«Could smaller, softer voices nonetheless make themselves heard in a media landscape dominated by large companies? Could the next revolution take place on the radio itself as it did when the industry last grew anxious about its survival, back in the 1950s? Technology night seem to be radio's enemy, but radio fought back with its own innovations. [HD]» (Fisher, 2007: 307)
«in 2002, the Librarian of Congress, under pressure from the commercial broadcasters lobby, the recording industry, and Congress, issued new rules requiring Internet stations to pay royalties to the music publishing cooperatives ASCAP and BMI. Commercial radio broadcasters have never had to pay those royalties, on the theory that airplay of musical recordings promotes record or CD sales.[Traditional broadcast stations pay royalties only to the writers and publisbers of songs they play, while Web stations now must pay those fees plus extra royalties to the record companies and performers of the music. Billington accepted the recording industry's argument that traditional radio's exemption from those fees is justified because airplay promotes sales of the music.- Notes 356] Librarian of Congress James Billington knew his new fee scale would silence most Internet stations, which could not afford to pay the royalties. Sure enough, within hours, basement Web operations started switching off the music. Some small stations survived by pulling all commercially released music off their shelves and dedicating themselves entirely to local artists who have no recording contracts. But at hundreds of college stations and many more solo operations, the Internet stream simply went silent. (...) By late 2003 - only eighteen months after those early signs of flowering diversity - Arbitron's list of the top fifty Internet radio stations had changed dramatically. America Online had launched its Web radio stations-offerings that mimic commercial radio's formats almost exactly. The impact of the new copyright rules was clear: now, twelve of the top twenty Internet stations were AOL's (AOL Top Pop, AOL Top Country, AOL Smooth Jazz, AOL Lite Rock, and so on). Among the top thirty stations, only four were not run by huge corporations» (Fisher, 2007: 306)
«Abrams [Lee Abrams, director da XM] wants to capture the spirit and rebellion of 1950s and '60s radio, but keep it in the controlled context of the '80s and '90s corporate environment. (...) Satellite radio is everything radio has become in the past twenty years - on steroids.» (Fisher, 2007: 302-303)
«Will the public turn against corporate radio? Can a popular rebelion restore creativity and fun, pushing radio back to its local roots? Or will we simply adjust to the loss? What's happened in radio in the past decade also happened to bookstores, drugstores, supermarkets, and hardware stores. The mom-and-pop stores that once lined downtown streets have given way to Borders, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot. American consumers have voted with our feet and our dollars: as much as we may grumble about mega-companies or wax nostalgic for the lost community of the old ways, we cast our votes for the big boys.» (Fisher, 2007: 294-295)
OU SEJA, O PROBLEMA, COM CARACTERISTICAS PROPRIAS À REALIDADE DA RÁDIO, NÃO É ESPECÍFICO DA RÁDIO
a grande questão que se deve pôr é outra: perante isto, que saída para a rádio? o que resta, o que pode fazer a rádio perante determinada constatação negativa?
