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BY KURT HANSON
Rock consultancy Jacobs Media hosted its "Jacobs Media
2000 Summit" for several dozen  active
and alternative rock programmers Wednesday and Thursday in Los Angeles
(affiliated
with R&R Convention 2000) and featured keynote speaker Jason
Calacanis, editor and publisher
of a variety of Internet-oriented trade publications including Silicon
Alley Reporter.
Calacanis, whose publications cover the Internet scene in New York
and Southern California, offered an hour's worth of insight about
radio and the Internet.
He began by sounding an alarm -- "Radio may be a bunch of people
in the first-class cabin on the Titanic. You may have an unsolvable
problem; you may want to just enjoy it until it sinks" -- but
offered a more-optimistic perspective as his speech progressed.
"At the end of the day," Calacanis told his audience,
"what this is all about is people's time."
He noted that people are probably spending more hours per day reading
than they were a few years ago, due primarily  to
e-mail. "But the percentages are changing. You're spending
less time reading professionally-produced content and more
time reading e-mail from friends and neighbors."
Similarly, Calacanis observed, younger consumers are learning how
to edit their own videos and produce their own music mixes as easily
as our generation can edit text in Microsoft Word.
By implication, consumers may spend more
time listening to music in the future, but less of it may be in
the traditional professionally-programmed radio form.
"These
streaming audio things are not your competition -- your competition
is Napster.," Calacanis suggested. "Consumers are
saying,
'I don't want to wait. I want to listen to Eminem right now!'"
"The biggest thing you have going,"  Calacanis
said, "is your reach
-- your relationships with thousands of people. They know your name.
But that reach is going to go away fast as usage percentages change."
The opportunity, he said, is for a radio station to become
a multiple-medium brand, like Martha Stewart, Oxygen Media,
and Bloomberg, with an Internet presence as well as a broadcast
presence.
(Calacanis, true to his own advice, has launched products that include
glossy magazines, e-mail newsletters, websites, and high-end conferences.)
In an answer to a question from Paul Jacobs, Calacanis offered
three first steps a PD should immediately to begin creating
a multiple-brand platform:
| (1)
"You have to use it to understand it. In addition to
using it yourself, another useful task is to find somebody young
who uses the Internet and sit with them. Watch how they use
it -- for example, how many things they're doing at the same
time." |
| (2)
"Find the right balance of on-line, real world, and
ether (your broadcast signal). For example, owning people's
e-mail addresses is important. If I had a radio station, every
DJ would have to be on e-mail all the time and respond to every
e-mail they get. Embrace your audience, don't hide from them!
Another example: I'm a big fan of WFAN. I'd listen to them at
work if they'd put up audio clips, but they don't... |
| (3)
Go deep. "The 'new consumer' wants to go deep. For
example, I can rent the DVD of Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai"
and listen to an alternate audio track with three hours of background
information. In your case, as one example, you can use your
website to help your listeners more about the person spinning
the records. Are disc jockeys allowed to show any personality
any more?" |
He concluded
his speech by showing a hilarious Flash cartoon on the Metallica
vs. Napster lawsuit ("Money good. Napster bad") from the
CampChaos.com website.
You can take a look at Calacanis's publications, beginning with
the website of his flagship, Silicon Alley Reporter, here.
NAB's Eddie Fritts rejects
streaming fees for broadcasters
From R&R Online: "There is a symbiotic relationship between
stations and the record companies whose songs  are
played," the NAB's Fritts told the House Copyright Subcommittee yesterday.
The committee is probing performance fees for radio streams on the
Internet, and the RIAA believes fees should be paid to performers.
"Broadcasters pay about $300 million a year in royalties to the copyright
licensing groups. As we go forward into the world of the Internet,
I would suggest that system continue to operate well." Read more of
R&R Online here.
GlobalMedia posts 321% gain
From Radio Business Report: GlobalMedia (O:GLMC) had zero revenues
a year ago, so it is crowing about a 321% increase  from
$58.6K in its fiscal Q2 to $246.6K in fiscal Q3, which ended 4/30.
The company’s net loss grew to $3.3M in Q3 from $2.5M in Q2. GlobalMedia
calls itself “a provider of revenue generating streaming media and
e-commerce solutions.” Read
more in RBR.com here.
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To
read recent past issues of RAIN --
if you want to follow the thread of these conversations -- simply
use the arrow(s) next to the issue date at the top of the page.
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 |
"While
choice is good for ME...you [may] never make a penny..."
|
WOW!
It's great to see that conversation has been struck up. I'm
glad to see so many people talked about my post yesterday. I'd also
like to thank RAIN for posting it.
I'd like to address the man who stated to my post that "it's about
choice."
While choice is good for me I would assume that unless someone
settles on your website as one they'll frequent, you'll never make
a penny. So then I ask you what is your purpose? Are you throwing
darts? Is it to draw 100 million people through your site and retain
none of them? You may be able to get people to come to your site
but can you get them to return?
While this "plethora" of sites is great for users, I would think
that it means didly squat for a company that is banking on people
coming to [and returning to] their site.
I have a host of sites -- many discovered through RAIN
-- that I use regularly. ESPN (a guy thing), Kerbango
for new  choices
to add to my small list. Rolling Stone for my music news.
Quicken for my stock quotes and biz news, Mr Showbiz
for my entertainment news, Yahoo and Alta Vista with
Alta Vista being preferred. MSN for the incredible space
pictures and a variety of other things. CyberRadio2000 for
my Rock N Roll, Blues and Soul music, WWW for my smooth jazz
and techno. Kiss' site, Hunger Relief and a few others.
I choose sites that are designed so that I don't have to
be a rocket scientist to figure them out and they have things I
enjoy. Like you said, it's about choice and many of the sites don't
seem to have an allegiance of people choosing them so they'll probably
go out of business.
Just curious: What number is considered a big number for
traffic these days? I see so many numbers mentioned and not one
has ever shown proof. Are these companies just telling people their
numbers or are they showing proof of those numbers? Could people
be lying about their numbers?
--
Food for thought from Gulliver (Don't drink and surf!)
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"This
is a classic example of the problems others outlined earlier..."
|
With regard to the Cablemusic.com
quote, "Our growth is due to the simplicity of the site", hmmm...
I have some personal experience to relate: I tried to sample their
channels and kept crashing. I e-mailed them looking for a solution
and ultimately they told me that I had to have Netscape 4.7 (the
latest  version
at the time) or it wouldn't work and I had 4.5.
This is a classic example of the problems others outlined earlier.
I can't speak to the product because I couldn't access it and wasn't
about to risk a having to do a total re-install by donwloading what
was then a beta release (4.7). I wonder how many people (few had
4.7 at the time) had my experience and just moved on.
Simple? I'm not sure. Growing? It would grow a lot faster if you
didn't need a beta release to run it!
--
Bob Bellin, MP3Player.com
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