Li confessed in a December 31 blog post. “I am not a lawyer, so I’m not sure if this is exactly a cease-and-desist, but I definitely did not want to test the RIAA out on this case.”

To be fair, Li thought what lots of people might think. YouTube is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s “safe harbor” policy. As long as the operation keeps a reasonable eye on infringing content and takes down illegal stuff when rightsholders complain, the service is in the clear. So under those circumstances why can’t smart high school kids with programming skills tap into the YouTube API and work their magic? Well, maybe they can. But if Li stuck to his guns, I’m guessing he would have had to prove to a judge and jury that he was keeping a top eye out for illegal content as well, which he probably didn’t have the staff for. So the wise lad resolved to get out while the getting was good.

All this raises larger issues. As better prepared music streaming companies tap into resources like YouTube and SoundCloud (hello plug.dj), these big repositories of audio will slowly morph into what amount to government protected public resources. To recap: the DMCA offers three crucial liability limiting safe harbor provisions to entities that allow user uploads (pdf, see page 12):

• The provider must not have the requisite level of knowledge that the material is infringing. The knowledge standard is the same as under the limitation for information residing on systems or networks.
• If the provider has the right and ability to control the infringing activity, the provider must not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the activity.
• Upon receiving a notification of claimed infringement, the provider must expeditiously take down or block access to the material.

Without these provisions, it is safe to say that YouTube, SoundCloud, and similar entities would get the living bejeesus sued out of them and quickly cease to exist. These DMCA standards have thus far survived two concerted attacks. The first of these was Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google for infringement. Google won round one of this battle, but Viacom has appealed the case. Second was the failed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a crudely crafted law designed to end run the DMCA. It was stopped by public outrage.

If big sound/video repositories like YouTube and SoundCloud continue to expand thanks to vast armies of citizen uploaders, and more companies tap into them to provide creative services to the public, and the DMCA continues to survive, and the relationship between YouTube/SoundCloud and those smaller companies survives legal scrutiny, we will have come to an interesting place in the development of Internet radio. Entities like YouTube will have become quasi-public resources—state protected reservoirs of audio and video, if you will.

Think lakes, canals, forests, rivers, highways, the air waves. Welcome to the New Audio Commons. Where it goes after that, I am not sure.

We cover social music sharing communities every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.

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We’ve got an interesting discussion going on our reader forum about the best automation/music library software for Low Power FM and indie radio stations. The winner, so far, is Station Playlist, a software package that comes out of New Zealand.

“We’ve been using StationPlaylist Studio, Creator and Streamer for almost 4 years at Crescent Hill Radio,” writes Kathy W. “Our entire music database is local music. Once I’ve tagged the music by one of 8 genres I have created, I can create templates for each hour of the day. This program is awesome, I highly recommend it. Great support, and after 4 years I still haven’t tapped into everything it can do.”

Ditto, says johnthebru:

“Stationplaylist is a reliable automation program with a fast learning process. At manoradio we only use it when no one is live in the studio, it runs non stop so all someone has to do is monitor and pot it up. It has great capabilities that could work as a more than entry level automation program. A read of the yahoo group will show you how programmers are using it in many, many ways. The response to problems is very fast and if you buy the highest level tier you can lock out the ability for people to mess with the details of the setup something I would recommend.

I have no connection with the company or any interest other than that of a happy camper.

I actually looked at other automation programs and selected stationplaylist. Hope this helps.”

Full disclosure, I’ve got no connection to StationPlaylist, either. In fact I never heard of it until Journogal asked for advice on a good playlist automation package. I very much enjoyed her list of requirements for her LPFM startup.

“This is what we plan to do to date—and this is subject to change, obviously,” Journogal wrote:

“1) All our music will be digitized as time allows to .wav or FLAC files so the fidelity will be as close to the source material as it can be. We’ll probably have volunteers get their feet wet with this task, which is essential but time-consuming, especially with vinyl that has to be digitized in real time. We’ll invest in lots of storage – mass quantities of storage, as the Coneheads would say; possibly on a separate RAID drive or server – to house this music. The database we use must allow this library to be tagged and searchable by artist, era, genre, album title, song title, song length, etc.

2) Right now we’re planning for one studio, but we have contingency plans for two if things work out. Both will be connected via Ethernet to the music library for use by show hosts, and to automate the station when no live talent is scheduled. These computers will be accessible by Internet to the Station and Programming Managers via password so that they can tweak things without having to come into the station, but there will be no browser and regular Internet access on these computers. We’ll have dedicated computers in the office area of the studio for volunteers to use, and one in each studio to be used only for browsing and answering emails. This is to keep the music database and its software safe from viruses and casual hackers.

3) A third computer will be in the main office/CD and vinyl library area (with headphones but no speakers), also connected to this digitized library, and serve as a “listening post” for show hosts to audition music for their shows. A printer will be on the same desk so hosts can generate printed lists of their planned shows to take home or into the studio with them, or for reporting purposes to fulfill licensing obligations.

4) The listening area will also have a turntable and CD player so volunteers can either rip music into the station library from their own collections, or pull physical CDs and vinyl that has not yet been digitized and audition those directly on the equipment for airplay.

5) We want the software to allow program scripting and scheduling.

6) Whatever automation software we choose should also allow us to import sweepers, spots, underwriting mentions and station IDs and add them to the mix, or better yet, record them and then add them without having to go to a separate recording and editing program.

7) We want to be able to put live playlists (or a link to live playlists) on our website.

8) Integrated streaming support would be nice.

9) We want to record shows for airchecks and archival purposes and to download to the website as podcasts.

10) We want the software to support the greatest range of audio formats possible, including but not restricted to .wav, FLAC, AAC, AIFF, Mp3, etc.

