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Chicago-based Internet audio provider RadioWave.com laid off 15 percent of the company's staff yesterday, reportedly to bring costs and the prospect of future profitability in line with the firm's financial reality.

Coming on the heels of the release of VP/Sales Jim Smith ten days ago, and the resignation of company cofounder James Burke last week, RadioWave.com let go nine more of approximately 60 employees. They include Hamlet Meneses from the marketing department, Affiliate Sales Manager Chris Crane, and PR Director Bo Overlock. Sources indicate other layoffs included employees from the design, operations, and marketing departments.

The loss of Smith and Crane in particular may indicate that the company will begin to concentrate more on projects not involving broadcast radio.

Chicago-based new economy news source
I-Street quoted VP/Marketing Berry Meyerowitz: “'We looked at our business plan and saw that the market isn't where we thought it would be. Our staff needed to reflect current demand, not anticipated revenues.'"

From the press release: "RadioWave.com announced today organizational changes that will allow the company to focus on serving its largest clients and to target specific industry segments for growth..."

"RadioWave.com raised a first round of $22.5 million in venture financing in January 2000 and has enough cash on-hand to last for most of 2001. 'While reductions are never easy, current market conditions dictate that RadioWave marshal its cash carefully...' said (RadioWave.com Chairman and CEO, Bill) Pearson.

"RadioWave.com streamed more than one million hours of audio in November 2000, primarily through its major partners, Susquehanna Radio Corp., MSN Chat Radio, Rolling Stone Radio, and the ARTISTdirect Radio Network. This represents one of the largest online audio audiences to date and is the foundation of the company's virtual interactive audio advertising network."

The I-Street story is here.

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Microsoft is heralding the results of a study conducted by market research firm Millward Brown that indicates that 76 percent of the consumers surveyed preferred Windows Media Player 7 to comparable products by competitor Real.

According to the survey, respondents preferred the Microsoft product for copying songs from the CD to the PC, using the media guide to play songs, changing skins, recording CDs and transferring music to a portable player.

A copy of the study is available here. A Microsoft release called "Top 10 Reasons to Choose Windows Media Format" is here.

From MSNBC.com: "Security services consulting firm @stake and communications and security software developer GFI have announced two separate vulnerabilities in Microsoft Media Player 6 and 7. Both would allow a malicious person to remotely execute on a victim’s computer arbitrary code embedded either in a streaming media file or in a Media Player skin.

The security hole reported by @stake affects Media Player versions 6.4 and 7, but only on Windows 2000 systems with Service Pack 1 installed...

The second exploit takes advantage of Media Player skin files (*.WMZ). A “skin” is a customizable interface used in this case to modify the “look and feel” of the Windows Media Player. Because skins were introduced in version 7, only Media Player 7 is vulnerable to this particular exploit. However, unlike the *.ASX buffer overrun problem, Media Player 7 is vulnerable to JavaScript shenanigans on all compatible operating systems."

Read the MSNBC.com piece here. Read the Microsoft security bulletin here.

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From InternetNews.com: "MP3.com emerged from the bunkers Tuesday, relaunching its My.MP3.com service which for nearly a year has been beset by copyright infringement lawsuits brought by major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

"The only difference? Submit to ads and store a maximum of 25 CDs, or pay an annual fee and store up to 500 CDs with fewer advertisements and more functionality.

"The company shut down the service -- which lets users store music digitally and access it from any computer connected to the Internet -- in May after an April finding by a U.S. District Court that it had violated copyright protections. MP3.com settled with four of the five labels, agreeing to pay Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group, BMG Entertainment and EMI Recorded Music $20 million each. Seagram's Universal Music Group held out and the court ruled MP3.com should pay the company $53.4 million. Following the legal maneuvers, all five labels entered licensing agreements with MP3.com, allowing it to legally store music from their catalogs..."

MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson, at last week's Radio Ink Internet Conference, revealed that the service would soon reappear.

Read the InternetNews.com story here.

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Reprinted from yesterday's edition...
Streaming audience rating service MeasureCast has released their first weekly "Internet Radio Top Ten List." The chart below shows the top ten of the 944 rated stations in the study.

ABC Radio had the best showing, with six of their Talk or News/Talk outlets ranking in the top ten. WABC-AM/New York topped the list with over 107,000 hours of reported online listening for the week of Monday November 27 through Sunday December 3. Total cume, which is the estimate of the total number of unique listeners that tuned in for at least five minutes during the week, was nearly 20,000 thousand.

Only four stations on the "Top Ten" list were music formats. Two were traditional broadcast outlets (The Beat/Los Angeles and WPLJ/New York) and two were "Internet-only" ("Radio Margaritaville" and "3WK"/St. Louis).

The following table is The MeasureCast Weekly Top Ten for the week of November 27.

Rank	Station	Format	Network	Total TSL (in hrs.)	Cume Persons
1	WABC-AM (New York)	Talk Radio	ABC Radio	107,409	19,336
2	The Beat LA (Los Angeles)	Urban R&B	CyberAxis	59,590	6,558
3	WBAP-AM (Dallas / Ft. Worth)	News/Talk	ABC Radio	53,188	7,755
4	KSFO-AM (San Francisco)	Talk Radio	ABC Radio	49,237	9,673
5	WLS-AM (Chicago)	News/Talk	ABC Radio	40,116	9,475
6	KGO-AM (San Francisco)	News/Talk	ABC Radio	33,214	6,922
7	WPLJ-FM (New York)	CHR/Top 40	ABC Radio	32,894	3,243
8	Radio Margaritaville (Internet-only)	Classic Rock	Broadcast America	32,222	5,893
9	KABC-AM (Los Angeles)	Talk Radio	ABC Radio	30,343	6,418
10	3WK Original Underground (Internet-only)	Alternative Rock	3WK	28,861	9,713

Of all the stations studied, MeasureCast offered this analysis:

	-- More men (71 percent) tuned in to Internet radio than did women (29 percent).
	-- Nearly 90 percent of all on-line listening took place on weekdays, with Wednesday being the top day for listening.
	-- 73 percent of all streaming audio listening took place between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. EST.
	-- 3 p.m. EST was the peak listening hour for Internet radio.
	-- Nearly 25 percent of the listeners were aged 35-44, followed by 25-34 year olds (23 percent), and 18-24 year olds (21 percent).
	-- The South (33 percent) had the greatest number of Internet radio listeners.
	-- California had more Internet radio listeners than any other state.

Dec. 12-14, 2000	Streaming Media West 2000, San Jose, CA
February 1-4, 2001	RAB 2001. Details coming soon.