People are always stating that Internet Radio is killing terrestrial radio broadcasting.
I just do NOT agree with that.
When my radio station was carried on the FM broadcast band, we had over 50 interested people listening to it and Interacting with us on our Facebook page.
Because of issues, the terrestrial broadcast side of my radio station is now gone.
I have gone over to being an Internet only radio station.
I am listed on several sites, including Tune In dot com.
I keep posting on facebook as much as I can, about the station and the links to listen in.
No matter what I have done, my Internet station always has ONE listener....ME!!!!
Included is a screen shot showing my server's status.
When I was on the FM band, people listened, now, as an Internet Radio station with the same programing schedule, I can not get anyone to listen for the life of me.
This is why I have to ask, why do so many people claim that Internet Radio is killing terrestrial radio??
When WXTZ 87.9 Norwich was in operation we had a crew, now I'm a loner trying to revive what I once had. Advertising my stream is difficult, without crossing that spam rule at most sites.
WFPN is a non-profit, self supporting station, I pay the music licensing fees, without financial help from others.
But try and try again, I can not get anyone to listen on line!! My daily server statistics indicate I am the only listener my Internet station has day after day.
I do not do live broadcasting, like I did when WXTZ was on air, because I see no point in talking to myself, when no one else is even trying to tune in to see what WFPN has to offer.
Are you all facing the same issues with your Internet feeds?
Bruce.
Just wanted to add, my stream is on a premium account, so even that is costing me money to keep going, not to mention the purchasing of all of the music I own.
Bruce.
There are probably more than 100,000 radio stations that anyone can get on the internet.
In your neighborhood there may be only under ten music stations competing on AM or FM, si the odds of attracting listeners are much higher.
If internet radio is killing terrestial radio it's because there's more choice on the internet.
For example, MrBruce, how many internet stations have music just like yours?
Carl Blare Said:
For example, MrBruce, how many internet stations have music just like yours?
MrBruce contests:
Not many, at least not carrying as many genres as my feed carries.
My genre list is as follows:
Rock
Album Orientated Rock
Disco
1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, New Millennium
Soul, reggae, main stream, new wave, hip hop, heavy metal, country, southern rock, top 40, oldies, techno, trance, contemporary, sound tracks, comic releases. LOL the list goes on and on.
There really isn't anything I won't play, except for rap, specially profanity ladened rap, I might own a few tracks that are close to rap, but, those tracks are few and in-between and fall under hip-hop not rap.
Bruce.
It is good that you have determined a way to make your music mix unique and that should build an audience.
Looking for ways of promoting the station is a problem given the impediments you mentioned.
If nothing more, it is the station of your choice and gives you the best listening.
The Legacy has been an internet radio station since 2007 before we added part 15. I can tell you this it doesn't happen overnight that you get listeners. There has been many times I might get to 2 to 3 listeners at the start. I would do live shows anyway even though I only had two or three listeners. I would promote the station on Facebook and many internet sites such as TuneIn and much more. Even YouTube. I would comment under the artists and track that I play and then I would go to YouTube and see if there is that very same track. If there was I would make a comment that I play it on my station and give out the URL. I did this for several months and it was on going. After doing it every day for several months and almost every track that I play I finally got tons of listeners. You see many people don't realize that internet radio exist so you have to promote it. Also the server quality that you have makes a difference and your internet connection makes a difference. I'll explain at first I had problems with my station buffering. I would lose listeners due to this. When you're on the air it is important that no one else uses your internet connection you cannot play video games and broadcast at the same time if you do it will cause your station to cut in and out. This will cause you to lose listeners. So while you're on the air make sure no one and I mean no one plays video games on your internet connection if they do you will pay a high price and that is listeners. If you're going to do that you need to have an auto DJ as a backup so that while you have a family member playing games you can switch it to the auto DJ and then you will not cut in and out and then you will have plenty of listeners. This was something I had to learn on my own as an internet broadcaster and believe me I went through plenty of growing pains and it did not happen overnight that My station
became a success there were many many months of huge internet issues and this cause me to lose listeners. So if you're not getting listeners you need to make sure your connection is as solid as a rock.
Do special broadcast events.
Pick an artist that you really like, and that doesn't get much airplay (example - The Beach Boys). Develop a playlist with Beach Boys & related songs (including commentary), and hold a Beach Boys weekend. Promote this on the Beach Boys facebook page (if one exists - remember, this is an example), and various Forums, well in advance of the weekend.
You'll get tons of listeners for that one event, and some will likely stay on. I did something similar for Cliff Richard, and it was a big success - I did it for 2 weekends, and my # listeners went up from single digits to over 125 (which saturated by upload bandwidth of 5Mbps (at 40kbps mono for each listener).
If you rely on word of mouth or people finding you in the Internet radio directories, you'll be waiting a long time. There are just too many options - some may stumble across you, but that's it. Even if you are unique. There's lots of unique out there.
Since Jimmy VanZant died Today you may want to do a Lynyrd Skynyrd Weekend. Nothing but Lynyrd Skynyrd songs. Or if you do other songs you can play tons of Southern Rock that sounds a lot like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Make sure to tell everyone in forums and such and see what you get.
Mixing Album Rock and Hip Hop however won't work. Die hard Album Rockers consider that sack religious. See Album Rock (Dir Hards) look at that almost like worshiping the Gods of Rock. Anything pop is the same as the Devil himself. It would be like having played christian music and preatching the word of God and then playing Iron Maiden - The Numger Of The Beast. Or W.A.S.P - F Like A Beast.