And, finally,

11) We don’t want the software to require an advanced degree in Computer Science to configure, learn and operate.”

To which Brian Seim responded: “If you like scripting, Station Playlist is inexpensive but has very nice features. For budget minded outfits, it may be worth some research.”

I hate to interrupt this lovefest, but surely there must be some other playlist software package worth considering. If you know about it, please add your voice to our forum page. And thanks!

The post Need a music automation program? StationPlaylist gets high fives appeared first on Radio Survivor.

We had Rhapsody, Pandora, Rdio, Slacker, Songza and Spotify. Then last year Google Play All Access and iTunes Radio joined the scene. Today producers and headphones impresarios Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are bringing us Beats Music.

Like Spotify and similar platforms, Beats offers up on-demand music for unlimited listening. In part the service hopes to set itself apart by being subscription-only and commercial-free. More importantly Beats is turning to the power of celebrity, led by musician and Chief Creative Officer Trent Reznor, for custom playlists that will will give you “the right song at the right time.”

From these descriptions, it doesn’t sound like Beats is offering up anything radically new or innovative. Most streaming services have their own celebrity curated playlists and stations, while Songza, Slacker and iTunes Radio also try to match them to your mood. However, Beats does seem to have an excess of celebrity, due to its management team’s deep music industry connections. The strategy sure worked in getting folks to shell out for enormous $200 headphones, pretty much single-handedly resuscitating a consumer market that died with the 8-track.

It’s still a question if Beats’ short 7-day free trial will attract enough paid subscribers, especially without an ad-supported option to help get them hooked. The service costs $10 a month, though AT&T customers can get Beats for the whole family, for up to 5 people 10 devices, for $14.99. That latter option might be attractive for a family full of teenagers.

Kicking the Tires on Beats Music

I was able to download the iOS app and sign up a little after 2 AM Pacific Time today, the day of Beats’ big debut. The service emphasizes mobile, rather than desktop listening; at least this morning you have to use the app even just to sign up. So, that’s what I did.

After getting my account in order the Beats app began interrogating me about my music preferences. First, it presented me with floating bubbles labeled with genres. I was asked to double-tap genres I like and to press-and-hold the ones I don’t. I chose jazz, heavy metal, indie and alternative. I got rid of “Christian/gospel.”

Then I was presented with another screen of bubbles, this time labeled with artist names. The selection leaned pretty heavily towards alternative and indie rock artists (genres with a pretty porous boundary to being with). After making my selections I got a screen instructing me to “Hit Play,” getting the Best of 90s Indie, Vol. 4 playlist, delivering music from the likes of Belle and Sebastian and Pavement. Scrolling down offered some similar stations that I might also choose, like Indie Hits: 1997 and Radiohead: Deep Cuts.

With sleepiness descending, that was all the time I had for kicking the tires on Beats Music. I’ll need to take a longer test drive before judging if it’s a Spotify-killer, never mind if it’s worth 10 bucks a month.

In the meantime, Wired made a longer examination of Beats, while the New York Times published a feature profile of the company, its management and strategy.

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RadioSearchEngine.com

I spent several fun hours testing RSE and surfing radio from around the world with ease. The site delivers on music search results for songs, artists and, to some extent, genres, that are playing on just about any station streaming on the internet. This happens with a surprising quickness and smoothness, especially considering it’s in beta. RSE updates results dynamically on your screen as songs start and end somewhere in internet radio land, lowering your chance of clicking a song that’s ended. The app’s interface is straightforward and pretty easy to use, if spare. But that means it generally doesn’t get in the way of starting to listen right away.

As a huge radio nerd I had a blast jumping from song to song, station to station, country to country. Despite how cool it is, I’m not yet certain it delivers a complete enough experience for the average music or radio listener. As a result it may not be ready to take on Clear Channel’s attempt to be radio’s Google. Read on for more.

Ten Songs, Thousands of Stations

But first, if there’s one thing that using RSE will do, it’s confirm the belief that too many radio stations all play the same songs, over and over. Of course that’s not RSE’s fault. The site is just harvesting tons of metadata from the live streams of radio stations across the world and across the internet to deliver a surprisingly responsive and reasonably accurate searchable database of the songs and programs that are airing live right this moment. Then you’re just a click away from hearing that song, artist or show, provided it is actually airing somewhere now.

That, in and of itself, is impressive, even if I don’t like what it means about the profound lack of creativity in radio programming.

If you’re interested in the top hits of today, you’ve got a high likelihood of hearing your choice without delay. Robertson says “tens of thousands of stations are scanned every 3–5 seconds to get the currently playing song.” When I was testing out RSE its “top hit” song was “Roar” by Katy Perry. Clicking the song immediately brought up a stream from KKLS-FM. Selecting the #2 song, Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” also came up nearly instantaneously, this time from KEGY-FM.

Vividly demonstrating the meaning of “heavy rotation,” clicking through the top 10 hits brought up each song pretty much right away. Hits 11 – 20 did not necessarily come up so quickly, obviously owing to the fact that they’re not played quite as wall-to-wall as songs 1 to 10. But I didn’t have to wait long to find most of these tracks playing somewhere.

This pattern held pretty well true for the top tracks in other genres like “Rock” and “Oldies,” though only the top few songs were as ubiquitous as the top 10 pop songs. Also, I find RSE’s genre categories to be too broad, and not matching well with established radio formats. For instance, the site doesn’t seem to distinguish between newer, so called “active rock” and “classic rock.” A listener with a jones for popular metal band Avenged Sevenfold very well may not have a taste for Lynyrd Skynyrd or Billy Idol as RSE would suggest.

