TEN SCOOPS IN TEN DAYS! We've got a LOT of excellent, exclusive material in the queue. Look for original reporting on brand-new stories involving radio and the Internet every day for two straight weeks in RAIN!

BY KURT HANSON
Following just on the heels of the initial Sonicbox shipments (see second RAIN story here) and beating Kerbango to market by at least several weeks, a Chicago-based firm called Akoo is accepting delivery in the next week of several thousand units of its new Kima Internet audio appliance.

Kima is a two-unit system that allows Internet radio listeners to wirelessly transmit audio from their computer's sound card to any selected FM radio in their home. It uses a 900 MHz transmission between the transmitting and receiving Kima units (which can be up to 1,000 feet apart) and then transmits on the 88.3 FM frequency from the second Kima unit to a nearby FM receiver (up to 6 to 8 feet away from the second Kima unit). Each unit can be powered by either 4 AAA batteries or AC power.

The firm expects its first few hundred devices to arrive its manufacturing plant in China this week -- and a few thousand more are expected to arrive sometime next week. The current production order is for 50,000 units between now and year-end, according to Akoo executives.

Rather than opting for retail distribution this fall, Akoo plans to sell the Kima units (at a price point of $149.99) through affiliate partners. According to Akoo Business Development Manager Anthony Vorres, numerous Internet radio webcasters -- including Investor's Broadcast Network, Radio Gogaga, WWW.com, Boombox Radio, TuneTo.com, CyberRadio2000, QSound, and Choice Radio, plus a "few dozen" terrestrial broadcasters -- have agreed to promote Kima sales on their sites in exchange for a 10-20% commission on sales made through their site.

Akoo has also built an elaborate Internet radio guide to compliment its Kima device. Visit the Akoo.com guide here -- or the Kima product page here.

...

... The Kima device looks like a nice, simple solution to the problem of getting Internet radio from your computer into your home stereo. Of course, $149.99 is not a trivial price point. If your stereo is in the same room as your computer, a 30' pair of RCA-jack cables would do the same job. (Or, for less money, you could simply buy good speakers for your computer.) However, if you want to listen to Internet radio in a different room of your house, Kima may make sense. Compared to Sonicbox, I like the fact that you don't have to plug anything into the back of your stereo -- and that you can move the second unit pretty freely from one radio to another within your house. What it lacks is Sonicbox's remote control feature, meaning that if you're in the other room, you can't change stations easily. However, consumers who value simplicity may prefer the Kima approach. (And it's an attractive design, too.) ...

Have an opinion about this device? Share it with other RAIN readers! (Thanks to the work of RAIN's crack team of interns, clicking the headline at left should bring up a nice pop-up form.)

Part one of a two-part series:


BY RALPH SLEDGE, RAIN intern
The age of Internet radio is speeding towards us like a brick through a coffee straw: it's almost here, but it's taking the last few inches slowly and painfully, one small chipped-off flake at a time. It seems like such a good idea: but a few technological barriers exist which, until they are removed, will keep Internet radio from seeing widespread acceptance.

However, there is a technology on the horizon that may looks well-poised to address the issues that plague Internet radio. The technology comes in a form of the Internet appliance.

Let's look at the specific problems first:

The problems
(1) The 'Net isn't fast enough. Broadband is just starting to trickle into home usage, and frequently it seems to be coming in through a rusty, smelly pipe. ISDN never caught on due to a slew of technical problems; DSL and cable technology, while better, still tend to be problematic for many people. I live in Chicago, and I have a cable modem that couldn't work better: and if I didn't go with cable, I would have had a host of other broadband providers from which to choose. Yet in Evanston, a fairly wealthy suburb that borders Chicago's north side, broadband options are slimmer, and in Wilmette, slightly farther out, they're slim to none.

The problem is that listening to radio over a modem, even one as fast as 56K, might work well for a while as a novelty, but won't cut it in the long run. Constant problems with "net congestion" make many streams sound like a poorly-received AM station. Technologies like Napster are far more popular, because though it might take a while to download a song, the user ends up with a CD-quality track that she knows she wants to listen to, ready to be played on demand at any time.

