quentin
Newbie
Joined: 12 Apr 2005
Posts: 5
Location: Australia |
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What is Internet Radio, and what makes Radio, Radio!
Internet radio is just broadcast quality content being streamed over the internet. That is it, nothing more. There are 2 variations, and both are considered internet radio. One version is live content being streamed in real time based on a time schedule, but in reality that is not really necessary or cost effective for that matter. What I believe to be the next wave of useful marketing tactics using audio on the web, is building a niche internet radio station which will have tremendous marketing and audience building potential. It will be in the broadcaster's best interest to produce killer-archived content and post that regularly to stream on demand for their listeners. This is so easy and cost effective to do, and does not require the live production techniques of traditional radio, nor the high costs and server infrastructure of live feed internet audio streaming.
Be aware live streaming can be done through web companies such as www.Shoutcast.com or www.Live365.com, and many other others that have the data centers to multicast audio streams in real time. Internet radio needs only to be great audio content available upon demand online, and I see it as an incredible opportunity for producers of niche products and services to create to build audience or traffic to their online offerings.
Why do we listen to traditional radio and where do we hear it?
We listen for music/entertainment or news/information, not what the advertisers are selling and generally most of us are trapped in our vehicles in highway traffic. Very few of us listen to radio to hear commercials, except maybe the advertisers who paid to run those ads. But if you think about traditional radio, we tuned in to listen to content we like, and we get essentially spammed for 8 minutes of every hour by advertisers trying to sell us everything from soft drinks, diet plans to cars and travel packages!
Advertising is all radio cares about, but they have to produce shows that attract listeners. When Aribitron, the rating service of radio, says you have listeners in a market, you then have the proof to sell that 8 minutes of each hour the FCC allows you to pay for everything. Like the promotional give-aways, the DJs, the sales people, the receptionists, the managers, program directors and the office overhead to create the content. That 8 minutes of audio real estate in radio is all they have to make money and it is based on if they have an audience and how big the research from Arbitron says it is.
What has this got to do with the Internet and Internet Radio?
The model of radio has been working and profitable for years. The only difference between WABC radio and YourDomain.com is they have an audience (akin to web traffic) and they are pros at producing audience attracting audio content that they broadcast 24 hours a day to a limited area geographically. With your dot com, you can broadcast audience-attracting audio content just good as theirs, broadcast it on demand to anywhere in the world, and make profits with niches where they can't.
Example: Fly fishing radio, Pottery artists radio, Swing trading radio, Hair coloring tips radio, thousands of other possible niches would fail horribly in traditional radio broadcast models, but niches thrive on the internet, and so does niche internet radio. Once the audience is built, if yours is not already, all the profitable techniques of traditional radio apply. It would not be spam in an internet radio program to advertise and direct listeners to online offers. You could run all the audio ads you want. But be careful, people are 1 click away from not listening. Yet, we are conditioned to hear, "This program is brought to you by XYZ advertiser" and 8 minutes of every hour, radio plays commercials, and you could do the same on Internet radio programming.
What makes Radio, Radio. The aural elements we take for granted and don't think about.
Below are auditory elements we hear every time we listen to commercial radio. They all can be produced easily with sound editing software, royalty free music, pro audio mics and sound cards, Add some creative energy and you can have an internet radio station broadcasting your creative content to the world. Listen to become familiar with the examples of the aural elements of radio.
Below is listed examples of radio style audio production you can create yourself to make your niche station
Advertiser Jingles
Station Call Letter IDs
Sweepers - Bumpers
Production Music Beds
Voice overs
Interviews - Talk radio
Advertisers commercials
To hear these examples Niche Internet radio station examples online now.
http://www.lawtechradio.com - All lawyers radio
http://nbeatmusic.com - Music radio
http://www.choosefitness.com - All fitness radio
http://netstreamradio.com Showing different formats
What is a great solution to host an internet radio station?
Flash is the best technology to stream archived audio over the web because it is the most common cross platform player, period. Real Media and Windows Media are the formats that allow live streaming, but I focused on archived, on demand audio in this article. The easiest method for hosting internet radio content is http://netstreamradio.com
You can do it all with the right equipment, the right production software and a little learning curve.
Hear you on the Internet! .
Quentin Brown
Streaming Audio Made Easy |
Sun May 29, 2005 11:55 pm |
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