Radio Search Engine Starts Local

When you fire up RSE for the first time it takes you to a list of stations in your local market, each showing the program or song that’s playing now. If RSE doesn’t know the program or track it displays the station’s format. Since I’m in Portland, Oregon, I saw the stations in my market, both FM and AM. The station list for FM was pretty accurate for the main analog or HD–1 signal, but only one secondary HD2 signal was listed–KHME HD2–though I know there are many more HD2 stations than that.

Both the station listing and now playing data for the AM band was less accurate. One station, KMTT-AM flipped format on November 1, so it’s understandable that it would still be listed as the former alternative rock format. But the show information for two other stations was wrong, too. I clicked on KPAM-AM to hear Dennis Miller but got Dave Ramsey instead. Selecting the Dave Ramsey show on KEX-AM delivered local host Michael Berry instead. Checking both stations’ websites showed accurate schedules for what I heard.

I did not run into these kinds of errors for music stations. I suspect that’s because talk and non-music stations don’t necessarily include the same program metadata, which means RSE would need to rely on schedules obtained from websites or other sources.

Click, Play, More Choices on Now

You start listening by clicking on either one of the stations listed in the center column or one of the top tracks listed on the left of the screen. By default the top tracks you see first are labeled “top music,” which looks like the top songs played across all stations, genres and formats. If you click on a song that isn’t playing now RSE offers up a list of stations “likely to play it soon” in the center of the interface. If other songs by that artist are being played on another station they’re listed on the right-hand side.

Selecting a song that is live, sometimes the song would be just ending, or a station’s stream seemed to fail. But with the popular tracks reclicking on the song once or twice would shunt me to another station playing the same track. These sorts of glitches are not necessarily RSE’s fault. For timing the search engine has to rely upon a station’s metadata being accurate to the minute or second. My experience with streams is that the track information can often be seconds to as much as a half-minute delayed from when the song actually starts. As well, RSE has no control over any station’s stream being up and functioning correctly.

Your selected stream is displayed in a player at the bottom of the screen, showing a conventional player interface along with artist, track, station and an album thumbnail, if available. There are also the now-ubiquitous thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons to tell RSE how you feel about the track. If you click thumbs-down the track stops and another one is delivered, generally from a station of the same format or genre.

The center column of the interface displays “More Choices Now,” which is a list of stations playing songs in the same genre as what’s playing now (cribbed from Robertson’s UberStations site–more on that in a bit). I was impressed by the fact that this list refreshes automatically as songs end and new songs start somewhere on the internet. If you click the thumbs-up icon in the player it refreshes this list. I’m not sure it does anything else.

The “More Choices Now” accuracy to genre was all over the map, in my experience. Popular songs from popular artists seem to generate the most accurate suggestions. But when I listened to “Moving in Stereo” a moody synth-heavy track by 80s pop new wave band The Cars, suggestions included Katy Perry, indie rock band White Denim, electronic artist Strip Steve and, most curiously, the country song “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker. Then clicking on “Wagon Wheel” brought up quite a few pop country hits from the likes of Keith Urban and Tim McGraw, but also pop singer Lana Del Rey and the French electronic band Phoenix. But listening to 90s alternative hit “1979” by The Smashing Pumpkins served up a nice selection of other alt rock hits that would all segue nicely.

Music Search Is its Strength

As its name implies, you can search for artists, songs, tracks, genres or shows and then listen if they’re on. RSE is very good at delivering results for artists and songs, with a deep inventory of even obscure artists in its database. Searching on genres was less impressive, often only delivering online-only stations with the genre explicitly in its name, such as “GothVille Radio” for “goth.” Broader, less obscure genres like “jazz” delivered better results, hewing to the actual genres of tracks, not just the station or program. But a sub-genre like “avant grade jazz” resulted in a less successful search.

Searching for talk shows works reasonably well, too, putting aside the problems I had trying to listen to talk shows on Portland AM stations. If you listen to a talk show RSE suggests other talk shows that are on now.

RSE also delivers podcasts, but I found that functionality to be spotty. Listening to the enormously popular Adam Carolla Show was no problem, but I was unable to come up with the also popular WTF with Marc Maron at all. Strangely enough, the Ihnatko Almanac podcast came up as a suggestion when I was listening to a song, but the podcast failed to play, crashing the player.

Made for Surfing

RadioSearchEngine is truly made for surfing radio stations like surfing the web, making it easier than just about any other radio listening platform I’ve used to come up with far-flung stations and interesting artists from other countries that are working in a genre you like. It’s a always an odd, but fun, experience when listening to Katy Perry on a station in Bern, Switzerland, or having one of her songs lead me to Italian pop singer Laura Pausini singing her hit “Se Non Te” on Radio Manila. And, frankly, except for the fact that it’s in Italian, that song would sound perfectly at home next to Katy Perry on any American pop station.

In this way RSE is a very unique recommendation engine for songs, artists and stations. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way that I can see for you to bookmark stations or songs you might want to return to. There is the “thumbs up” button, but there’s no indication that it has any function like a bookmark.

Open Architecture

To his credit, Robertson has opened up RSE to outside developers via an API. It’s also easy to create links to search terms. You simply put them into the URL. So to search for the Beatles your link would be http://radiosearchengine.com/search/beatles. It works the same for genres, say if you want to link to a search for country: http://radiosearchengine.com/search/country. You can even create a link that should play the BBC World Service, wherever in the world it may be on.

Radio Platforms In Search of Unity

This is the fourth online radio platform Michael Robertson has rolled out. RadioSearchEngine joins his TiVo for radio service DAR.fm and the very similar recommendation engines UberStations and UberTalk that both launched just earlier this year. These “Uber” sites have very similar functionality to RSE, though organized a little differently, and without RSE’s music-focused search.

