From the press release: "Hiwire
Inc. announced today that it signed an exclusive deal with NetRadio
Corporation...
"Under the terms of the agreement, Hiwire will be
the exclusive provider of targeted ad insertion services for
all of NetRadio's 100+ channels, including channels that consistently
dominate the Top 10 Arbitron Webcast Ratings. Hiwire will also
serve as the exclusive third party rep for all ad sales.
"Based on conservative estimates, Hiwire will be able
to serve over 22 million impressions for NetRadio each month,
in addition to the millions of impressions the Hiwire Ad Network
already serves."
Read the press release here.
BY PAUL MALONEY
The small town of Oxford is tucked away in the same southwestern
corner of Ohio as Dayton and Cincinnati.
It's home of Miami University (whose basketball team, if anyone
cares, knocked this author's Big Ten Alma Mater out of the first
round of the NCAA tournament when he was a college boy). It boasts
a small but pleasant downtown, a handful of people, and some clean
air. Oxford is also home of WOXY
-- a station that's stayed true to its alternative rock "mission"
for Cincinnati-area listeners for nearly twenty years.
It's impressive, encouraging, and even endearing to see
how proud and dedicated the staff behind the station and the website
is to creating and maintaining a truly unique and independent
voice for alternative rock music. Critics are unfortunately correct
when they say radio stations are homogenizing with the consolidation
in the industry -- the alternative station in Denver sounds like
the one in Spokane sounds like the one in Worcester, etc. But
you'd be hard pressed to find a station that you could mistake
for 97X -- certainly not on the starboard (that is, commercial)
side of 91 FM.
First of all, the music mix is much more loyal to the idea
of what "alternative" was supposed to represent back
in the day. Listen to the station (streamed with WindowsMedia
or RealAudio technology by BBQRadio):
we heard Big Star's "September Gurls" and "The
All the All" by Lo Fidelity Allstars just now. Check out
the playlist on the site -- there's a conspicuous shortage of
the "not-really-alternative-in-any-sense-of-the-word"
records that "mainstream alternative (now there's a concept!)"
stations have been pounding by order of someone in a suit at the
home office somewhere.
That's not to say that if it's successful that 97X shuns
it -- Radiohead, U2, and Dave Matthews are all there, because
they are artists with a history outside of
mainstream radio and are still (regardless of their mainstream
acceptance) creating music that challenges conventional boundaries
and musical "formulas." Perhaps it sounds trite, but
97X has stayed the course as an "alternative" to what
mainstream rock radio serves up. The station plays music that's
new, different, cool, and sounds "right" within the
context of their presentation. And that includes a healthy amount
of local sounds.
The website seems to be laid out around the idea that WOXY
listeners want to experience the music -- and for that reason
also want to be a part of the station. 
The
site's design is a unified and attractive combination of orange,
blue, and charcoal grey -- with few images to slow page loading.
The homepage layout breaks convention a little by having the logo
placed on the upper-right,
but is otherwise pretty logical. It's easy to find the link to
listen. The stream sounded very nice (64K stereo), but we never
realized how fond of the "Now Playing" feature we've
grown until faced with a player that could really use it -- this
one! The station explains that since their 8700 song library isn't
stored on hard drives but played directly from CDs, such a feature
just isn't realistic. Listeners are invited to email the jock
if they'd like to know what's playing.
WOXY.com has a really nice "Artists" section
with (at least some) original biographies and links. Also in the
music section: links to music news, a list of new releases, a
guide to free (legit) music downloads on the Internet, a schedule
of 97X artists Internet chats and streamed concerts, and archived
lists of the stations own musical "Best Of" rankings.
Here's the "being a part of the station" part
of the website. The site's community section has a charity auction
segment, multi-topic (and active!) message boards, and a chat
function (not so active when we tried it). Most unique is the
Gallery, a collection of listener submitted art (photographs,
digital art, paining, poetry and rants, and even recipes.
As mentioned, the station exhibits a true effort in exposing
local music to its audience. The Local Scene part of the site
has its own local music concert listing, details on the 97Xposure
contest for local musicians, and a local music message board.
Giving a voice to local music -- a long dead ideal at most other
alternative stations -- is in full practice at 97X.
If you're an alternative radio fan who wants to listen
to what alternative radio was originally supposed to sound like,
a good place to start is Oxford, Ohio and (as Dustin Hoffman's
character in "Rain Man" said) "97X...Bam!...the
future of rock and roll."
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From the New York Post: "The music mogul-backed Web
site
Tonos.com is lowering
the volume.
"The site, backed by Grammy-winning songwriter and producers
Carole Bayer-Sager and David Foster,
as well as R&B singer Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds, has let go of
about half its staff.
"The layoffs - about 20 employees - fall on the heels
of the resignation of CEO
Matt Farber,
who left the company last week to pursue new job opportunities (reported
in
RAIN here).
"A music industry insider said yesterday the site -
which serves as a forum for aspiring artists to get discovered by
industry heavyweights - is in trouble. The source said Tonos' founding
trio is no longer interested in pouring additional money into the
site."
Read the entire story
here.
From
Webnoize: "Mobile phone maker Nokia
yesterday introduced the Nokia Music Player, a digital audio device
that can be attached to select Nokia phones. The device comes with
a 32 MB memory card and supports AAC and MP3 music files transferred
to the device using proprietary PC software, which is sold along
with the player...
"In a separate music play, RealNetworks
Tuesday unveiled Mobile RealPlayer, a version of its media player
software
compatible with Nokia's forthcoming 9210 wireless phone and PDA.
The 9210, which will be available in the first half of this year
in Europe, Africa and Asia, features a color screen and supports
some standard PC software programs such as Microsoft Office."
Read the entire story in Webnoize here
(registration required).
This is in response to yesterday's reported death of the Kerbango
Internet radio appliance...
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"I
thought it to be a great idea."
|
I was especially distressed to see that 3COM has abandoned
the Kerbango product as seven of our music streams were listed in
their excellent data base from the beginning.
We
were looking forward to even greater Internet audiences when the
product hit the stores as at one time over 65% were "tuning in "
to
Sunlite Radio,
from the links on their home page.
I agree, however, with Kurt that when 3COM announced it would only
work on high speed connections (I have that at the office, but not
home), I was very concerned about the success of the project.
Still, as it was originally conceived, I thought it to be a great
idea. I am very sorry to hear of this news.
| |
Allan Winters, President
Sunlite Broadcasting
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|
"Like
building a radio with AM only..."
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The other thing that I think hurt Kerbango was its ability
to receive (only) MP3 and Real streaming. Not having Windows Media
access is like building a radio with AM only (or FM only, depending
on which streaming you like better).
I think there is a future for a Kerbango-type product, but it has
to be as ubiquitous as a standard radio for it to succeed.
| |
Rich Petschke, President
RIS Solutions
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| xxx |
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it out! Explore the wide world of
Internet audio by clicking the screenshot above.