Certain formats don't and Wont mix. Now you can play Pop and country, Southern Rock and Country or something like Pop and Oldies. But remember Album Rock (True Album Rock that is) is the most pickey format on the planet. I know I have friends who are die hards. It a sort of cult like group of Audiophiles.
Agree with MrBruce....Most people aren't using their computers as radios, even though there are thousands of stations in hundreds of genres and you can hear in the oldies format for example songs that terrestrial radio would never play...try hearing do-wop or blues on regular radio. But still everyone isn't using a computer as a radio. Look at satelite radio, the same thing, many more genres and formats not found on regular radio but everyone isn't running to that either and it's a lot cheaper than the internet. As for the oldies format the age group of listeners for this genre are older people who, the majority of them(myself not included lol!) don't know about computers or navigating through the internet to find the stations. The people who don't like what is played on regular radio just don't listen....they don't sit at the computer listening to internet stations.
I myself have listened sometimes and I like Artisan's streaming but only listen for a bit occasionally....If I was in his area where I could get his over the air station I'd have it on all the time.
Myself being into this hobby with a BETS-1 station I listen to myself and my station plays everything I want so I don't really need to listen to internet stations.
If regular radio is loosing audience it's not to the internet or satelite radio...they just listen to their own records or CD's or what's downloaded on an MP3 player.
Mark
Just heading out to work and a couple quick comments:
WREN an internet only oldies station in Topeka has surpassed the 200,000 unique listeners level. They have 20,000 listeneers + daily. SO, yeah, it can be done.
Shoutcast alone has over 250,000 stations available on their app. Add in the others and see where it stands.
Virtually every terrestrial station is now streaming as well, add that to the count.
The stations I work at -- my morning show gets about 2,000 streamers every morning -- this is a terrestrial oldies station - heavy on the blabber in the morning. I play Doo-Wop, Blues and the Beach Boys ๐ When we have local high school sports on the stream numbers generally double.
Posting on Facebook only helps if you have a decent number of followers.
Internet radio is not killing terrestrial radio. Some would like you to believe that but the numbers do not support that.
But at a Part 15 it does increase the audience potential from a few hundred to the world.
I know my Part 15 has over the air listeners. I also know that I have regular listeners who listen on the cable TV channel that carries my audio. And weekly I have people who ask when I'm going to start streaming (not until I retire from my real radio job).
Just random thoughts. Now, off to work.
TIB
Internet Radio takes awhile to gather steam, I think it took mine several months to attract a sizeable number. Eventually I had to upgrade the server 2 or 3 times to keep up.
Legacy is spot on about audio quality being fairly important, however what goes on with your local connection doesn't do much to your internet stream. Unless you have a terribly slow connection the bandwidth consumed by encoding to shoucast is negligable, my net can slow to a crawl and my stream won't hiccup at all heading to the server.
This of course assuming you don't host your own server on site.
On a side note, Legacy's method of promotion can attract some very negative attention on the internet. This method is commonly called "Spam". I do not recommend this method of promotion, I suspect your spike in listeners was coincidental and likely came from other sources.
Going a bit deeper into audio quality, believe it or not only the older listners are concerned with the actual bitrate quality of the stream. If your station targets younger listeners the bitrate really doesn't matter as much.
On Easter Saturday we hosted our extended family for dinner and I was a non participating observer of a conversation among three adult males. They were comparing streaming music services and the common theme I observed which attract them to this is that they can choose their own favorite genre and playlists. Their excitement was due to this feature. They also mentioned that they use these services because they are commercial free and they don't have to listen to inept chatter from DJs.
It would seem, from this unscientific micro sample of an audience, that the attraction is the ability to choose the content rather than to accept what someone else thinks they wish to hear.
Could it be that it is not the delivery method but rather streaming radio stations are doing essentially the same as is being done by broadcasters in terms of content and format and trying to guess what will attract listeners?
Years ago I came across an oldies jukebox website where I could select the cuts from a library and enjoyed this because i could select what to hear, hence the "jukebox" name. The site owner announced that due to licensing he no longer could allow listeners to choose from his playlist and his site became no different that a station playing satellite streaming. My ability to choose was gone and so was I.
Compare Netflix to traditional cable TV. The difference is not in the quality of the movies and programs but rather in the ability of the viewer to watch on demand.
Neil
With all the choices out there, I believe that the only way to get any substantial listenership, even with streaming, is to target the local audience. Essentially, community broadcasting over the Internet. And you don't have the Part 15 rules to worry about - just copyright.
And while it won't help you, MrBruce, there are a lot of countries (most, actually) that have less draconian copyright rules than the U.S. It is possible to bypass the copyright licensing bodies completely by playing all public domain music and sound recordings - which is what I'm doing in Canada.
It is even possible in the U.S., using independents (with permission, of course), and freely available stuff. Most OTR is in the public domain as well.
i once had the crazy idea of a town/city-wide mesh net using a mixture of 900, 2.4, and 5.8 and feeding it internet via a comcast business connection running through opendns. essentially it would be a giant wide area lan connected through a firewall / content filter to the internet and my streaming station would be run over the wide area lan side which would be linked on the wifi splash page users get before connecting to the internet.