I’m honestly a little confused by the strategy of offering four different, but somewhat overlapping radio platforms. I asked Robertson to clarify this and he explained that it’s due to being in beta. “It’s a huge undertaking to index the entire world of radio and then create a universal player, which is why nobody else does it yet.”

That’s a fair enough answer, though I don’t think that makes things any clearer to the potential user/listener. With such a general name as RadioSearchEngine I’d expect most folks would look to it to find just about anything on the radio, using it like an actual Google of radio, rather than just looking for music. I understand Robertson’s distinctions, but I’m not certain that they are useful or obvious. Instead, I suspect they’re confusing and serve as a barrier to adoption.

The real killer app would combine all four of Robertson’s radio platforms into one interface, where you can search for artists, songs, shows or stations in the same search box. In fact, that would be much more like how TiVo works for live TV, letting you search for programs, actors and channels, in addition to recording programs for viewing later.

I don’t doubt that combining DAR.fm, UberStations and UberTalk with RadioSearchEngine is a big task. But radio’s 900 lb. gorilla Clear Channel has already delivered much of this functionality with its iHeartRadio, where you can search for songs, artists and stations for instant listening. The experience isn’t as immediate or comprehensive as RadioSearchEngine, nor is the library of music and stations nearly as extensive. With iHeart you’re not getting every station on the internet, but Clear Channel is busy expanding, making deals with other broadcasters, including public and college stations.

I prefer the enormous inventory of stations and programs offered by RSE, UberStations and UberTalk, but I’m an enormous radio nerd. And so, I also suspect I’m an outlier who is much more demanding than the average iHeartRadio user. Still, it’s that potential iHeartRadio listener who Robertson needs to win over, not just the nerds like me.

If RadioSearchEngine is the Google of radio, then it’s the 2003 Google. Or, more accurately, it’s the Yahoo or Bing of radio, offering up some very good functionality, but not quite smooth enough to beat Google… or Clear Channel.

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Fighting off as-yet-undiagnosed intermittent internet issues I still managed to watch a good portion of several Monday sessions from the Future of Music Summit in Washington, DC. While I cannot report substantially on any one session, I can give my overall impressions of the day.

It seems like there were three major recurring themes:
1. Terrestrial radio should pay performance royalties
2. There is not enough transparency is what and how artists are paid
3. Things always come back to Spotify

Indeed, there seemed to be something darn close to unanimity on #1. I didn’t even hear broadcast attorney and Broadcast Law blogger David Oxenford raise any serious objection to the idea (though, it’s possible I missed it when my stream buffered).

That agreement even reaches to the federal government. During the morning presentation on “Federal Agencies and Copyright,” Shira Perlmutter from the Patent and Trademark Office and Jacqueline Charlesworth from the Copyright Office discussed a “green paper” from the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force (PDF). In that paper the task force unequivocally supports requiring AM and FM broadcasters to pay for the right to air sound recordings.

There’s nothing new with #2, and, of course, that remains a problem that gets only more complex in the digital world. There was, however, spirited debate about who is responsible and what to do about this lack of transparency. Some folks blame record labels, while others blame the streaming services for failing to give enough information in their reports. Plenty were willing to blame both parties.

But there did seem to be agreement that efforts to sidestep the organizations that collect and distribute royalties to artists–like ASCAP and SoundExchange–threaten to be steps backward for transparency. Such efforts include [the deals Clear Channel has struck with record labels](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/business/media/clear-channel-warner-music-deal-rewrites-the-rules-on-royalties.html) in which the broadcaster agrees to pay royalties for music played on its terrestrial stations in exchange for lower rates for its online iHeartRadio streams.

One solution to promote transparency proposed by music industry veteran Jim Griffin is that every recorded song should have a globally unique identifier so that it can be accurately tracked. You see, just minor differences in spelling and even punctuation in song and album titles can lead to fits when rights organizations are correlating information of sales and plays. The hope is that having a single ID for each track would cut down on this sort of problem, leading to more accuracy in artist payments.

Finally, it seemed like every conversation that dealt even a little bit with royalty payments and artist income always veered back to Spotify. On this there was nothing close to any sort of unanimous opinion, though the discussion and debate was respectful. While people’s opinions are heartfelt–it does deal directly with artists’ livelihoods–panelists and audience members made reasoned arguments.

I heard the most spirited discussion during the day’s final panel on “Making Sense of New Platforms for Music.” David Macias, president of music marketing and distribution company Thirty Tiger, spoke in support of Spotify, noting some of the points he raised in a Billboard Op-Ed he authored back in July. In particular, he said that Spotify pays rights holders 70% of income generated from subscriptions and advertisements, which is the same that iTunes pays. He said that streaming services have been “a plus for artists, a plus for consumers.”

Emily Smith of the Whitesmith Entertainment talent management firm reflected that when she uses a streaming service like Spotify, “Isn’t it cool that Merge (records) and Arcade Fire will get paid every time I listen to their new single over and over again?”

Spotify is based in Sweden. As a result Macias said that the company makes up a bigger portion of the music business in that country–serving 15% of the population–and generates 70% of all prerecorded music revenues. However, at the same time some Swedish artists are threatening to sue Universal and Warner Music over the royalties they are receiving from Spotify play. While the artists are not threatening Spotify directly (yet), the net benefit for artists is still unclear even in Spotify’s home country.

Some audience members were less sanguine about Spotify, with one person saying that his statements from the company don’t give him all the information that he would like. Another person questioned the accuracy of Macias’ payment stats.

White responded that “if you’re not seeing the money you think you should get, go yell at your label.”

