As broadcasters continue to debate the advertising of satellite radio on traditional radio stations, Canadian webcast company Iceberg Media plans to do much the same for its Internet radio channels. The company announced on Monday that it would trade 714,240 common shares of its stock to Canadian broadcast company Standard Radio, in exchange for $178,560 of on-air ad inventory.

According to the announcement, Iceberg will use the commercial time to promote its 300 Internet music channels. Iceberg operates TheIceberg.com multicast site, and Corporate Radio, which designs custom audio channels for third party sites.

In much the same way that XM ads on Clear Channel stations is somewhat less of an issue (Clear Channel is an XM investor), Standard itself owns "the tip" of Iceberg. In September of last year, Standard bought 2,250,000 shares of Iceberg, giving them a 15 percent ownership stake in the company.

The Iceberg swapped stock for on-air inventory from Canadian broadcaster CHUM Limited and the assets of Internet radio portal Bonzaroo.com in November (see RAIN here).

See the press announcement of this story here.

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The MediaSpan media technology company has announced that it has acquired Music Buddha (also known as MuBu) product line of music industry research and recommendation tools, such as SongSonar and AudioVoyant.

RAIN first reported (here -- scroll down to the end of the story) in October that Music Buddha closed its doors. According to a press release, MediaSpan will relaunch the MuBu services next month, as part of the company's music research product suite.

The SongSonar product is geared towards radio stations looking for an affordable way to conduct their own music research -- online, as opposed to in an auditorium setting. The product also includes applications to build listener databases.

Streamer goes down, new funding for audio technology firms
From StreamingMedia.com: "In a continuing sign of the still-struggling economy, more companies are closing their doors. In January, streaming media provider ST3 said it was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after coming up short in its next round of funding. Chattanooga,TN-based ST3 had an impressive list of clients, including BroadStream, SurferNetwork, Media Station and eMotion...

"Despite some bad news, companies are still managing to get funding. Audible announced on Monday that it was executing a $3.5 million private equity investment agreement with the New York-based institutional investment firm, Special Situations Funds...

"Sonic Foundry announced that it completed a $3.2 million offering of convertible subordinated debt with 'certain investors,' including one unnamed institutional holder."

See this article here.

Wiser named Sony Music's first CTO
Sony Music Entertainment...announced that Philip R. Wiser has been named Chief Technology Officer...

"In this newly-created position, Wiser will be responsible for overseeing technical operations of the company’s existing digital media initiatives, including electronic music distribution (EMD) systems, as well as for developing and implementing new digital media technologies..."

See this entire piece here.

BY RICH RIEMAN
for RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter

online job banks

"Invest in technology to effectively manage the recruitment process. Internet pre-screening and resume management software tools can significantly reduce the time involved in managing the front-end recruiting process of pre-qualifying only the best candidates, the cream of the crop, that should be recommended for interview by a hiring manager or decision maker. "The Internet can be used to build a recruiting supply chain of your ‘first preference’ employment candidates, which is as critical to a station as a list of P1 listeners. We have a searchable archive of articles and tips about recruitment process management technology here. "Use your corporate website for recruitment. Be sure all of your current employment opportunities are listed in an easily visible jobs section. ChicagoInternet.com has developed over 100 recruiting related websites and offers free tips on maximizing your website’s recruiting power -- e-mail them here. "Use a highly targeted, web-based strategy. Online career sites offer low cost and highly targeted opportunities to post jobs for current and future positions. CareerXroads.com offers an annual printed directory for sale and a low cost, searchable online directory of the top 500 career sites. "Web-based partners can save you time and money. If you have limited internal HR or recruiting staff available to manage the new FCC requirements, a partner can implement the best strategy for your organization. TiburonGroup, DToolbox.com, and RivieraAdvisors are a few companies with excellent reputations in delivering these kinds of solutions."

Tiburon Group, www.TiburonGroup.com, provides turnkey, outsourced recruiting solutions to companies seeking to reduce recruiting costs and improve recruiting effectiveness.

Rich Rieman, rrieman@richvision.net, is a Management Consultant for Radio and the Internet projects. His clients have included Bonneville International, SurferNETWORK and Global Media.



Last week, we described a new time-waster that is the current craze at the RAIN office: Googlewhacking (see RAIN Analysis box here). Try to get one and only one result from the Google search page when entering two words.

To Rain's Ralph Sledge's own finds: "lickable fission," "sniffable Novocain," and "slobbery canticle;" we add:

Tyler Hartley of First MediaWorks: "Try malignancy yahtzee, no quotation marks."

Josh Gertz of XACT Radio: "Ematic distillery. Technically its not legit -- it's just that someone misspelled problematic as 'probl ematic'... but it counts."

Brian Cullinan of Columbia Records: "Googlewhack: stupified Rhinelander."

Hank Bordowitz: "Logomachy rictus. Logomachy was my word for the day yesterday. I thought it would be a good one for a Googlewhack and kept coming up with fours and sixes. I don't know where rictus came from (maybe the way my back feels this morning), but it's a 1 of 1 of 1."

Warren Banholzer of Future Radio: "Googlewhack and Websters...'WEB'sters no less:)...Of course it goes without saying that as you and other web reports publish (on a web page) successful Googlewhacks, those word combinations in turn fail to be Googlewhacks. I pose the question: When will there no longer be a single Googlewhack? And, at that point in time, will the entire web implode on itself?"

Thanks to everyone for playing along!