RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter

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BY PAUL MALONEY
We wanted to call this piece something along the lines of "Fun with Trainwrecks," after the radio industry metaphor for the segue of two stylistically incompatible songs.

But that's not really fair.

MusicMatch is a terrific jukebox application that now includes customizable, multi-format, streaming MP3 radio.

Launched at the Interactive Music Expo earlier this month, the new personal MP3 radio application is part of the MusicMatch Jukebox 6.0 beta package (for the purposes of this piece, we'll save the other excellent elements of the release for another time, and concentrate on the radio app).

The idea driving this endeavor is to allow a customized, quality stream that doesn't sound like a jukebox. David Bean, the company's VP of Programming, says "Most Internet radio stations

either sound like a shuffling of CDs from the 1980s or are simply terrestrial stations rebroadcasting their content online. By blending our music personalization technology with the science of broadcast radio programming, we're able to take Internet radio to the next level."

There are four main ways to listen to the MusicMatch radio. The first is to simply choose one of the 18 "Popular Formats" designed by MusicMatch. The pretty standard choice of offerings includes Top Hits, Alternative Rock, Rap & Hip-Hop, Smooth Jazz, Classic Rock, and 80s Hits. One interesting one was Rock Mix -- a mixture of the Alternative, Classic, and Hard Rock formats. Listening to this gave us the rare treat of hearing the Eagles, Beastie Boys, Tool, and ZZ Top all in a row!

The second personalization option for MusicMatch Radio is called "Station Match." Very simply, it allows a visitor to combine up to three of the Popular Formats, and in various proportions.

Our personalized recipe called for (on a scale of 0 to 4) 1 part Classic Country, 1 part Classic Soul, and 3 parts Adult Alternative (since we were limited to three formats, all the others were set to 0). If there were train wrecks here (and there were!), we had no one to blame but ourselves. There was occasional "bunching" of genres (4 Classic Souls in a row with no Adult Alternative, etc.), but over longer periods of time, MusicMatch did a real nice job of delivering songs from our chosen formats in a pretty appropriate proportion.

Third, a visitor can design a station based upon a favorite artist with "Artist Match." It's really as simple as that: type in an artist's name, and hit the play button. We tried a few different rock artists, and had very nice results each time. The channel stream pretty much ends up as the focal artist coming up every 6 or 7 songs, interspersed with songs from that artist's influences, contemporaries, and other artists

influenced by the theme artist. The artists we chose all have pretty extensive catalogs, so choosing a less prolific singer or band might have a different result.

Finally, there's "My Station." MusicMatch designs a station based upon what cds or MP3s the user has played in the past on their MusicMatch Jukebox. According to the press release, if a listener is using MusicMatch for the first time, he or she can simply provide the names of three favorite artists to get the My Station channel running. But we were unable to use this feature that way.

The look and navigational features of the MusicMatch Radio are among its top qualities. The player is handsome, the controls are easy to use (and include a Skip button), and the format choices and song playlist are easy to read. The Now Playing button (or the "i" button next to each title on the playlist) takes you right to the Muze-powered "Music Guide" page for artist and album info, purchase link, etc.

As a matter of fact, the playlist is historical and cumulative, that is, the player keeps track of the titles and artists of everything that's played in that channel's "session," with the links to "Music Guide" remaining intact.

Most impressive is the sound! Streaming MP3, though not the industry standard, has proven to be a excellent technology for high quality, reliable streams --especially at higher bandwidths (MusicMatch can stream at 128kbps).

But if MusicMatch hopes visitors will ever use the radio feature to its full potential, the options must be more clearly explained. Truth be told, we had the company press release in our hands while negotiating the personalization options, and it still took some time. Even in the Help section, the available options weren't clearly defined. "How are Custom Stations different than My Station?" "Are 'Artist Match' and 'Station Match' both Custom Stations, or are they different?" MusicMatch Radio is a fun and useful application. It would be a shame for potential users to miss out on all it can do.

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From Reuters: "San Mateo-based Keynote Systems, a consultant group specializing in performance on the Internet, has created an index measuring the quality of live audio and video streaming at 20 popular Web sites. The average score: a dismal 1.87 out of 10, with 10 denoting near-DVD, broadcast quality.

"The top broadcaster in the study, MTV Interactive, scored a 3.46 out of 10. Other high-rated sites were Barnesandnoble.com for audio e-commerce, WUSL-FM 99 in Philadelphia for broadcast radio, and CNBC.com for financial audio.