Watching the summit from the other side of the country I wished I could join the evening’s social events so that I might listen in to some of the passionate exchanges that will erupt after a few drinks. I look forward to what I may learn from Tuesday’s sessions, including an appearance by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel.

The post Radio should pay & no consensus on Spotify: Impressions from day 1 of the Future of Music Summit appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Why should iOS users have all the fun? iOS users got to try Slacker’s redesigned app first, but starting today Slacker’s new app is available for Android, giving users of Google’s mobile OS access to the new My Vibe feature and the redesigned and improved interface for accessing curated playlists.

After putting both Apple’s iTunes Radio and Slacker’s apps through their paces I prefer Slacker’s interface and station lineup. But don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself.

The post Today get Slacker’s My Vibe on Android, too appeared first on Radio Survivor.

iTunes Radio is not innovative, nor is it a great app. However, I think it stands a chance of doing what Apple set out to do. As I explained yesterday, I think Apple intends to bring streaming radio to millions of iOS users who don’t already use a service like Pandora. Then, Apple wants to give them every opportunity to make more purchases from the iTunes store, something that the platform makes it very easy to do.

As I’ll explain further, iTunes Radio does have a couple of unique charms and at least one definitive advantage. This however, does not result in an “amazingly great” app nor an exceptional user experience.

Using iTunes Radio

On the surface iTunes Radio looks a lot like Pandora or Slacker. You start Radio from the Music app on iOS 7, which used to be called “iPod.” This means Radio sits alongside the music and playlists you have stored on your device.

The Radio home screen presents you with featured stations, which are curated by Apple, and “My Stations,” which are stations that you’ve added. These can be either Apple-curated stations–which is more like Slacker or Songza–or stations you created using an artist or song seed–which is more Pandora-like.

Selecting a station immediately starts it playing, with play controls that look familiar to anyone who has used a streaming music app. You can skip a song, but, as with others, you cannot skip back. Like Pandora and similar apps, there is a limited number of skips you can do in a given amount of time, and you cannot select the exact artist or song you will hear.

Customizing Stations

You can customize a station, but with iTunes Radio you can only customize a station you built yourself. With your own stations you can tap the star button to bring up a menu letting you “play more like this,” “never play this song” or “add to iTunes wish list.”

Note that this is a 2-click, 1 menu operation, whereas most other apps have dedicated buttons for these operations. While that extra click doesn’t seem like much, for me it means that I’m less likely to engage with Radio if I’m also doing something else, unless it turns out that I really truly like or hate the song. Pandora’s and others’ 1-click thumbs-up or thumbs-down interface is much more intuitive, easier to use and therefore much more likely to be used.

Only one of these options is available when listening to an Apple-curated station: “add to iTunes wish list.” That wish list is exactly what it sound like. It’s a queue of songs that you might want to buy later from the iTunes Store.

While customizing your station or adding to the wish list requires two clicks, buying songs immediately is only one click away. The song’s price labeled in a bright red box is always at the top right of the “now playing” screen.

When listening to a song you can click the “i” icon to bring up information about the track and about the station. You can immediately create a new station from either the artist or song. You can also “tune” the station to lean more heavily towards “hits,” “variety” or “discovery,” in addition to allowing or disallowing explicit tracks.

Navigation

In the first hour or so that I used iTunes Radio I kept wanting to review the songs that I’d already listened to. But looking at the “now playing” screen I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to do. Mistakenly I assumed that you just can’t do that.

Instead, it turns out that you have to navigate back to the home screen, which has a prominent “History” button right on the top left of the screen. Clicking that brings up the stations and songs you’ve listened to, going back pretty far. Of course, you also can buy any track right from this screen.

Now, obviously I was being a little thick-headed when I couldn’t find my listening history. Using Slacker’s new iOS 7 app I really liked that you just swipe back and forth to see the songs that played, or, if you are a paid subscriber, preview upcoming songs. But, to be fair, Pandora’s iOS 7 app gives no access to your playback history, though you can navigate menus to see your history of likes and bookmarks.

Curated Stations

I listened to a handful of Apple-curated stations, including Progressive Metal, The Beatles Radio, Guest DJ: Jared Leto from Thirty Seconds to Mars, Guest DJ: Diplo and Twitter #music: Alt+indie. The Guest DJ playlists are curated by the named personality, as you might expect, with occasional voice breaks and song introductions mixed in.

The Twitter #music stations is supposed to be programmed based upon songs and artists that are trending on that social media service. I enjoyed that station and the fact that I’d only heard of one artist, Cut Copy, out of about 10 tracks I listened to. They all shared a dreamy mid-tempo vibe with a fair amount of electronics. So I guess that must be what’s popular on Twitter right now.

I let the Progressive Metal station play for the longest, and it started to repeat tracks heavily within just 11 songs. In fact, after those first 11 tracks, all subsequent tracks were repeats. Mind you, they were not just tracks from the same artists, but the exact same tracks. This kind of repetition is annoying, even compared to commercial hit radio.

Creating Your Own Station

The station I created based upon classic New Jersey alternative power pop band The Smithereens did not have that kind of repetition. A number of related artists, like the Cars and XTC, came up repeatedly. But the repetition didn’t seem to be any more frequent than a Pandora station created with a single artist seed.

Unlike Pandora, you can’t add additional variety to an iTunes Radio station by adding more song or artist seeds. You can only tune it for more hits or discovery.

Genres, Sub-Genres and more Sub-Genres

I was quite impressed by the variety and depth of genre stations available. If you’re into heavy metal, you can choose not just from progressive metal, but black metal, doom metal, thrash metal and grindcore. The electronic category offers up an even longer list of sub genres, including “experimental electronic,” which to my ears lived up to its name impressively, featuring artists like Cex and Aphex Twin.

