AOL Radio, Pandora, Slacker and Last.fm are some of the online radio services that have become popular these last few years. A lot of of these are also accessible on mobile products including mobile phones. Does this mean the end of traditional radio stations? I will take a look at the impact of streaming radio on the radio landscape.
Local radio seems to be having a hard time in today’s radio landscape with competing satellite and online radio services taking away listeners by providing commercial-free music and entertainment. The internet has allowed access to a virtually infinite number of online radio stations.
Pandora and other online radio services have become available on wireless audio transmitter and portable products by installing the appropriate app. This increases convenience and mobility cheap doxycycline of online radio. Mobility has thus far been the main advantage of local radio.
AOL Radio which features 200 plus music channels of 25 genres uses CBS radio as its underlying platform. It also provides access to 150 national CBS radio stations. The underlying platform “play.it” also has a feature that allows listeners to make their own radio stations by entering favored albums, artists and so on. The individual tracks of each music channel are also available for storage on an iPod via 3rd-party software such as iGetMusic.
Pandora and other online radio services have in the same way begun to offer customized music. The user can enter music-related details such as artist, track or album name. These channels will then select tracks which are similar to the information entered. However, most online radio broadcasters lack the ability to create fully customized radio stations such as the “play.it” platform.
Are conventional radio stations destined to become extinct by the continuous decrease of market share due to online radio? Online radio has proved useful in particular for niche broadcasters because of the inherently lower broadcasting expense compared with local radio stations.
Online radio broadcasters have found it hard to be profitable. The main reason is the vast number of competiting channels which is diluting listeners. The lower expense of online radio at the same time enables making of more interesting content than local radio by serving niche markets and inserting westernunion texas fewer commercials.
However, cialis online order local radio has one big advantage over satellite and online radio. That is local content such as local news and events. Additionally, local radio is now improving the audio quality by using digital transmission technologies versus traditional FM broadcasts which has been a big benefit of online radio so far. The big factors that will ultimately decide the destiny of each technology are content and convenience. Online radio and conventional radio each have their own niche regarding offering unique content and both offer high mobility and convenience so there will most likely be no clear winner.
