Vintage Electronics

Does AOL Radio Mean The Extinction Of Traditional Radio?

AOL Radio, Pandora, Slacker and Last.fm are some of the online radio services that have become popular these last few years. Many of these are also available on portable products including cell phones. Are local radio stations doomed? I will take a closer look at online radio to attempt to answer this question. In particular I will examine the effect of online radio on local broadcasters.

Local radio stations do seem to have a hard time as of late. Satellite radio has been cutting the market share of previous radio stations severely in the past few years by providing mobility, a substantial number of commercial-free music channels as well as news and entertainment channels. Specifically, online radio has become pretty popular by offering a nearly infinite number of radio stations.

While traditionally local radio has been the only truly mobile radio, online radio services including Pandora are now available on wireless audio transmitter and portable devices such as mobile phones.

AOL Radio utilizes CBS radio as its broadcasting platform. It comes with over 200 music channels. In addition it provides access to over 150 local CBS radio stations. The underlying platform “play.it” also has a feature that permits listeners to create their own radio stations by entering favored albums, artists etc. The individual tracks of each music channel are also accessible 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 information such as artist, track or album name. These channels will then select tracks which are similar to the information entered. On the other hand, most online radio broadcasters lack the ability to create fully customized radio stations such as the “play.it” platform.

Does online radio mean the end of local radio? The growing number of options clearly is going to reduce the market share of conventional radio broadcasters. Particularly niche broadcasters have found online radio very useful. The main reason is the low broadcasting expense of online radio compared with terrestrial radio. One more reason is the difficulty acquiring frequency spectrum licenses from the FCC. Nonetheless, increasing royalty charges have made the life of online broadcasters more difficult lately.

The big number of accessible stations is a big plus for online radio listeners. However, this is a difficulty for online broadcasters. This big number of stations is diluting the number of listeners. Consequently streaming radio broadcasters have found it difficult to be profitable. At the same time, however, there is less pressure to insert commercials because of the lower expenses of broadcasting compared with traditional stations. This has made online radio content more interesting than terrestrial radio.

One big plus of local stations however is local content such as news or current events. One downside of local radio has been the inferior audio quality of FM broadcasts. However, that is being remedied by the latest introduction of digital radio broadcasts such as HD radio. The big factors that will in the end decide the fate of each technology are content and convenience. Online radio and conventional radio each have their own niche in regard to providing unique content and both offer high mobility and convenience so there will most likely be no clear winner.

Does anybody make a portable radio that picks up the new digital tv channels?

I bought a radio that picks up tv a few years ago for my mom. Today she went to use it and it doesn’t get the tv channels anymore. I’m guessing it’s because it’s digital now. Somebody must make an affordable one.

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