I was also surprised by the top level genres. Instead of broad categories like just Rock or Country, you start with genres like Alternative or Country Hits, which then let you select more fine-grained sub genres like “Post-Punk Revival” or “Texas Country,” respectively.

In some cases Apple has also separated “classic” artists and songs from their contemporary brethren. “Classic Alternative,” “Classic Country,” and “Classic R&B/Soul” are all top level genres, leading to sub genres like “New Romantic,” “Countrypolitan,” and “Classic Motown.”

The selection of stations most clearly reflects that Apple did its homework looking at competitors not just in the streaming music space, but also satellite radio and streaming radio. The roster of genres definitely appears tuned for hardcore music lovers, not just casual listeners. This makes sense, since music lovers are much more likely to buy more songs from the iTunes Store if they discover something new and interesting.

A nice touch when browsing is that you can preview a station just by tapping it, which starts 15 sec clips of songs playing in succession, displaying the artist and track name. That way you can find out what actually counts as “hardcore metal” without having to add the station to your home page.

Sound Quality

The fidelity of iTunes Radio was consistently very good. In fact I would say that it was slightly, to quite perceptibly better than the free version of every other streaming app I’ve used. I listened both over my home stereo using Airplay (as detailed in my recent Slacker review), and over closed-back studio headphones (Sony MDR–7506).

I never encountered the tell-tale shimmery highs that are the signature of lower bitrates, which are more prominent on the free versions of the Pandora, Spotify and Slacker iOS apps. There was clarity and depth with iTunes Radio that I’m simply not accustomed to hearing from streaming services in general.

To my ears most tracks sounded pretty close to your average iTunes Store track. I was unable to confirm whether or not iTunes Radio uses the same quality tracks as available in the Store, or if bitrates are scaled down for different bandwidth conditions.

I listened both on my home wi-fi network and on AT&T LTE and did not detect any difference in quality. That said, I would need to take iTunes Radio for a walk or bus ride to see if the sound quality holds up under more challenging bandwidth conditions.

Conclusion: Nothing Special, but According to Plan

Sound quality and an interesting diversity of genre stations are iTunes Radio’s most distinctive features for me. However, neither of these two qualities launches it above its competitors. Sound quality improves when you become a paid subscriber to services like Pandora and Spotify while Slacker and Songza each off their own very extensive inventories of curated stations across many genres (and moods).

On the other hand, iTunes Radio’s user-curation features and user interface trail those of competitors. If you want to create and fine-tune a station of your own you are far better of using Pandora, Slacker or even Spotify. Burying the ability to “like” a song behind a menu rather than a button clearly indicates that user-customization is not its highest priority for iTunes Radio.

But those mediocrities may not matter to users who’ve never used Pandora, Spotify, Slacker, Songza, MOG, Rhapsody or any other similar app. Apple is targeting the casual user looking for some new, or familiar, music, who doesn’t even need to download a single app to start listening.

Secondarily, I think Apple is targeting users who have big music collections, but are not yet streaming music users. iTunes Radio sits in the same app as their song library, making it simple for a user to look for some variety when she is tired of what’s on her phone, or wants to check out a different genre.

Altogether, this means Apple is trying to capture the millions of smartphone users who either have never used a streaming music platform, or who haven’t used one enough to become a regular listener to any. I’m sure they’d be happy to steal away users from Pandora, but I don’t think that’s Apple’s primary strategy.

Beyond capturing these new listeners, and maybe getting them to sign up for iTunes Match, Apple wants to funnel them into using the iTunes Store and make more purchases there. As a result, the try-then-buy experience is the best amongst iOS apps I’ve used.

That’s also why Apple did not introduce an on-demand service as many analysts predicted. I don’t know the numbers, but I’m guessing that selling tracks outright at 99 cents a pop is still more profitable than subscription payments or ad fees for thousands upon thousands of streamed songs.

Apple isn’t known for eating its own cash cows. And while the company has shown itself willing to abandon less popular products–even if ostensibly profitable–the iTunes store is still amongst its success stories. iTunes Radio is a conservative play to stake out space in a crowded market without a big risk of cannibalizing its music store business.

Whether or not iTunes Radio will be successful enough to give Apple the incentive to improve it is anyone’s guess. I think Apple’s assumption that there are millions of potential streaming radio listeners out there is accurate. I’m not convinced that iTunes Radio is the app and platform to bring and keep them into the fold.

The post Mediocre, but by design — an iTunes Radio review appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Apple’s first foray into online radio shipped last Wednesday as part of the latest version 7 of its iOS mobile operating system. The big question is: What’s the big deal? Or, rather, Is it a big deal?

After using the service for four days I have to conclude that iTunes Radio is a big deal, but not for the usual Apple reasons.

iTunes Radio is not innovative. It is derivative.

The iTunes Radio user experience is adequate, not the best in class.

So what is the big deal, then?

The big deal is that iTunes Radio just shipped to millions of users of the most popular smartphones in the US, and will ship to new owners of the just-released iPhone 5s and 5c, which likely also will be top sellers. In essence Apple has positioned itself to be one of the top streaming radio platforms in the US right upon entry.

More importantly, iTunes Radio will be on the smartphones of millions of people who have never used an internet radio or music service. For many of these folks iTunes Radio will be the first, and only, such platform they use.

The other big deal is more subtle, but critical. Unlike every other competitor, the iTunes Radio revenue model is not about subscribers. It is about buyers, and growing the iTunes Store.