«Rather than rebelling in protest, many Americans find music elsewhere: Internet radio, satellite radio, downloading, fIle sharing» (295)
«(...) the Arbitron ratings service tracks the amount of time Americans spend listening to radio, and its numbers show a steady drop since 1993, particularly among listeners age twelve to twenty-four. Duncan's American Radio, an influential industry source of statistics (owned by Clear Channel), says listening is at its lowest point in the survey's history, dropping 17 percent in the first three years of the twenty-first century alone» (Fisher, 2007: 294)
«As for listeners, it depends on who's asking. When the National Association of Broadcasters commissioned a survey, it found general satisfaction with radio; about two-thirds of those polled liked what they heard on the air. But when the Future of Music Coalition, a Washington lobby fighting against further deregulation on broadcasting, asked similar questions, it found radio listening on the decline, especially among younger people.» (Fisher, 2007: 294)
«Virtually everyone in radio believes the medium has become less fun, less creative, and just plain less worth listening to than at any other point since its birth» (Fisher, 2007: 294)
«Stories about "why radio sucks" and "why radio stinks" popped up in the press. When Prince opened a concert at New York's Lincoln Center by asking, "How do y'all like your radio stations, New York City?" the crowd responded with a booming chorus of boos. At FCC meetings, activists favoring radio diversity dogged commissioners, urging them to defy the big corporations and return control of the airwaves to the public. And on the radio, Tom Petty, recently inducted into the Rock the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, sang "The Last DJ": 'And there goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say»
(Fisher, 2007: 295)
«In 2002, when a train passing trough Minot derailed, releasing a toxic cloud of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, local police tried to reach someone at the stations to get word about about the danger. There was no one at the studios of KCJB, the area's designated emergency broadcaster. The station was on automatic, running satellite-fed programming from Clear Channel. Even if there had been someone on duty, it's not clear how the station would have responded: among Clear Channel's six stations in Minot, there was only one full-time news staffer.» (Fisher, 2007: 282-283)
«From the dawn of commercial broadcasting, advertisers needed to know just what they were buying when they ponied up for a few seconds of airtime. The science of polling was in its infancy as radio became a mass medium, and pioneers such as George Gallup and Paul Lazarsfeld soon realized that the methods they developed for public opinion research had powerful potential as a marketing tool - and a opinion research» (Fisher, 2007: 192)
«Payola - gifts and payments to deejays made as inducement for playing records - wasn't illegal. Nor was payola new - in the heyday of sheet music, song pluggers handed out cash to get barroom pianists to play their tunes, and in the 1930s and '40s, promoters paid bandleaders to push their songs» (Fisher, 2007: 79)
«Others stuck to legal forms of persuasion. "I never gave a disc jockey money in my life," says Frank Falise, a promoter who worked the mid-Atlantic states for Universal, MCA, Capitol, and other record companies. "But you took care of those jocks very well. You made sure they got plenty of records, backstage meets with the artists, photos with the artists, great tickets. If they can take their listeners backstage to see Elton John, that builds their audience and helps them make more money at their station. There's no payola the way it was forty years ago, but the business was always based on relationships. "» (Fisher 2007: 288)
«Cox Communications [The third-largest cable television company in the United States, Cox offers an array of advanced digital video, high-speed Internet and telephony services over its own nationwide IP network, as well as integrated wireless services.] has launched the Cox Rhapsody music service to customers throughout Northern Virginia. Cox Rhapsody allows Cox High Speed Internet customers to access millions of songs for about the price of one CD per month.
fonte: «Cox Communications Launches Cox Rhapsody Music Service for High Speed Internet Customers», 27/03/08
«Cox Communications [The third-largest cable television company in the United States, Cox offers an array of advanced digital video, high-speed Internet and telephony services over its own nationwide IP network, as well as integrated wireless services.] has launched the Cox Rhapsody music service to customers throughout Northern Virginia. Cox Rhapsody allows Cox High Speed Internet customers to access millions of songs for about the price of one CD per month. "Our customers have expressed that music is a big part of their lives, and Cox Rhapsody allows us to make their favorite songs even more accessible," stated Mark Snow, vice president of marketing for Cox Northern Virginia. "Cox Rhapsody provides our customers unlimited access to their music anywhere -- at home, work or while traveling."
