The future of Internet Radio

The Future of Internet Radio

Will the success of Web radio spell the end of traditional broadcast radio?

Over the past month or so, there has been a heated battle between the music industry and Internet radio about rights and fees. Actually, over the past decade, there has been nothing but trouble surrounding Internet radio. I think it’s one of the reasons that podcasting emerged as an alternative to Internet radio. Look closely at podcasting, however; with the exception of the advanced auto-download via RSS aspect, it’s actually just more Internet radio.

(An aside: It’s interesting to me that many of the people who have pioneered podcasting are trying to ditch the term because it only serves to confuse the market. I suspect the term “podcasting” will be dropped in favor of variations on the Internet radio moniker. The classic “deliverable via RSS model” (developed by Adam Curry and Dave Winer)—on which podcasting was based—will need a new name, such as subscription radio or auto-load radio or who knows what.)

Let’s define Internet radio. Simply put, it’s the delivery of voice and music over the Internet. This has to be done in a format resembling that of a conventional radio show as opposed to mere file-swapping of music, which is also delivered over the Net. That’s it as far as I’m concerned.

The fly in the ointment is that there are no standards for Internet radio—not in the way it’s done, how we listen to it, etc. One would hope, however, that both the PC and Mac worlds would have systems on their machines that would take care of anything thrown at them. Not so from my experience. There is always something that works fine on one of my machines but fails on another, presenting me with odd error messages about missing codecs or unknown formats.

This mess began in the very early days of what could be described as Internet radio, when RealNetworks promoted its streaming, buffering player. You’d click on something and it would play, and then you’d click on something else and the player would tell you that you needed to upgrade. You’d upgrade and then it wouldn’t play the thing it played before unless you did a paid upgrade, which completely confused the machine half the time.

Luckily, more versatile free and public domain players emerged, and people began to stream MP3s and other formats. The bad news was that there were too many of these players, and each would fight for control of the computer and make a mess. Some sounded better than others. Some could save streams. Nobody in the mainstream media could get a handle on the scene, so reviews were scant, and you had to rely on your kids for the inside poop. That dialogue usually came in the form of “What’s this? Why aren’t you using such and such? That’s what everyone uses.” “Oh, okay.” What would I know? I only write about this for a living.

The key to understanding Internet radio is the fact that it can exactly mimic transmitter-based terrestrial and satellite broadcast radio in terms of content and style. Internet radio has three huge advantages over transmitter-based distribution, which will absolutely spell the eventual doom of traditional radio-REACH By its nature, the Internet can distribute the “signal” or show around the world to every nook and cranny. And it can do it while providing high quality at each locale.

ON DEMAND Because the product has to run through servers anyway, there is an on-demand aspect to Internet radio that cannot be duplicated by transmitter-based radio without the use of ancillary TiVo-like equipment. And there are no such devices available. Internet radio can stream in real time or be obtained on demand as needed. You can listen to what you want when you want. This is a big competitive advantage.

LOW COST The death blow, though, always comes down to money. The expense of streaming over the Internet is a fraction of what transmitter-based broadcasting costs. There is no big antenna, no transmitters, no special studios. Nothing within reason can change this metric.

This same argument could be made about TV, with IPTV being the future of TV distribution. Internet radio will pioneer this transition of media to the Net, if for no other reason than it got a head start.

So, you have to wonder: When will the last terrestrial transmitter get turned off? Well, this sort of thing never happens overnight, but certainly by 2020.