From this afternoon's press release: "The Arbitron Company has entered into a strategic alliance with Lariat Software, a leading developer of streaming media infrastructure solutions, to power InfoStream, the world’s first webcast audience ratings service.

"Under the terms of the agreement, Lariat will license its MediaReportsTM software to Arbitron for use in the collection of data from streaming media servers for the InfoStream ratings. MediaReports is a robust streaming media measurement and analysis solution."

...

... Arbitron Internet Information Services VPGM Bill Rose told RAIN this afternoon, "The purpose of this partnership is to make the whole process more timely, more scalable -- meaning that Arbitron can measure more channels and more stations -- and make it easier for the content distributor to participate. "The current system is that we gather log files through an FTP system, which requires that we work with people at the other end of the phone to help us set it up. Lariat's software will make this whole process seamless." This partnership comes at a time when Arbitron is falling months behind in getting out its webcast ratings reports. (See second story in Thursday's issue of RAIN here). According to Arbitron personnel, the slowdown has been caused, at least in part, by the complexities involved in processing terrabytes of data that come into Laurel in a wide variety of different formats. Using Lariat's software to standardize the incoming data should help solve that problem. How soon should Arbitron be able to start releasing timely data? "We have some meetings coming up on that in the next week," Rose told RAIN. He said that his long-term goal is to release results within four to six weeks of the end of each month's survey period. ...

From the Los Angeles Times: EMI Recorded Music is taking a major plunge into selling downloadable music online, teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to put more than 100 albums on sale in the Windows Media format, the companies said Friday.

In the first large-scale test of digital music sales, the EMI albums -- by artists ranging from the Smashing Pumpkins and D'Angelo to Frank Sinatra and George Thorogood -- will be available for downloading to personal computers via various online music sellers as of 12:01AM Eastern on Tuesday, the companies said.

Each music file will have use restrictions written into the software code, limiting the number of times a customer can copy the file for personal use. That helps circumvent a major concern of record labels and artists, who worry that perfect-sounding digital bootlegs would quickly make record sales dive.

"Consumers have spoken loudly that they'd like to get their music on something other than round silver platters," said Jay Samit, senior vice president at EMI. "Now, we can be assured of not only the quality of the music being delivered, but the security and copyright issues as well."

Unlike the popular MP3 digital audio format, the Windows Media format generally has higher quality playback while taking up less storage memory. Also, Microsoft's copyright-management software has made points with record labels.

Read the full story in the L.A. Times here.

According to an article in USA Today (here), the prices will be "comparable to those for the prerecorded CD. Downloading an EMI album from Janet Jackson or Pink Floyd will cost about $16." Are they nuts? On principle, I've been avoiding using Napster -- but this is the kind of greedy, bone-headed decision that would send me there! (Unless they're also planning to send us the disc, jewel box, and liner notes by mail, I can't imagine consumers perceiving anything higher than $6 or $7 to be a fair price.)

Or am I nuts? Contribute your opinion using the form below.

From the Chicago Sun-Times: Has a glitch on the CBS Web site spoiled the national guessing game of who will be revealed next month as the $1 million winner on ``Survivor''?

Maybe, and that's all that can be said with any certainty for now... But if the lone surviving castaway is, in fact, the person the hidden online information indicates, it will be a stunner that makes Gretchen's unexpected ouster on last week's episode seem ho-hum by comparison...

Visitors to the ``Survivor'' Tribal Council Voting History page at CBS.com will see that contestants already eliminated have a red X on their picture. But a few more clicks reveal that photographs with X's have been readied for every contestant -- except one.

There's no way of knowing for the next few weeks whether there is anything to this computer glitch thing. The notion of such a huge, closely guarded secret being undone by some inept CBS Web site techie is almost as ludicrous and improbable as the outcome it heralds...

RealNetworks revenues double
From CNET News: "RealNetworks, a maker of Internet media player software, said its second-quarter loss widened on acquisition costs, while revenues more than doubled on sales of software and advertising. The loss widened to $27.2 million, or 18 cents a share, from $1.08 million, or 1 cent a share, a year earlier. Revenues increased to $62.7 million from $28.5 million... Without the cost of goodwill related to acquisitions of about $37.8 million, the Seattle-based company said it would have earned $10.6 million, or 6 cents a share.

Arbitron council miffed at 'Net decision
From R&R Online: Members of the Advisory Council were angry at Arbitron’s spring decision to give out-of-market listening credit to stations heard over the Internet. The Council passed a resolution scolding Arbitron for proceeding with the policy without first consulting the council... But even with this new policy, don’t look for WABC/New York to show up in, say, Los Angeles. That’s because precious few listeners are mentioning the Internet in their diaries. Last winter, a grand total of 20 diarykeepers in L.A. and only 40 in Washington mentioned Internet listening. Until enough diarykeepers in a single market listen to one station that exceeds Arbitron’s minimum reporting thresholds, you won’t see any Internet listening in an Arbitron report.

"RAIN: Radio And Interent Newsletter" -- the leading web-based publication devoted specifically to the subject of Internet radio -- is establishing a summer internship program and is now accepting applications.

If you or someone you know is looking for an interesting new opportunity in the exciting dotcom world, this may be just what you're looking for!

To learn more about RAIN's Summer 2000 internship program, click here.

August 3-5	Morning Show Bootcamp, New Orleans
September 20-23	NAB Radio Show, San Francisco
October 5-7	Billboard/Airplay Monitor Seminar, New York
October 9-12	QuickTime Live! Conference, Beverly Hills (NEW)
November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA

"To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, 'Hey, can you give me a hand?' you can say, 'Sorry, got these sacks.'" Buy this fine item from Amazon here. (RAIN doesn't have an affiliate deal with Amazon or anything. It's just a great book.)

xxx

Try it out! Explore the wide world of Internet audio by clicking the screenshot above.

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