Sure, other radio and streaming music services give you the opportunity to buy songs as you listen. But none of those services is connected directly to the biggest music retailer in the US–the iTunes Store.

iTunes Radio is Apple’s move to plug a hole in its online music offerings. While iTunes offers previews in the form of 30 second clips and some advance streams of full songs and full albums, it’s not a great discovery platform because you really can’t dig into a wide array of full songs and albums without buying them. Up to now, users who wanted a better discovery experience had to head to Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody and the like. With iTunes Radio now they don’t have to.

iTunes Radio also provides additional incentive to buy its iTunes Match cloud service. Rather than offering iTunes radio for a separate monthly fee, Apple simply bundled it as an extra to an already extent service. iTunes Match allows a user to replicate her entire iTunes library in the cloud, whether the songs were bought from the iTunes Store or ripped from CDs. Now a $24.99 a year Match subscription gives you an ad free Radio subscription, too.

Note, however, that iTunes Radio does not offer any on-demand listening like paid versions of Spotify, MOG, Rdio or Slacker. In this way it remains more like Pandora. This isn’t by accident. It’s because Apple still wants you to buy the songs and albums you really like and want to hear on demand.

iTunes Radio, then, just provides a new way for you to hear songs and albums that you might want to keep, and then makes it easy for you to purchase them right away, or later, via a wish list.

This service is not targeted to steal away customers from other platforms. Paid subscribers to Pandora, MOG or Slacker are unlikely to abandon their investment of money and customization for Apple.

Instead, Apple is making the bet that the audience for an online radio service–and buying digital music online–is significantly larger than it is now. The company is predicting that the millions of iPhone users out there who don’t yet use a radio or streaming service will check out iTunes Radio first. And that many will never try another service thereafter.

To make this gamble pay off Apple doesn’t have to make iTunes Radio ridiculously great, nor does it have to steal away users from other services. It just has to make a product that is ubiquitous for its customers, and is good enough all around.

I will post a more thorough review tomorrow. But I can preview now that iTunes Radio pretty much succeeds in being good enough. It might even qualify as pretty good.

The post iTunes Radio: What’s the big deal? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Typically I’m a little more cautious when upgrading my mobile device OS. I usually wait a couple of weeks for the early adopters to upgrade and find the bugs and hassles, and maybe even wait for the first patches to fix those bugs before taking the plunge. But today I had two reasons to upgrade to iOS7 on the day of release, to try out Slacker’s new app and iTunes Radio.

First up is my initial impressions review of Slacker for iOS7, which I’ve been using for a half the day. For more details on what the upgrade offers, see my post from earlier today.

Releasing a major redesign on the same day that Apple debuts its iTunes Radio service certainly seems like an audacious move. Slacker CEO Jim Cady doesn’t seem concerned. He said,

“The digital music market has shifted dramatically since the days of simply putting 1,000 songs in your pocket. We think Apple finally jumping into streaming with iRadio will help expose millions of new consumers to streaming music, which is great for everyone in the space. However, access to music is just the beginning, listeners need tools to navigate this massive sea of content, which is where Slacker leads the with the best human curated stations, playlists and recommendations.”

So let’s dig into Slacker’s new app and see how it measures up to that goal of helping the listener “naviate this massive sea of content.”

Upon starting up the app the first time I can say that it delivered on the clean interface promised in the pre-release screen shots and walk-through. Indeed it is easy to just start playing music, with the last song I played in my most recent Slacker listening session queued up at the bottom of the home screen. Buttons for stations and My Vibe are prominently displayed in the center.

My Vibe

I most wanted to try out the My Vibe feature, so that’s where I jumped in. For my Wednesday morning moods I was offered options like “Wake Up,” “Driving” and “Concentrating.” Although it was 11 AM by the time I had iOS7 and Slacker installed, I went for “Wake Up” and chose the Indie Coffee House station.

That playlist delivered a nice selection of mellow, but not too downbeat, indie rock like “Chained” from xx, Feist’s “Secret Heart” and Radiohead’s “Let Down.” All the typical Slacker navigation options are there to favorite the song, ban it, or skip forward. Like Pandora, the free version of slacker only allows 6 skips, which is plenty for me.

When morning turned to afternoon I checked out some other vibes. Slacker offered up moods like “Supermom” and “Hump Day,” the latter with a camel icon, neither of which quite met my needs. As I started to write this post I chose the “Concetrating” vibe which offered the intriguingly titled “Mensa Mix” amongst others. Needing to be smart, I went with “Mensa” which streamed some low-key but complex electronic tracks from many artists I wasn’t familiar with, along with more known acts like Björk and Boards of Canada. I really got into this station–it worked as advertised for concentrating.

Featured Stations and Playlists

Heading back to the home screen I checked out some featured stations and playlists, which are at the top of the app’s home screen on a carousel. I chose one intriguinginly titled “55 Songs You Think Suck, but Don’t.” Hosts Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks wrote the recent book “I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution,” and give cheeky, but informative, introductions to each song. I can’t say I agree that Alanis Morisette’s “Ironic” doesn’t actually suck. Luckily these featured stations offer the same interactivity as all others, so I chose to skip poor Alanis. That brought me to LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem.”, and while I’m not sure it doesn’t suck either, I appreciated how one of the hosts offered that his 9 year-old son has better taste in music because he likes that track.

In the browser version of Slacker you can turn DJs off if you don’t want to hear their banter. But I could not figure out a way to do it on the new mobile app. If I’m choosing to listen to a featured countdown I probably want the DJs, but would prefer not have them when I’m choosing a My Vibe station. Now, none of the My Vibe stations I listened to had a DJ–just occasional ads, because I’m using the free version–but with so many to choose from, my sample is far from exhaustive.