Customers can choose from a variety of Cox Rhapsody packages:
Cox Rhapsody Free
-- Price: FREE trial service
-- Listen to 25 ad-free, high-quality streaming radio stations from
RealNetworks on your computer
-- Access the Rhapsody Unlimited catalog and play up to 25 on-demand songs
per month on your computer
Cox Rhapsody Radio
-- Price: $4.99/month
-- Listen to more than 80 ad-free, high-quality streaming radio stations
from RealNetworks on your computer
-- Includes ability to "skip" tracks and create personalized radio
stations based on artist preference
-- Access the Rhapsody Unlimited catalog and play up to 25 on-demand songs
per month on your computer
Cox Rhapsody Unlimited
-- Price: $12.99/month
-- Includes all the features of Cox Rhapsody Radio
-- Includes unlimited on-demand access to the entire Rhapsody catalog of
millions of tracks you can listen to on your computer
Cox Rhapsody To Go
-- Price: $14.99/month
-- Includes all the features of Cox Rhapsody Unlimited
-- Includes the ability to transfer music onto any supported portable
music player at no extra charge (as long as the monthly subscription is
maintained and the player is synchronized with the Rhapsody To Go
account at least once a month)
fonte: «Cox Communications Launches Cox Rhapsody Music Service for High Speed Internet Customers», 27/03/08
2) USA Today believed that our subscription model was not relevant to the story they wanted to tell.
«For her, DAB remained "part of the digital future of radio". She said it was "easy to use and portable". She could have meant in contrast to internet radio, which Hazlitt flagged up as an alternative investment for GCap.
Then again, in "giving listeners more choice and a range of additional features such as programme related information and storage", some more of her praise for the platform, DAB will always trail the web alternative. Her initial comments were closely followed by a joint statement with 4 Digital chairman Nathalie Schwarz, whose own upcoming DAB project has seen its own problems. Channel 4 has dropped one of its planned stations and delayed the launch of the others from early this year to next, while a proposed Sky News Radio was axed before it started. Nevertheless, she and Abramsky stated their DAB confidence in solidarity: "It is clear to us that DAB has an exciting future in a fast converging UK media industry."» fonte: «Thursday, 27 March 2008 DAB UK - Scary Scenario
«As mais recentes tendências destes produtos dão-nos conta de equipamentos bem além das funções básicas esperadas, incluindo vocalizadores de email, molduras digitais, rádio Internet e uma permanente ligação a informação actualizada e pertinente, como o tempo ou o trânsito. (...) um processador Freescale a 350MHz, 64MB de SDRAM, 64MB de memória Flash acessível ao utilizador, dois altifalantes estéreo, saída de áudio e microfone integrados, um acelerómetro e um sensor de torção, para interacção com o Chumby. A conectividade essencial fica a cargo da ligação Wi-Fi, secundada por duas portas USB 2.0. O Chumby é alimentado directamente pela corrente doméstica, dispondo de uma pilha de 9V para manutenção temporária, em caso de falha de energia.
Todo este hardware dá ao Chumby possibilidades quase infinitas, podendo ser utilizado como despertador, rádio Internet, relógio, moldura digital, visualizador de email, feeds RSS e notícias, streaming e reprodução de vídeo e música, jogos, acesso a redes sociais, etc. (...)
este coelho electrónico faz um pouco de tudo, desde sinalizar e ler emails recebidos, sinalizar e ler feeds RSS e notícias, dizer as horas, o tempo ou o trânsito, reproduzir rádio internet e música em formato MP3, desempenhar funções de despertador, etc., tudo através da suas orelhas motorizadas, cores camaleónicas e voz personalizável (incluindo português). (...) o SoundBridge Radio oferece uma solução muito mais completa que os dois produtos anteriores, embora mais centrado no som, acumulando funções autónomas de rádio internet com streaming de uma biblioteca central de música, tudo por Wi-Fi, sendo compatível com a maior parte dos protocolos e livrarias mais populares, incluindo iTunes e Windows Media Player» fonte: «rádios do futuro», Tek, casa dos Bits, 25/03/08
«At the 2008 Macworld expo in January, Steve Jobs quieted iTunes subscription service rumours by proclaiming that people don't want to rent music, they want to own it (unlike movies, which are available for rent through iTunes in the USA). Jobs' logic is that because people listen to a favourite song hundreds of times throughout their life, a file that might expire doesn't make sense. For companies like Rhapsody and Napster, the million dollar question is, "Is he right?" The answer is more complicated than you'd think. I would never be so bold as to call Mr. Jobs a liar, but I think his Macworld statement is misleading.
