BY KURT HANSON
In doing some research in anticipation of this week's scheduled release of the new Arbitron InfoStream Webcast ratings report, I found an interesting article on USA Today's website (here).

Buried 32 paragraphs deep in an article about radio station Webcasts, in the middle of some quotes regarding the size of Webcast audiences, I found the following paragraph:

"Arbitron general manager Greg Verdino would not release specific numbers before his company's official report comes out next week. But he says he was surprised at how many people are tuning in. Some sites have reached audiences of 100,000 unique individuals who listened for at least five minutes during the monthly measuring period."

The interesting thing about this paragraph is the date of the USA Today story: January 26, 1999.

Apparently, although I don't remember it, Arbitron must have produced a Webcast report a year ago and announced a release date to the press. Then, just a couple of days before its scheduled release, they must have cancelled its release.

Why? The best speculation I can come upwith -- and I spent the weekend asking around -- is that the streaming companies that subscribed to the report might have had its release quashed because they weren't happy with the size of their audiences.

Another interesting thing to note is than none of the stations in the InfoStream report issued in December 1999 had a monthly cume of 100,000 people -- even though Arbitron apparently dropped the five-minutes-of-listening requirement!

As for Verdino himself, he resigned from Arbitron shortly before the first InfoStream were finally released in December 1999 (to join an Internet startup).




The big news yesterday, of course, was the report that EMI and Time Warner are planning to combine their music operations into a joint venture, controlled by Time Warner, that would allow the combined operations leap to the top spot among record companies. Combined with Time Warner's recent purchase by AOL, the press noted that venture would be extremely well-positioned for the Internet era.

From yesterday's New York Times: "The pace of change is accelerating in the music industry as the Internet promises to revolutionise distribution, making traditional compact discs and tapes redundant. Industry experts believe that it is only a matter of time before most music is sold over the Internet, being downloaded onto PCs and recording devices."

Read the full article here. (If they've moved the link, click the NYT logo above to find the article.) Also, a good CNET News story is here.

BY KURT HANSON
Sometime last week, a link was added to RadioWave.com's website to a new, not-yet-officially-launched Internet-only radio station sponsored by Capitol/EMI's Blue Note jazz label.

Blue Note is the label of such jazz luminaries as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Horace Silver, plus current artists like Holly Cole and Kurt Elling.

I think that there are THREE interesting things about the new Blue Note Webcast. First, the Internet-only station seems to be one of the first significant efforts by a record label to launch a full-time Webcast.

Second, it's being programmed by Chicago-based former group head, GM, and radio programmer Barry Mayo (and features well-known Chicago air personality Richard Steele as the host). Mayo, who is generally credited with, among other things, creating the Adult Urban format, is perhaps the best-known radio executive yet to program an Internet-only radio station.

And third, the site features an absolutely gorgeous new audio player, designed by RadioWave, that incorporates Macromedia's Flash animations. As a result, it provides visual effects you've never seen in an audio player before -- beautiful typefaces, rollover effects, zooms, dissolves, and more. (The 410x430 pixel window, shown half-size above, actually seems to be a hybrid between a browser and a player, in that it appears on your computer as a browser window and includes a full web-page's worth of graphics and links.)

Here's how the Blue Note Radio player works: As each song begins, the artist name and album title slide into the frame, followed by a virtually-full-size illustration of the CD cover, which then proceeds to shrink into the upper-right-hand corner of the window. Various graphics on the page (highlighted by rollover effects, in which words change color when the cursor moves over them) are links to the artist's discography, biography, and tour information, the song's credits (see above), an attractive Flash-based list of recently-played songs, and a link the allows the listener to purchase the CD directly from Blue Note. (Warning: You have to submit your credit card information before the site reveals what its shipping charges are!)

Because Blue Note Radio is not yet available on the Blue Note site, to listen to it and see the player for yourself, you need to go through the RadioWave.com site, here.





From Friday's Radio & Records: "Susquehanna Radio, Jefferson-Pilot, Barnstable Broadcasting and Beasley Broadcasting all said today they had cut equity-for-advertising deals with eTour, an Internet company that helps users surf the web. The radio groups will receive stock in the company for about $10 million worth of advertising between the four companies.

"Michael Bergner, who brokered the transaction, tells R&R Online this deal was special because the four radio groups aren’t investing as a consortium but as individual investors, meaning they all believe eTour has great potential."

I personally found eTour very appealing for a few days last summer...until I began to perceive that eTour wasn't giving me impartial recommendations of the Web's best sites, as I had first imagined, but rather was simply directing me to sites that had paid eTour to send people their way. At that point, I lost interest.   --KH

Click here to read R&R Online (subscription required). The deal is part of a $25 million round of new funding for the Atlanta-based firm.




Last Thursday (here), this newsletter told you about a new streaming audio tuner/player from an L.A.-based startup called Hiwire.

From a consumer point of view, it looks like a superb product -- an elegantly-designed player that lets you quickly locate and listen to your choice of over 3,000 radio stations in the U.S. and around the world, no matter what format they're being streamed in.

From a radio industry point of view, however, there are conflicting opinions about the product. The problem is that Hiwire bypasses the station's intended audio player (e.g., the Real player, the Windows Media player, or any custom-designed shell for either of those players). Thus, the listener doesn't see the elements -- e.g., banner ads or "Buy this CD" links -- that are intended to appear on that player.

Read those readers' comments by clicking here.

We've made it easy! Just click this button for some text that you can cut-and-paste into an e-mail document and send to people in your address book.

This page will be updated later today if news happens. Feel free to check back.

Thanks for reading RAIN today.
And if you like it, please tell your colleagues about it! (See above.)

Day-trade