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Read part 1 of this series here.


ClickRadio's music by PAUL MALONEY
Now for the important part: the music. The truth is, despite the big-name programming talent involved, ClickRadio doesn't sound very much different than most other Internet radio jukeboxes.

Songs are simply played back-to-back with some sweepers for ClickRadio (and with a rare occasional ad -- usually for a record company) thrown in.

Somewhere along the line, the idea that "a database randomly spitting out song choices like a jukebox equals a radio station" has become accepted. But, long-story-short, jukeboxes don't really sound like "real" radio -- and that's basically all this is.

A well-programmed radio station (in, say, a current-music format) consists of a carefully-balanced mix of hard and soft, current and classic, male and female, electronic and grunge and pop and new wave. In this case, the listening experience is determined by the random generation of 1s and 0s.

What this DOES sound like is a showcase for major-label "baby bands."

The library-type formats, like Classic Rock, were respectably tight, seemingly well-researched playlists. But again, they didn't seem to have a creative or even logical flow of songs of different timbres, intensity, or eras.

These short-comings are certainly not the fault of bad music programmers; rather, the system for delivering what's supposed to be "radio" is. While a programmer can pick the right songs, good radio is so much more than that. Without flow, a consistency of sound, and personality (more than can be expressed with Click's short sweepers, anyway) -- all you've got a jukebox.

Technical issues by RALPH SLEDGE
I was suspicious of the player from the beginning. It looked like another custom radio app, and custom radio players (i.e., applications that are meant to be downloaded and run on your computer) are more often than not unstable, difficult to use for one reason or another, and can be resource hogs.

Add to that the 600+ megabytes worth of space ClickRadio needs to store music files (we wound up feeding it 2 gigs), and the program seemed destined to become a hefty burden on our computer.

A quick glance at the Windows 2000 Task Manager also told me that while ClickRadio didn't necessarily consume a lot of CPU time for playing songs, it did at any given time have a 28-30 MB RAM footprint -- more than twice as much as Microsoft Word! That's also over twice as much as the LAUNCHCast player, which, due largely to its excessive use of Flash, is one of the more ponderous players around.

I couldn't quite figure out why ClickRadio uses so much memory. I'm assuming it's because of its database functions -- always grabbing and adding songs, and so on.

The songs sounded generally somewhat better than what you would hear over even a good 56k connection. I say "generally," however, because I'm not sure exactly at what rate all of the songs on my system are encoded. You have the option to select between a low, mid, and high encoding rate for songs, and this leaves me with the impression that some of the songs -- the ones I copied from the CD -- are at a mid-quality encoding, and the ones I downloaded are at a higher rate. Some songs do indeed sound better than others: Again generally, louder songs sound better than softer, and certain softer songs, like Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," seem to have a metallic echo throughout the song.

There was another issue that bugged me: the player seemed to "hang" Windows 2000 intermittently (i.e., temporarily bring to a complete stop) -- and more so the longer the player stayed on. The hang would last for 1-5 seconds and would completely lock the system -- cursors would disappear and characters would cease to appear on the screen as you typed.

While this was seemingly minor at first, it started to occur more than once a minute as I was typing, and quickly became incredibly annoying. I did try ClickRadio on a computer running Windows 98, and sure enough, after about an hour of being on the computer, the same thing started happening. I honestly can't see anyone tolerating these pauses.

I'm mentioning all of these issues because they leave me the impression that anyone with a system over a year old will have problems using this player. Which means that the player's appeal is limited to those who (1) have the latest equipment (2) but not a broadband connection, and (3) who aren't terribly computer-savvy.

And I am not convinced that modem users are really going to find it as useful as it would seem at first blush. Your Internet connection would have to be idle for a fair amount of time to download a significant number of songs. Alternatively, a person could, for the sake of ClickRadio, leave the connection on for a long period of time -- but this kind of behavior seems to defeat the purpose of ClickRadio! (You can leave your connection on listening to an Internet radio station, or using Napster, and get the same results.)

If you have broadband, however, that seems to entirely eliminate the need for ClickRadio. DSL and cable are always-on, and users can usually browse and listen to Internet radio at the same time already with perfectly fine results. Laptop-users who are frequently off their networks might benefit, I suppose -- but only if their computer is up to spec.

ClickRadio is not a horrible experiment, but I can't help but feel that it's a stopgap measure rather than a truly viable long-term product -- a fix that lies in between better technologies.

