Despite Arbitron's position three months ago that NetRadio.com was going to be measured in their November InfoStream webcast ratings report but was pulled at the last moment due to problems in the provided server logs, execs at NetRadio told RAIN this week that they in fact had never delivered server logs to Arbitron last Fall at all.

As you may recall, webcast ratings for NetRadio's 120 channels, all of the stations streamed by OnRadio, and 31 of the stations streamed by Magnitude Network were expected but eventually absent from the November 1999 InfoStream report.

The day before the report's release, this newsletter reported that "Arbitron executives revealed to RAIN that the two major players that were scheduled to debut in the November report -- content provider OnRadio and Internet-only broadcaster NetRadio -- will not be represented in the report after all, apparently due to technical problems involving incomplete data in the server logs supplied to Arbitron." (Read the 1/28/00 issue of RAIN here.)

However, Dave Witzig, Senior VIce President/Content & Business Development for NetRadio, told RAIN yesterday that NetRadio had never delivered those November server logs to Arbitron.

According to Witzig, NetRadio has only recently delivered one week's worth of January logs to Arbitron, in an experment to see if Arbitron's tabulation of the data matches their own internal tabulation. Witzig also claimed that NetRadio's audience size has increased significantly since last fall, due in part to $2 million in advertising that included transit ads in New York and San Francisco and magazine ads including Spin, Wired, Yahoo! Internet Life, and Rolling Stone.

Note that Arbitron's InfoStream webcast ratings are not traditional ratings estimates at all, but rather an independent tabulation of server logs provided to Arbitron by participating webcasters. To date, only a small minority of webcasters have chosen to provide those logs to Arbitron for the study.

Although the concept is to produce traditional broadcast radio metrics, the statistics released so far have been slightly different -- e.g., monthly cume rather than weekly cume and Time-Spent-Tuning (per month) rather than Time-Spent-Listening (per week).

The service's December 1999 report is due to be released shortly.



From R&R Online: "eYada.com secures $25 million investment. Chase Capital Partners, Time Warner, Boston Millennia Partners and Credit Suisse First Boston contributed to the total... eYada.com [is] an Internet-based all-Talk radio network that streams former WABC/New York host Lionel, N.Y Post editor Richard Johns, Daily News gossip columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy, and former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten."

From eYada's website: "eYada.com was the brainchild of Robert Meyrowitz, the creator of the legendary King Biscuit Flower Hour. He had been approached by both Geraldo Rivera and Bob Dole about producing a syndicated radio show for each of them. Bob explained the difficulty and time it would take to get wide distribution through syndicated radio. Since neither of them wanted to wait they both went on to other things. However, while relaxing on vacation, Bob started to think about talk radio and the internet and eYada was born.

"We launched our first two channels, Entertainment and Sports, toward the end of 1999. Our plans for the year 2000 include the launching of many additional channels for people interested in women's issues, financial, health and fitness, and a channel dedicated to people under eighteen."

Read more from Radio & Records here or visit the eYada site here.



From Billboard: "Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons has formed a hip-hop Web site, with funding by private investors. The site, 360hiphop.com, will launch this summer with news and lifestyle content; an e-commerce element for music and clothing is planned...

"Simmons will be chairman of the New York-based venture; Selwyn Hinds, formerly of The Source, will be chief creative officer/editor in chief; and veteran publicist Leyla Turkkan will be senior VP of strategic marketing and special projects."

The introductory animation on the site says it will launch in June. Read more in Billboard.com here.

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

RAIN has returned to America from a week in Tokyo, where we were reporting to you on the latest in home electronics, wireless Internet (via cell phone), station website ideas, and more.

If you missed any of RAIN's coverage, you can access it via the links below. (Each day's issue included two or three stories from Japan; the issue's lead headine is described below.)

Complete RAIN News Archives here.