Navigating Stations

My past experience with Slacker has been mostly browsing their large selection of human curated stations. Navigating stations on the iOS7 app is markedly improved. Selecting stations from the home screen takes you to an alphabetical genre and theme list. Many stations are listed in multiple categories, which I think aids in finding them. For instance the 66 Greatest Metal Songs is under both Countdowns and Rock, which makes sense.

Once you pick a genre or theme you’re presented with a tiled layout with icons for each station in a 2 x 3 layout that I think is easier to browse on a smartphone than a text list. If browsing isn’t working out you can always search by text to find songs, artists, albums or stations.

Sound Quality

I listened to Slacker with my iPhone 5 via AirPlay to my Airport Express, connected to my Yamaha Aventage 1000 receiver with Polk Audio tower speakers so that I could put the sound quality to the test. On most tracks I found the quality to be surprisingly good, given that I understand the mobile app plays 40kbps AAC+ files.

On some tracks, like “Let Down” I heard some shimmery highs that were only distracting if I turned up the volume to higher than background level. However, My Vibe is intended more for background music than focused listening. For this the quality was more than adequate, and consistently better than SiriusXM internet streams. I need to revisit the Pandora and Spotify mobile apps to judge how they compare.

Slacker isn’t slacking

Slacker’s strength has always been human curated stations, and the iOS7 update definitely puts that aspect up front. Several hours of heavy use turned up no bugs or glitches in the app, which I found impressive, especially given how Slacker must have had to push it to deliver on Apple’s iOS7 timeline.

When I first heard about My Vibe I was intrigued. Using it today more than met my expectations, offering enough variety and depth of stations, genres and artists to both satisfy the need to hear the familiar and the surprising. I think that makes Slacker a very solid choice when you want some music but don’t want to customize your own station or playlist, or even choose a genre at the outset.

But…. I haven’t yet taken iTunes Radio for a spin. I’m guessing that hardcore Slacker users won’t easily be swayed to use Apple’s new service. The real question is if Slacker offers an experience that will lure away casual listeners for whom the service built right into their phone’s OS will be the easiest option.

Stay tuned for my assessment.

The post Checkin’ My Vibe – First impressions review of Slacker for iOS 7 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Ever want some music go with what you’re doing, but can’t quite figure out where to start? Maybe you’re studying, doing housework or having a nice dinner, and you don’t want to pick just one artist or album, but you don’t have a whole playlist ready to go.

Today Slacker Radio releases “My Vibe” which the company hopes will help out in just these sorts of situations. It’s part of Slacker’s new app for iOS7, which Apple launches today. That means today is also the launch day for Apple’s iTunes Radio, itself introducing some major competition into the mobile radio app world.

The resdesigned Slacker app is only on iOS7 right now. Though Apple’s new mobile OS is due to launch for download today, as I publish this piece it is not yet available. So I have not yet been able to put the new app through its paces on my own iPhone. But I did get a walk-through of the Slacker app from Slacker Chief Product Officer John Hayase.

He said the “My Vibe” feature is about “the idea of being in the moment. You’re doing an activity and in a certain mood. You’re not looking for a particular song, but something to go with what you’re doing.”

According to Hayase “My Vibe” is curated by “a group of professional radio people who love radio and who love to pull music and put it together in ways that computer’s can’t.” He said that Slacker is trying to deliver “a reinvisioned radio experience that is the next generation of radio.”

Even subscribers who pay for Slacker’s on demand service–where they can select specific albums and tracks–are spending 84% of their time listening to a curated station. “That’s what users find special about Slacker,” Hayase said, “so we’re making them more curated.”

Slacker Radio’s “My Vibe”

More than 80% of Slacker users are on mobile now, so it’s a high priority for the company. The new app is designed to put fewer clicks in front of the user listening to music. “You immediately get a play button,” when you open the app, Hayase said. “We want to get you to music.”

The current track is always displayed at the bottom of the screen in the new app, including the home screen. Just above the current track are shortcuts to a user’s favorite stations, which Hayase compares to the presets on a car radio.

The top of the home screen has trending features and news on a carousel, with items like an artist of the week, current events or upcoming specials.

Specials, such as “101 Greatest Classic Rock Songs,” are hosted by human DJs who Hayase said “walk you through the content. It’s not just about music, it’s about another person who is there and walking you through a journey of discovery.” When human hosts were added, those channels saw an average time spent listening go up almost 20%; on the Classic Rock special there was nearly a three-fold increase.

The redesigned Slacker app is currently only available for iOS7, and can be downloaded free from the App Store by anyone on the new OS. Anyone using iOS6 or earlier will receive the previous version of the app. Slacker says an Android version of the redesigned app “will be available soon.”

The post Slacker launches “My Vibe” to deliver curated playlists for your mood appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Pink Floyd lodging public complaints about Pandora and Tavis Smiley moving into online radio are just two stories in this roundup of streaming radio news.

• Pandora announced that more than 100 car models offer smartphone integration to control its app. The service is offering free commercial-free listening to listeners using an integrated car stereo through the end of the year.

• The impoverished millionaire members of Pink Floyd published an op-ed in USA Today to complain about Pandora’s efforts to bring down the royalty fees it pays for streaming music online. The band says that Pandora is trying to trick artists into signing a letter of support that will only hurt their own pocketbooks. Simultaneously the band’s music became available on Spotify for the first time this week.

• SiriusXM streaming radio now joins the dashboard, too. An agreement with Ford brings access to its smartphone app via the carmaker’s Sync, giving drivers access to on demand content not available via SiriusXM satellite service.

• Public radio and television host Tavis Smiley has signed on to anchor a weekday show on BlogTalkRadio, following his program being cancelled at several prominent stations. Smiley is the first well known media personality to be signed to the service.

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