Which vendors are still active in the Internet radio space? Our new "RAIN Vendor Guide" will reveal the companies that have at least a limited marketing budget and want your business in 2002!

These firms will be telling you that they're "IN "!

Vendors: To add your firm, call RAIN today at 1-312-527-3879 or e-mail us here.

FEATURE STORY

BY PAUL MALONEY
In tough economic times, sales forces have to make an extra effort to stay in front of media buyers. And when money is short and spending on traditional media is down, selling new types of advertising is even more difficult. And many recognize that now more than ever, it's important to keep knocking on doors.

Bruno (right) is one of those execs -- like Hiwire's Bob Nagengast, Lightningcast's Bill Jaris, and Live 365's Ron Denman -- who is out evangelizaing Internet radio to agencies and advertisers. He has embarked on a 30-day, eight-city sales blitz in an effort to finally get streaming ad sales off the ground -- both for his company and, hopefully, the industry.

"I've heard from a number of buyers that our industry is 'in the right place at the right time,'" Bruno, newly promoted to VP of Sales at Loudeye, told RAIN in an interview yesterday. "People just aren't buying banners and buttons anymore. Rich media offers new ways to communicate with the audience."

Along with Loudeye's own radio solution for third party clients (Radio Free Classmates, for the Classmates.com site, for example), the company is now representing Radio Free Virgin Internet radio for sales (reported in RAIN here), with more deals, according to Bruno, in the works. He plans to make 100 presentations to advertisers and ad agencies in cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Philadelphia during the four-week blitz.

"I feel the time is right to do this for two reasons," Bruno told RAIN. "First, the timing. Advertisers are optimistic yet cautious." He explained that with the economy slowly beginning to recover, advertisers are ready to spend again -- but they're being extra careful to spend the money in the right places -- in other words, where they'll get the results.

His second point is his ability to offer "fresh reach" to online advertisers. He argues that Internet companies, or those advertising their Net related products and services, actually pay double for their audience when advertising on the radio or television -- a sort of "tax" reach. Since the level of "wired" households (those with Internet access) has only reached around the 50% mark in most markets, only about half of those listening can respond to the ad. With rich media streamed ads, there's no "tax" on reach... everyone hearing it can respond. What's more, they can do so instantly with clickable links or Loudeye's proprietary "Go" button. Other media can't offer the ability to respond so instantly, Bruno notes.

Across the outlets he represents, Bruno says he can offer advertisers 42 million impressions a month, to listeners who spent more than four million hours listening in December.

"We've been asking too much of media buyers, making it too hard" for those who want to try advertising in new media, Bruno said. "Some people offer 'geo-targeting,' others say they can 'demo-target,' some can offer verification while others can't. There are no standards."

He feels his company has eliminated this problem with their set of ad and traffic management tools . For instance, all audio production is done in-house by Loudeye for free. They offer a "robust" ad verification system to guarantee impressions, and...by using traffic management by Engage, the company can continually monitor and control the reach and frequency of ads. "For instance, if a spot is to run over a two-week flight and get 'X' number of impressions, but listening is way up -- we can slow done the frequency of the ad so that we don't hit our impression mark too early," Bruno explained.

Finally, Bruno hopes his "roadshow" will help renew the sales effort industry-wide. "You hear a lot of people in the industry complaining that advertisers aren't ready to buy streaming. But when I ask a buyer how many other streaming ad sales pitches they've heard in the last week, they tell me 'None!' We can't wait for buyers to 'come around. It's time to be proactive.'"

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From the press release: "SESAC announced a three-year, non-exclusive agreement with Audible Magic Corporation, a leading provider of digital audio identification technologies and services, to monitor terrestrial radio broadcasts utilizing Internet simulcasts.

"SESAC represents the first major performing rights organization to implement content-based ID (CBID), a technology that identifies audio content by electronically 'listening' to it and generating unique digital fingerprints for items such as individual songs or advertisements. The agreement is specifically designed to assist in determining royalty distribution. The initial rollout, which began last fall, utilizes Audible Magic's patented audio fingerprinting technology to monitor the simulcasts.

"Under the new agreement, Audible Magic will monitor 34 radio stations, covering several genres of music...across the United States...

"On January 7, Audible Magic announced a strategic alliance with Loudeye Technologies Inc...[which] has given Audible Magic access to one of the largest encoding databases in the world."

File trading service KaZaA halted downloads of its software yesterday, pending a decision in the copyright lawsuit filed against it in a Dutch court. According to a notice on the site, the company expects the decision on January 31.

Late last fall, a Dutch judge ordered KaZaA to stop its users from sharing copyrighted music files. At that time, it seemed that KaZaA did little, if anything, to obey the court order.

One would imagine that file trading using the KaZaA technology would continue, however. Unlike Napster, which was able to halt file-sharing activity involving its technology by shutting down its servers, KaZaA-based trading requires no centralized physical location. Thus, for file traders who already have the software, it is beyond KaZaA's reach.

KaZaA, and fellow FastTrack technology-based file trading services Music City and Grokster, are all subjects of lawsuits filed by the RIAA and MPAA as well.

News source DotComScoop claims to have obtained an internal RIAA memo from October. The memo indicated that the RIAA planned to initiate negotiations with FastTrack in an effort to shut down its licensees. DotComScoop quoted the memo as saying, "Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against FastTrack, MusicCity, and Grockster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with FastTrack about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against MusicCity, and if possible obtain FastTrack’s cooperation in shutting down or converting MusicCity and Grokster."

KaZaA was founded by FastTrack inventor Niklas Zennstrom. Morpheus is another file trading service that uses the FastTrack technology.