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If you're planning on attending next week's NAB in
Las Vegas, we'd like to invite you to a special open discussion
on the crisis facing webcasting. Please watch this space
for time and location information.
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Yesterday, as a service to our readers who have pulled down
their broadcast stream in wake of the AFTRA
broadcast
commercial controversy, we featured a quick guide to the major
companies offering ad-insertion services. We hope you found the
guide helpful.
We're still working on filling in the remaining details.
You can still access the guide by clicking
here,
or on the screenshot.
Again, if you represent an ad-insertion firm who we haven't
profiled (or we've posted something erroneous), please let us
know via e-mail
here.
Likewise, if you're a broadcaster who's used one of these services
and would like to add something informative, please use the same
e-mail link.
Internet radio audience measurement firm MeasureCast
has announced they've raised $3 million in the first
phase of their second round of financing. One year ago this month,
the company closed out a $3.5 million first round. Then, as now,
the leading investor was Seattle-based FBR CoMotion Venture Capital.
MeasureCast Communications Director Sven Haarhoff told
RAIN, "The funds will be used for product and business
development, customer support, and sales and marketing."
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BY PAUL MALONEY
These guys love radio -- enough to experiment with putting up
a pirate signal at one time, and applying for
a LPFM license (now that they've gone legit!).
And at the pAved
earth, they love music too.
They love discovering it, listening to it, playing and broadcasting
it, talking and arguing about it, and even criticizing and hating
it. Their "pull no punches" approach swings them back
and forth between the most passionate extremes of infatuation and
contempt -- like in only the best love affairs. Read this review
(or better yet, visit the site), and you see exactly what I mean.
The "Paved Earthers" (Ben and Andy) describe the
station's palette as "crock alternative." In other words
(or better yet, in their words) "We play good music, while
most stations play excrement. We play what we like..Everything we
play falls into one category, crock alternative. Crock alternative
mainly means music that we play, that no one else does."
Hardly scientific, but that's exactly the point. And quite
frankly, don't let the 'tude scare you away. This music -- though
outside the narrow scope of most commercial radio -- isn't inaccessible
at all. You may not know every artist, but you don't need to be
jaded beyond your years to appreciate the sounds. We heard quite
a bit of The Smiths/Morrissey, The Cure, and Echo and the Bunnymen.
The stream is carried by Live365.com. It's available in high-
and low-bandwidth versions of both streaming MP3 and RealAudio.
It's an automated presentation of the songs and a
little bit of "stationality" (sweepers) -- with the exception
of four live shows done weekly. Just recently, the site's added
a second all punk and ska channel called "We Eat Our Young."
And just so crock alternative means they play what
you
like, the site features CMOD -- "Crap Music on Demand."
(Don't be confused by their self-effacing use of the term "crap"
to describe their music/station/site; and their more evaluative
and unironic use of the similarly spelled and pronounced word "crap"
to describe other radio stations/sites/and music they don't play.)
"Crap Music on Demand" is their (almost) "instant
request" fulfillment service.
Very simply, a visitor can click a link to browse the Paved
Earth music collection (and it's huge -- pages and pages). It's
arranged as a list by artist, with song title, album, and a "request"
link to the right (see the screenshot above -- it may be too small
to be legible, but you get the idea). Click the link to request
the song. I requested Grandaddy "Jed the Humanoid" and
Hum "Stars." According to the site, this adds the song
to the queue, and the request should by played within
the next couple of songs (the wait is naturally extended as more
and more listeners make requests). The system limits one three requests
within a nine minute period.
By the way, as I write this, one song has gone by and I'm
hearing my first request.
There's a pretty handy "Now Playing" function that
shows you the last ten songs and artists played, the current song
and artist, and (like we've seen at Cablemusic.com) the
next
artist and song.
As far as the rest of the site goes, these guys are tireless.
The design is attractive and the navigation efficient. But they
just keep cranking out the content.
There's a history of The Paved Earth. There are album reviews.
A pretty active message board. A rants section with
original articles, essays, and slogans (!?!). Poetry, news and commentary,
technology rants and reviews, and any other ideology (subversive
or otherwise) these guys feel like sharing. And if you can't get
your fill on the site, they'd be happy to subscribe you to their
newsletter.
They share their philosophy on how they review music (Ben
"tends to concentrate much more on the lyrics, and message
the artist is trying to convey;" while Andy "concentrate(s)
much more on how the music sounds...(and) tend(s) to enjoy a song
much more as it becomes more complex."
But what kind of love can be healthy without a little hate?
These guys have decided to honor those bands and artists whose music
they most despise with their very own section of the site: Bands
That We Hate. The list is surprisingly concise for alterna-hipsters
(though they admit "...this will always be a partial list.
It would be an effort in futility to think that we could ever capture
all of our animosity for stupid music in one list.").
Were this site unattractive and the stream unlistenable,
I'd have still admired The Paved Earth for its spirit and passion.
But the results of Ben and Andy's labor of love are certainly positive,
enjoyable, and most worthy of a visit now and again.
