From The Gavin Report: "At work, at home, at play the Internet is impacting all of our lives. With that in mind, Gavin Award-winning station Alice@97.3 (KLLC)-San Francisco recently presented their First Annual Dotcom-a-Rama: Your Guide to Life in the Digital Culture.

"The day-long event featured Atlantic band Collective Soul, keynote speaker Po Bronson (best-selling technology novelist)...as well as panels with titles like 'Tech Fun: 101,' 'Making Your Internet Dream a Reality,' [and] 'Getting Your Music on the Internet'...

"The estimated 5,000+ attendees at the free event connected with sponsor exhibitors such as the cyber bill-paying service www.statusfactory.com, digital photo site www.eframes.com, Bay Area living resource www.bayinsider.com, and over 25 other Internet companies...

"As with any brand-new creation, there were challenges that [Alice VP/GM Steve] DiNardo and staff had to meet. He approximates that about three months of planning went into it.

"Among the biggest challenges, he says, was formulating the panel discussions. 'It meant going through an industry we don’t know that much about to find the right, qualified people to participate on those panels. It meant getting into a whole new area and networking within an industry that isn’t the absolute center of what we do daily. But we were pretty successful in pulling it together,' he says..."

This seems like an EXCELLENT idea! I was actually in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, visiting Kerbango and hearing promos for the event, and the promos sounded great.

Read the full piece by Annette Lai in Gavin.com here.



From the WebRadio press release: "After visiting every continent and most of the countries around the world, the Dalai Lama is coming to the Internet. WebRadio.com today announced an agreement with the Norbulingka Institute to act as the preferred webcaster for His Holiness the Dalai Lama's teachings and speeches...

"Besides his prolific public speaking, the Dalai Lama has for twenty years participated in forums and discussions in the company of the world’s foremost scientists, spiritual leaders and thinkers. He has published several books on Buddhist themes and, most recently, the best selling Ethics for the New Millennium and The Art of Happiness in which he describes what he means by the term 'positive ethical conduct...'

"[And] with GEO Interactive’s patented Emblaze™ technology, listeners can enjoy the Dalai Lama’s programming without the hassle of downloading a separate plug-in application..."

Learn more about the Dalai Lama here or, if that link isn't working, here.

Kim Johnson, formerly of Clear Channel,
lands with Entercom
From Radio Ink: "Kim Johnson has been named Vice President of Internet Sales for Entercom Communications Corp. In this position she will oversee the sales and marketing relationships of Entercom station’s web sites to local and national advertisers. Kim was formerly Vice President of Sales for Clear Channel’s Internet Group, based in Orlando, Florida..." (Read full item in Radio Ink here or CBS MarketWatch here.)

New high-resolution audio approach
announced
From Business Wire: "JAM Technologies announced an all-digital audio breakthrough that makes digital music, DTV, DVD movies, and digital radio through a personal computer rival the performance of a high end living room stereo. JAM's REVA True Fidelity delivers high resolution audio and eliminates the cost and space consumed by separate entertainment appliances. REVA True Fidelity is especially timely because the increasing prevalence of sound in news and entertainment Web-casts is boosting the demand for high resolution audio..." (Read full press release here.)




In the most exciting contest in the history of Web-based newsletters about radio and Internet issues -- the RAIN Viral Marketing Contest, Phase Three -- we're giving away next week, to one lucky RAIN reader, a fantastic prize package.

We've previously announced that that fantastic prize package includes a state-of-the-art Sony digital music player and a state-of-the-art wireless-Internet-ready Nextel cell phone. And now this week we're adding something even cooler -- a Kerbango Internet radio!

It's a gorgeous-looking little table-top-sized radio that will be able to pick up hundreds or thousands of Internet radio stations, with no PC required. (Read more about it here and here.) Kerbango's marketing director, Mark Auerbach, has promised that you'll receive one of the very first delivered units -- in fact, you may even get to be one of the beta users!

And all you have to do to be eligible to win this fantastic prize package is to recommend RAIN to friends and colleagues in your address book who you think would enjoy reading RAIN. (And let us know by "cc:"ing kurt@kurthanson.com. (If you need sample e-mail verbiage to use in making the recommendation, click here.)

As we've told you before, if you've already recommended RAIN to some of your industry colleagues, then you're already eligible to win. (Check the list here to make sure your name has been put in the hat.) However, it would no doubt be good karma if you could think of a few more people (whether superiors, subordinates, or peers) you could also drop a line to.

And if you HAVEN'T done so yet, why not tell a couple dozen of your industry colleagues about RAIN today? That way you'll make sure your name is in the hat for next week's drawing to select the winner of this fanatastic prize package.

Thanks...and good luck!


Reprinted from yesterday's afternoon edition:

Today's find comes from Rochester, NY. It's an attractive and well-organized Internet-only radio station devoted to giving exposure to selected unsigned artists, apparently primarily in the AAA format and related genres.

"What do we do?" asks the site's home page. "Provide a musical broadcast featuring today's hottest unsigned artists anywhere, commercial free.

"For the Artist? We provide the most intense advertising, marketing promotion of your music. Our ever changing 24 hour, 7 days a week music mix will ensure that your fans will hear and see you.

"For the Listener? An easy to use format that provides you with a constant stream of great music. Also an artist section for you to check out your favorite bands and purchase their music!"

The site currently seems to be featuring about 80 artists, most of which seem to receive several spins per day. The "Top 20" page explains, "You can vote a song into the Top 20 or into the RealNet Radio.com playlist by first locating a song you want to vote on, then press the vote icon."

One feature I particularly like about the site is its comprehensive playlist feature (see screenshot below), showing all the music scheduled for the next 12 hours, with the exact time each song is scheduled for airplay. Note that the list can also be filtered by artist or genre.

(Giving advance notice of what's coming up seems to be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but I'm unclear as to whether the Act's rules apply to unsigned artists -- or perhaps whether they can be waived by the artists involved.)

This is an interesting idea for a radio station, in my opinion -- although I suspect its primary appeal might to be to other unsigned musicians rather than the general public. Still, it's a nice execution of the concept. (And there are probably tens or even hundreds of thousands of people out there who consider themselves unsigned artists.)

Visit RealNetRadio.com here and contribute your opinions about it here.


Want to recommend a station as RAIN's next Internet Radio Site of the Day? Use the feedback form here.

More coming soon! Contribute your suggestions here. (Suggestions already in the hopper include CableMusic.com, RadioWoodstock.com, Nerve Radio, Radio Gogaga, and HotCountryHits.)

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