I think that in the long run, the only stations to which people are going to want to listen at any length are ones that are streaming near-CD-quality sound, and that's only possible over a high-speed connection. And I think that this may disqualify home ISDN and some DSL, too, because it needs to be fast enough to stream and handle any other web-surfing that people want to do at the same time.

(2) The web needs to be wireless. Radio has been wireless since forever. The only cords that tie down a radio are the power cord and the speaker cord, and a boom box with a few batteries can take care of that problem. And it never ties up your phone line.

To use Internet radio, users are tied down to a specific spot, and most often it's the same spot the telephone is (for the modem connection). That makes it harder, too, to have one Internet radio in the bedroom, one in the living room, one in the bathroom, etc. There are wireless networking solutions available -- Apple's "Airport" technology is one example -- but most users of these are hit by a limited range, limited speed, or both. And to make Internet radio viable for real travel -- i.e. for use in cars, or at the beach -- you can't be tied to your home computer at all.

(3) The equipment needs to be simpler to install and use. I will use an example from one of my earlier Internet radio attempts: I went to an Internet radio site I had heard about, and wanted to hear. It said I have to download a particular player (or more specifically, an updated version of a player) that I don't have. I downloaded the version and tried to install it, but then the installer program crashed Windows Explorer. I had to reboot. Next, I went to the site and tried to listen, but the player didn't work. Thinking something went wrong with the install (because Explorer had crashed), I tried to reinstall the player. This time my computer didn't crash, so I tried the site again. The player still didn't work. I looked around the site and finally found some fine print that says that the player might not work in my browser, Netscape Navigator, and that I should download Microsoft's Internet Explorer. With a sigh, I proceeded to do this. I went through the 40-minute (I am not kidding, and I was using a fast LAN connection) process of installing IE. I went back to the radio site. Finally, the station successfully streamed over my high-speed network connection at a 28.8K rate.

Most users' experiences won't be quite this painful, but the process of radio-over-the-computer will never compare to turning on a radio and tuning it in, or putting a CD in a player. Yes, Internet radio is more customizable, and people have a much larger choice of stations and of music. But I'm not sure that, at the moment, the difficulty is going to be worth it for many people.

The solutions so far
A few companies companies (so far) have come up with solutions. Akoo (see news story above) will soon be releasing the Kima, a device which broadcasts the audio streams from your computer to your stereo, via a 900 MHz transmission to a spare FM frequency.

Sonicbox has released the similar Sonicbox iM band tuner, which adds a remote that allows users to change channels without going to the computer.

These devices do solve the bit about being tied down to the specific place where your computer lives, but they're not quite computer-less (they rely on the computer to get the stream), and the range is your home -- not your car, or the park, or the beach. Nor is the bandwidth problem solved: you are still limited by the speed of your PC's modem.

Kerbango is developing an actual PC-less Internet radio (see photo at left). It's still limited by in-home connection speed, and thus it's still tied to the home. It might make life a bit easier than the Sonicbox does simply by bypassing the computer, but even if it's not released for several more months, the bandwidth issues I mentioned above will still apply... (To be continued tomorrow in RAIN.)

"How much does Tony Soprano care about Napster? More than you might think, according to a series of cartoons that can be seen starting Monday at Camp Chaos, a Web site featuring animated shorts." That's what USA Today wrote in a Monday article.

"In the nine spoofs," USA Today continued, "two of which go online Monday, with a new one following each Monday, Tony is convinced by two Warner Bros. Records (WBR) execs that he must whack Napster because it's 'taking the food out of Sinatra's kids' mouths.' He enlists his crew to figure out what Napster is and then take it out.

"The series was created after executives at Warner Bros. Records saw Camp Chaos president Bob Cesca's animated series poking fun at the legal efforts by Metallica's Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield to shut down the music-sharing Napster site.

"Warner Bros. Records bigwigs then asked Cesca to create a similar spoof featuring The Sopranos, which airs on HBO. Both Warner Bros. and HBO are owned by Time Warner."