The subscription vs. purchased music debate presents a false choice -- a black and white view of a world without accounting for all the mess in between. While it's true that most music consumers do just fine purchasing music a la carte through services like iTunes, Destra or eMusic, the idea of a coexisting "celestial jukebox" isn't any less potent. It's like saying the iPod and FM radio can't coexist. The concept of DRM protection for purchased music is clearly dumb (and still practiced by iTunes, by the way), but the real reason iTunes will be the last service to adopt a subscription music model is because it doesn't have to. Apple's existing music retail store is already enjoying a charmed existence without a subscription music option rocking the boat. Why the hell would Apple open up an all-you-can-eat buffet in a restaurant already raking it in on overpriced entrees?» The future of subscription music By Donald Bell on 25 March 2008
«I'm coming around to the notion that an iTunes subscription model, alongside Apple's existing system, could work quite well, especially if it's sold in conjunction with a network-ready piece of hardware. Lesser players in the digital music business such as RealNetworks (RNWK), Napster (NAPS), and Microsoft's (MSFT) Zune marketplace have embraced subscriptions. I used Rhapsody for the better part of a year and was for the most part pleased with it. For $12.99 a month, I could play music on my Mac or PC without paying for an album I ended up not liking. I could take music I was curious about for an extended test-drive. If I liked it, I'd go over to iTunes, buy it, and keep it forever. Rather than trying to compete directly with Apple, Rhapsody has gone a different route, getting itself embedded into standalone audio hardware—notably the Sonos Sound System, TiVo (TIVO) boxes, and some high-end audio gear from Denon. It is in conjunction with audio hardware that I think the subscription model makes a lot of sense. The idea is that the user buys a piece of equipment with a ready connection to an online music store and then pays a monthly subscription fee for unlimited access to many or all of the songs. Apple wouldn't be the first to try to make this work, but it could possibly do it better.» (How iTunes Subscriptions Could Succeed by Arik Hesseldahl Business Week, 28/03/08
«Remember when I said internet in your car may come sooner than you think? Well guess what, Chrysler is saying it will be the first car company to provide in-car Internet access - availability will come later this year.
The third-largest U.S. automaker will have the capability added to existing vehicles by dealers beginning this year, and later will be factory-installed on the assembly line.
The Washington Post is reporting that Chrysler will use a cellular signal and a mobile phone account to give passengers access to the web.
"We want to make the radio itself a WiFi port," said Frank Klegon, Chrysler's product development chief.» (Orbicast)
Mark Ramsey: «"The radio" is a technology device which will transform according to the capabilities of technology, assuming those capabilities are consumer-based. There is no necessity that any of these capabilities will have anything whatsoever to do with your station. Instead, these capabilities will be driven by the desire of consumers to be empowered - to control their entertainment and information experience - to have more fun in more places and to solve whatever problems they face on the open road. (...)So the strategy for your station is to think beyond the radio. You are not "the radio," you are an entertainment brand which distributes across multiple channels and has (hopefully) deep relationships with clients and hundreds of thousands of listeners.»
«iPods/portable MP3s, Custom CDs, and time shifting have adversely affected radio time spent listening (TSL) among 14 to 24 year olds. Let’s turn this proposition on its head and cite new media and activities that haven’t hurt radio as one might have thought.
Overall radio listening suffered a minus 4% net negative (listening more minus listening Less) among the 14 to 24 year olds surveyed.
There was a slight net positive radio TSL among…
• Cell phone owners
• Internet Radio users
• People who social network
There was a slight net negative radio TSL (although not above the -4 net negative radio TSL overall) among people who play video games
These observations underscore that usually radio is a secondary activity. People are still listening to radio even though the secondary activities they’re engaging in while listening may have not been prominent a decade ago. Internet radio listening may signal someone who’s more interested in radio overall be it on-line or over-the-air. Interestingly, cell phone ownership didn’t dent radio listening.»
fonte: «New Media and Activities That Don’t Adversely Affect Radio TSL», 24/03/08