I used to be what one could describe as a radio geek. Living on the east end of Long Island your standard Realistic radio receiver would pick up signals from Connecticut, Rhode Island, NYC, New Jersey and sometimes ‘skips’ from as far away as Halifax or Harrisburg. It helped that I lived on hill above town-one of the highest points in Sag Harbor. I heard countless college and free form radio from all the listed above exposing me to the music and nomenclature of innumerable genres. I built UHF amplifiers straight out of popular electronics or Radio Shack kits so I could tune in shows that I would not find locally. I also nearly destroyed our families first VCR attempting to tap into its tuning section in an attempt to get better reception of WFMU. You’ll recall that the early VCR’s used a series of tuning wheels to modulate the video out onto the TV channel – I learned so much by tinkering with it. Thankfully my mother never found out just how much I tinkered into that box, she would have been appalled at my opening such an expensive device. In a very analog way I had my internet radio, just without the genre shaping Genome and Audioscrobble Pandora and Lastfm provide. I pined for a shortwave receiver as I read articles about the stations in far flung parts of the world –or just the BBC- playing all sorts of music; alas I could never afford a decent one in high school.
I moved to NYC the summer high school ended and was both disappointed and intrigued. Living on the top floor of a six floor walk up getting decent reception of WFMU, WSOU and a new find WNYU worked out fine with an ‘illegal’ antenna hook up on the roof. So I could hear the lone free form radio station much better and a new station came into my life which indeed opened my ears to the urban alternative rock movement. But that was it, aside from the few college stations or WBAI’s morning music-(I did love that Delphine Blue) broadcasting only at parts of the day- NYC radio was\is a wasteland.
This is why I fell so hard for early internet radio, it was brash, eclectic often shocking, sometimes dull and fidelity was a feature for a later date. It was just like to old days. Radio IO was my first and still my favorite.
Currently the number of internet ‘stations’ can be counted in the thousands but its mass cannot stop the rag tag collection from being washed out. Twice has published a report which shows internet radio is growing despite several forces which could in a perfect storm combine to wreck havoc like a tornado in a trailer park. The article, based on findings from Soundexchange claims that the number of new stations registering with the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) increased by 400, although this is 100 less than the numbers from last year. My question is just who is applying and why.
Some evidence can be gleaned from Warner Bros recent decisionto pull out of its involvement with Lastfm, most likely to put its eggs in the MySpace streaming project. The issue? royalties of course. Warner Bros has been quite vocal about its desire to siphon off a share of the Ad revenues, not just from the main page but from the ancillary pages a user may go to whilst searching the artist. This is not a bad thing as it shows a traditional brick n’ mortar music company actively looking to compensate for the woeful sales of physical discs. I am sure if WB could effectively set up its own streaming ‘radio’ and abandon the distribution model it would. A number of labels \ artists are utilizing a single point of sale model already as evidenced by the fact that AC\DC is just the latest in a line of artist to sell their CDs’ exclusively through Wall Mart.
Why would an artist\label apparently limit distribution and technically expose the product to less folks? - Control of margins and less expenditure on real world distribution. How long before Label (X) only provides a song via Pandora or only on its own site? Madness you say? Just another example of last gasp attempts by a limping to extinction record companies? Answer me this, why are most record labels (such as Warner Bros \ Time Warner) are against the legislating for Net Neutrality? Bandwidth equals access. If the ISP’s get their wish media companies could purchase the lion’s share of bandwidth and elbow out the smaller niche players by having the playing field all to themselves. Some have argued that the hoopla is much ado about very little, that the shakeout will leave a number of marginal players absorbed or destroyed but that in the end the independent music will find a way to get out there. I counter, imagine you own a building in which your business resides, then one day someone tells you that a bigger competitor needs 85% of your space for stock storage. Oh yeah, and you will have to move your sign and front door to the back and the street will be reduced to a one way dead end. You may still get some of your dedicated existing clients but most new visitors will not even notice you. Bandwidth.
Over the next few years the big question for installers or custom systems is just how and what are you going to install in your clients homes. Most certainly there will always be the high client who will want-(or told) the Media System with ADA output cards but where will the content come from and can you tag a recurring income from it? Is the newest dealership to be an offical provider of Warner Bros licensed receivers? Will high end CE manufacturers provide multi license players much in the way you can sell ‘radio’ receivers with built in Wifi for internet content streaming?
Can pirate radio exist in a world where radio is only online? Will we never see the likes of Mark Hunter (Hard Harry) again?
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