But then, when RAIN checked out the Camp Chaos site on Monday, we found no videos. Nothing to be found. Nada

Yesterday, however, this message appeared on the CampChaos message boards from Cesca: "Warner asked us to remove the cartoons from the site because if they were shown anywhere but at last weekend's convention, they would be 'out of context.'

"Early in the discussions with WBR regarding us making these bits for their convention, we all agreed that Camp Chaos would give them a lower rate if we could retain web rights...

"The 'web rights' discussions were evidently forgotten about by WBR until, while on their way back from the Atlanta convention, they discovered that we (believing we were free and clear to post the cartoons) posted the first two shows on the site.

"So at this point, we're all trying to figure out ways to get the shows back online..."

Read the entire USA Today article here or visit the Camp Chaos website here.

Simply click the headline at left!

Frequent RAIN contributor Bob Bellin wrote in with some comments on yesterday's piece (here) by Katz Interactive's Gerry Boehme...

"I applaud what Katz is doing...but their clients aren't doing their part..."

"Does Gerry see agencies changing their methodology of buying media based upon CPM?"

Interesting points that Gerry made, but he gave absolutely no insight as to Katz's compensation or pricing solution when placing Internet-based buys. sites. How does Gerry and Katz compensate the site that has only 27 or 339 listeners at one time when an audio, video or banner ad is delivered?

Also, it seems that Katz still sells the spots on a CPM to advetisers regardless of the method or reach of delivery. Does Gerry see agencies changing their methodolgy of buying media based upon CPM? Has Katz also developed a pay schedule based upon a per-user basis for specific ad insertion and feed to a user in a unicast model -- i.e. ad insertion via Engage or iBeam's new individual ad insertion technology? What type of metric is Katz using that will compensate a site adequately for a per ad delivered or minimal audience when a spot runs?

Inquriring minds want to know!

"True, there is a value -- but..."

I do not agree with Gerry on reporting audience size of net listenership.

True, there is a value -- but 150 AQH Persons at a $20 cpm is only $3.00 per Webscasting spot!

Keep up the good work!

Several readers also wrote in regarding yesterday's piece on WWW.com's plans to begin offering pay radio subscriptions (here)...

"Every time they try to serve an audio ad it dumps me..."

I tried listening to WWW.com while at work and found it a very frustrating experinece. Everytime they try to serve an audio ad it dumps me. This is a frequent occurence and I am now a faithful listener of Sonicnet. Now, that's a hip site!!

"Bad programming is rampant on the Internet..."

Programming is the issue. As we continually point out on our site; The difference between other Internet Radio stations and us is programming and audio quality. How else would you explain a site with no hype doing over 1.5 million users per month and only 47 channels [as opposed to our competitors with channels up the ying yang]?

It's the programming and there's no substitution for it - PERIOD.

Most in this field have hired bad wedding DJs or PDs and MDs who may have been the big cheese in their P2's and P3's but like many of them (even in the big swamps) they've never once worked with PEOPLE who listen to radio nor are they LISTENERS of radio [in all of its formats].

Bad programming is rampant on the Internet. Format integrity is always an important part of our philosophy and our traffic shows it. I shudder to think if we had 200 channels. My God, we'd be at over 4 million users per month! Hmmmm,

"We will ALL be watching..."

Kurt: We will ALL be watching the first Internet-only subscription model.

With regard to your pet-peeve on the song ripping -- I agree. We do EVERY cut by hand in real time - only way to keep it sounding hot and be accurate with the original intentions of the labels... Thanks!

September 12-14	Digital Coast 2000, Los Angeles, featuring a panel on Internet radio moderated by RAIN's Kurt Hanson
September 20-22	Gavin.com: Music on the Net, San Francisco
September 20-23	NAB Radio Show, San Francisco
Sept. 29-Oct. 1	MOBE/Internet & Technology, Chicago
October 5-7	Billboard/Airplay Monitor Seminar, New York
October 9-12	QuickTime Live! Conference, Beverly Hills
November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA

 

xxx

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