From the Inside Radio fax: "AOL Radio intends to carry all the major formats that listeners can hear on-the-air. But, then it has plans to develop narrow niche formats for listeners who want their favorite genre of music.

"Example: Oldies. The AOL station will be an oldies station with all the trappings of a good radio oldies station. Then, if AOL listeners would like to hear an All Elvis station, they can access it through Spinner or Netscape. Or, for those who want just 50s, the same thing. Separate stations for 70s, 60s, Beatles or whatever the audience can support.

"But that's not the end of de Castro's plan. He plans to put together program intense content reminiscent of radio's best efforts pre-consolidation...

"Radio will now get serious competition from AOL like it has never seen. The end game involves doing radio better than terrestrial radio is doing it now and offering it through many technologies."

To read more, visit the Inside Radio website here.

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From The Washington Times: "Despite their differences, artists and record labels hold Webcasters in high regard because they believe Web radio stations are good for the music industry. That is especially true for independent labels and obscure artists whose music stands little chance of making the playlists of behemoth FM stations.

"'We realize that the Internet provides a huge market for artists who don't get traditional radio play,' (AFTRA national director of sound recordings Ann) Chaitovitz said. But artists and labels can't simply give their music for free to Webcasters, says John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, an unincorporated division of the Recording Industry Association of America that was established to collect and distribute royalties once Webcasters begin paying the copyright fees.

"The royalty rate will generate an estimated $15 million to $20 million in revenue annually for artists and labels if Webcasters pay the fee...

"Independent labels are struggling because more and more consumers are downloading music rather than buying CDs, says Gary Himelfarb, president of RAS Records, an independent music producer in Silver Spring that markets reggae music.

"'We think it's a great ruling that Webcasters have to pay the royalty. We also think it's too low,' says Mr. Himelfarb. 'We are hurting. We need a shot in the arm in this digital age, and we think this is it. Webcasters need to pay to use our copyrighted material, and [0.14 cents] is nothing.'

"Even (Hober Thinking Radio co-founder) Mr. (Gregor) Markowitz agrees they should pay — an uncommon view among Webcasters — because artists deserve compensation. But coming up with a fair formula is crucial to everyone involved in the dispute, he says."

Read this entire column from Monday's Washington Times here.

...

... Again, the music industry tries to convey the $0.0014 per performance rate as negligible. And again, some simple math shows that a webcaster with an average audience of just 500 people (definitely attainable, yet not highly attractive to advertisers) would pay over $90,000 a year to use copyrighted music. And it's webcasters that should foot the responsibility because file-sharing is hurting the music industry? Wait a minute -- who's subsidizing who now? -- PM ...

As a small break from the flurry of CARP-related news, here are a few excerpts from a recent two-part tutorial in StreamingMedia.com on encoding low-bandwidth audio. The first of the two segments dealt mainly with recording and preparing "live" audio. It's interesting (and you can see it here), but as we believe most of RAIN's readers are more interested in traditional radio applications, we've focused here on the second part.

From StreamingMedia.com: "In the following tutorial, we’re going to explain how to get the best results when encoding audio for low-bandwidths. By low bandwidths, we mean up to 20Kbps audio for mobile phone networks and dial-up 28.8Kbps and 56Kbps targets...

"Tip 17: Use your audio editor to cut out the frequencies at the top and the bottom of the audio spectrum...

"Tidbit: The human ear is especially sensitive to frequencies between 1.5kHz and 4kHz (sensitivity decreases beyond and below this frequency band, as per the Fletcher-Munson curve). These midrange frequencies get the most bang for the bandwidth, so record and edit with a preference for these frequencies...

"Tip 22: Get the file as small as possible using linear methods before applying codec compression to it. The general rule of thumb is to first change stereo to mono. Then, get the sample frequency down, and only as a last resort, reduce the sampling bit width/depth. A WAV file converted to 22kHz sample frequency at 16-bits mono and then encoded for 20Kbps will sound better than if it were encoded at 44.1kHz sample frequency at 8-bits stereo...

"Tip 26: If you’re bound and determined to push stereo down 20Kbps, you might get away with it if there’s not a lot of stereo separation (the difference information between left and right channels) in the audio. Set your MP3 encoder to Joint Stereo instead of Dual Channel...WMA also has a stereo adaptive mode whereby it looks at the different samples on the different channels and decides which are common to both, which are different and encodes only the difference separately instead of two separate stereo channels...

"Tip 30: If you’re getting 'flanging,' or a 'hallow,' swishy sound, reduce the codec compression or reduce the frequency response and apply more aggressive low pass filtering to the audio file. Some codecs, including MP3, will spread bits over the frequency spectrum, which sounds like flanging to the ear..."

The piece ends with a brief explanation of audio editor filters and useful links to additional resources. Read all of Part 2 of the tutorial at StreamingMedia.com here (registration required).