Conclusion by KURT HANSON
I visited the ClickRadio offices in Manhattan over the summer and was extremely impressed by what I saw: A huge staff -- seemingly big enough for two or there New York City-caliber radio stations. A bustling atmosphere in a loft-like environment. Maybe a dozen young people preparing content -- songs, artist bios, cover art, and so on. Plus advertising sales executives, graphic artists, lawyers closing deals, and more.

But the finished product doesn't seem to have the advertising in place, the songs don't have cross-fades, there don't seem to be a lot of promos in rotation... It's not quite what I expected.

Overall, I guess I expected more "stationality," given the caliber of the programmers involved. But perhaps that's ClickRadio Version 1.1.

The following story appeared yestderday in our late afternoon edition. For more fresh news from today, please scroll down.

BY PAUL MALONEY
Cleveland-based Internet radio programming provider Everstream is helping its affiliates bring the latest news and analysis on the Middle East situation to their audiences with JPost Radio, the online radio division of the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

Last spring, JPost Radio assembled a team of experienced journalists and furnished them with a full-scale radio studio for the purpose of producing news and features to accompany the newspaper site -- becoming the first audio news source targeted specifically to the Web. JPost Radio's staff includes veterans of the BBC, ABC News, CBC Radio, Reuter's, and The Times and The Sun newspapers of London.

Everstream creates radio programming which adds value and "stickiness" to sites of affiliates, such as newspapers. The Jerusalem Post is an Everstream affiliate. Through a special agreement, the JPostRadio stream has been added to the array of programming choices on the Everstream tuner, available worldwide on any website of the company's more than 200 affiliates.

News of the affairs in Israel are of great interest to many around the world, especially here in the United States. Israel is this county's strongest ally in the volatile region; Israel is the source of more absentee votes for US elections than any other foreign country; and The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune both Everstream affiliates, serve cities with significant Jewish populations.

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From the Real press release: "RealNetworks, Inc. announced the release of RealAudio 8, setting a new standard of quality, clarity and range for Internet audio. Developed in part through a strategic alliance with Sony Corporation, RealAudio 8 offers a single audio solution that delivers the highest quality audio at the widest range of bit rates. RealAudio 8 also gives consumers CD-quality playback at half the file size of MP3. And it enables broadcasters to realize substantial costs savings because it delivers equivalent or better audio quality as RealAudio G2, the current standard, at two-thirds the bandwidth..."

"RealNetworks is licensing two of Sony's latest digital music technologies: ATRAC3, Sony's highest quality compressed digital music format; and OpenMG, Sony's copyright protection technology...

"Sony will include both RealPlayer and RealJukebox with Sony's portable music devices and VAIO PCs beginning in 2001, and RealNetworks will include ATRAC3 technology, Sony's high quality audio compression technology, in RealSystem 8. RealJukebox and RealPlayer are the first partner jukebox and streaming media player to be bundled with these Sony product lines."

Read the press release here.


From the Akoo press release: "Akoo.com today announced it has signed a non-exclusive agreement with NetRadio Corporation, to distribute Kima, a newly introduced wireless Internet audio device...

"Akoo.com's Kima allows users to wirelessly access Internet audio - including Internet radio, MP3 files and digital music - away from their computers and on any stereo or portable radio up to 1,000 feet away.

"Under the terms of the agreement, NetRadio.com will feature Kima in its online music store located at www.netradio.com. Additional cross-promotional and advertising efforts also are part of the agreement...

"Kima is compatible with any streaming media player, including Real Networks' Real Player, Microsoft Windows Media Player and Apple's QuickTime Player, as well as with Real Juxebox and satellite/cable television digital music channels."

Read the entire press release here.

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Reprinted from yesterday's afternoon edition...

From the San Francisco Chronicle: "The president of NBC Internet, the San Francisco online media firm, will resign following a tenure punctuated with shifting strategies, a falling stock price and a redesigned Web portal.

"Edmond Sanctis, who served as president and chief operating officer since November, said in a statement yesterday that he is leaving to ``pursue other interests,'' though he added that his departure is at least partly because his duties overlapped with the chief executive, William Lansing.

"The president position will be eliminated, the company said.

"NBC Internet, best known as the home for much of NBC television's online content, has struggled to compete with other Web portals like Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN. The company is the 11th-most-visited Web property, according to Media Metrix, an online research firm..."

Read the San Francisco Chronicle story here.

November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
November 12-14	Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) "Broadcasting 2000: On-air / On-line," Calgary
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA, featuring a brand-new national study on Internet radio usage presented by Eric Rhoads & Kurt Hanson
February 1-4, 2001	RAB 2001. Details coming soon.