"Keynote admits the scale is a bit stacked against the Web broadcaster, or Webcaster as they are being called, because the highest possible score a Webcaster could get is around 6.0, which is about the same quality as a home video. One video clip, however, would only fill about a quarter of a computer screen and unlike a videotape, it would tend to pause and start again without pressing a key..."

Read more here. More information about the benchmarking system is here.

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From the company press release: "Strategic Media Research founder and Internet radio expert

Kurt Hanson has returned to the helm of the company he founded in 1980, the firm announced today.

"Hanson announced that he has taken back his Chairman title and yesterday accepted the resignation of CEO Deborah Richman. She joined Strategic last September from Encore Movie Channel. Prior to Richman's hiring, former Reuters executive Bruce Masterson served as Strategic's CEO for three years.

"'Debby was focusing her efforts on developing new products for cable channels and other media properties, and those plans have not come together on the timetable that was originally proposed,' Hanson noted. 'I thought it was time to refocus us on the field in which we've really got expertise - the radio industry.'

"Strategic Media Research is the leading independent radio research firm, Hanson observed, with over $9 million in

annual sales. Its products include its 'STAR' program of callout research, auditorium tests, format search studies, AccuTrack telephone-based ratings, and telemarketing services.

"Under Richman's management, Strategic announced about a dozen layoffs in the past two weeks, some relating to the slower-than-expected development of the non-radio ventures and others 'that I'm going to re-evaluate,' Hanson said.

"Hanson noted that he would be splitting his time equally, for the next few weeks, between his new responsibilities at Strategic Media Research and his role as Publisher/Editor of this publication, RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter, his web-based daily covering the field of Internet radio.

"Day-to-day operations of the company, Hanson said, will be in the hands of a management team that also includes VP/Client Services Amy Vokes, VP/Telemarketing Joe Heslet, VP/Operations Kathleen Reid, and VP/Technology George Ruenne."

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When my college roommate Joe Mansueto and I founded Strategic Media Research in 1980, our idea was to work with radio programmers to create a set of research services that would be genuinely valuable to them in helping them gain listeners.

It was a slow start, but our growth -- and the company's reputation -- eventually
exceeded all our original dreams. We developed a great product line that included our "STAR" program of callout music research, format searches, Auditorium Music Tests, and AccuRatings, a telephone-interview-based alternative to Arbitron.

Then, in 1995, to fund the growth of our fast-growing AccuRatings initiative, I brought in some venture capital from a Florida-based firm. And they recommended that we bring in a professional CEO from outside the radio industry to run the operation.

We've now gone through two -- one from the financial news services field and one from the cable TV industry -- and, frankly, neither has done a particularly better job in growing the business than the team we'd built previously.

I'm convinced that a key problem has been that neither CEO had a particular interest in or affinity for the RADIO industry. That's a special breed of animal.

So it looks like I'll be pulling 18-hour days for the next couple of weeks, spending many of those hours back in my old office at Strategic in downtown Chicago, nestled in the curve of the "El," getting Strategic back to what I feel is on track.

Strategic's products are great, the people are great, the clients are great, and revenues have in fact kept increasing throughout this entire period.

My tentative plans -- based on 1-1/2 days on the job -- are simply to scale back plans to expand into other media fields and instead concentrate on serving the radio industry again.
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Feel free to call me or drop me a line! You can e-mail me at RAIN here or at Strategic here.

And my brand-new Web-enabled cell phone (I left my old one in a cab yesterday; look for an upcoming product report in RAIN) is 1-773-354-KURT.
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Clear Channel employee alleges fraud...
From R&R: "Florida Independent Senate candidate Andy Martin tells R&R ONLINE he was allegedly sent a

'smoking microphone' memo from 'a Clear Channel employee at the managerial level' that states nationwide contests run on Clear Channel stations are 'rigged to favor winners from "weak" markets.' He further alleges that Clear Channel biases the contests toward callers from certain markets by using caller ID to pick calls from specific area codes, while callers who use call-blocking to hide their area codes cannot win since their calls won't be answered. Martin filed consumer fraud charges against Clear Channel in all 50 states last week."

Streamedia's President/CEO, CFO resign...
From Streamingmedia.com: "Streamedia announced that James Rupp, president and CEO, and Nick

Malino, COO and CFO, both resigned. Rupp will remain as a consultant to the company for at least a year, said a company spokesperson, and will remain a board member. Malino will also stay on an interim basis to help sort out third quarter earnings, which will be released soon. He will relinquish his position on the board, however..."


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.

xxx

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