BY KURT HANSON
If you've been reading ths newsletter for the past week or so, you may have followed the link we provided (repeated at right) and taken some time to listen to KFAN/Johnson City, TX ("Texas Rebel Radio") -- the #1 webcast in America in terms of total listeners (of the 240 stations measured) in Arbitron's recent InfoStream webcast ratings results.

(Background: For this newsletter's initial piece on the release of the InfoStream ratings, click here. For our analysis on what they meant, click here. For reader feedback to that analysis, click here.)

KFAN has an interesting and unique approach to the Adult Album Alternative format -- a Texas-centric mix of rock-influenced country and folk (and vice versa), with the claim of a 14,000-song playlist. Perhaps you tried to figure out the secret to their success...or looked for hints on how you, too, might achieve similar success for your webcast.

Does KFAN's success, for example, illustrate a pent-up demand for wide playlists and formats that span multiple genres? Is this what Internet listeners, at least, want?

Similarly, the top Country station in the report is KHYI/Plano, TX. It apparently was last year's Gavin Report "Americana Station of the Year," but still... How did this little non-mainstream station beat so many of the country's major legendary straight-ahead Country stations? And what does that say about the tastes of the Internet radio audience?

Finally, let me pose the question of why, in general, there seems to be a preponderance of Texas and West Coast stations on Arbitron's list of top stations in total listening, when the East Coast is generally agreed to be well-connected to the Internet and has the larger population.

Well, to tell you the truth, I've been thinking about all of these questions myself -- and I think I've got the answers! They'll be coming up later in this newsletter. Stay tuned.

(By the way, you can click the "Arbitron New Media" logo above if you want to review their press release.)




From Media Central: "Riffage.com, a Web site showcasing unsigned bands, Wednesday said it had won $21 million in financing, including funds from Internet access provider America Online Inc. and from record label BMG... Riffage launched in March out of Silicon Valley...

"The deal is another step in America Online's march to be a big player in the Internet music industry...

"Riffage boasts around 15,000 songs by 10,000 bands on its Web site, which attracted 695,000 visitors in November, up from 38,000 in August, Wirt said."

Note: Riffage's website reveals that its Sales VP is former radio executive Scott Fey! Until very recently, Scott was President/CEO of New Planet Radio, a company he founded and owned with partners including Jerry Clifton and which operated such stations as "Xtreme Radio Hawaii" and "Arizona's Party Station." Riffage CEO Wirt is described on its website as "the strategic visionary behind Diamond Multimedia's ground-breaking Rio portable MP3 music player."

For the full story at Media Central, click here.

Singing the MP3 blues: "It sounds like a no-brainer for struggling bands: Just sign a contract giving an online music distributor like MP3.com free, unlimited distribution rights to your original music, and bingo!

"Not only are you on the road to stardom ('Sell CDs!' trumpets MP3.com's online artist sign-up sheet. 'Get famous!') but you get to thumb your nose at the traditional recording industry along the way..."

Click here to read the full story from the December 2nd issue of Salon.




I should preface this by saying that this is purely my own opinion -- for all I know, KFAN and KHYI and other stations at the top of the InfoStream ratings report are conducting sophisticated Internet-based marketing programs. Or perhaps American radio listeners really are longing for long-playlist, cross-genre radio stations.

Nonetheless, here's what I've noticed: (1) There are supposdly, as of December 1999, more than 92 million unique users of RealPlayer, according to Real Networks. (2) The format classifications on the RealPlayer's presets are pretty simplistic (e.g., no "Urban" category). (3) Stations appear on each of the format lists in roughly alphabetical order.

So...put all of those three facts together and you get the fact that KFAN is listed as the first "Rock" station in up to 92 million RealNetwork players.

This leads me to the following conclusion: I would speculate that, in October, around 1/10 of 1% of RealPlayer owners tried looking for a Rock station and, however briefly, sampled KFAN. Whether they stuck around or not, that many people sampling the station would have been good enough to make it the #1 station in the InfoStream report.

And how about the nation's #1 Country webcast, KHYI? How did it beat all of the other Country stations in America? One possible factor is simple: It's the #2 station listed in the "Rock" category, right behind KFAN!

According to the InfoStream report, tens of thousands of cumers visited KHYI in October. I would speculate, although I would need more data (which, by the way, exists) to prove it, that many of them came from the RealPlayer, (perhaps after sampling KFAN). If so, they were probably looking for rock (e.g., Led Zeppelin or Bush), not Americana (e.g., the Derailers, Guy Clark, Dolly Parton, Leftover Salmon, John Prine, the Groobees). In such an event, their visit may have been brief.

However, since the primary statistic being quoted in the press is "Total listeners" -- by which Arbitron means monthly cume -- even a person who only sticks around for 10 seconds is counted in the total.

This "RealPlayer alphabetization" theory would also explain why East Coast stations don't appear in the top slots in the "Total listeners" section of the report: It's because K's come before W's!

(Why don't call letters that begin with "W" derive much of benefit from being on a RealPlayer preset? Perhaps after a RealPlayer user tries a couple of the presets, he gives up. Clearly, none of the 240 stations measured had anywhere near a cume of 92 million; a cume of 83,900 was good enough for #1 and even only 12,000 was good enough to make the top 25.)

Does this interpretation make sense to you? E-mail me here.

To read insightful comments from RAIN's readers, who helped me figure some of this out (including pointing me toward RealPlayer), click here.

And if you like this newsletter, feel free to tell your friends and co-workers about it! Its URL is www.kurthanson.com.

Radio and Internet Newsletter is designed to help you better understand the Internet and its potential impact on radio. We hope you find it valuable.

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