BY DANIEL MCSWAIN
Earlier today, veteran webcaster WOXY got the band back together (again), kicking off its second and arguably most unlikely comeback in as many years.

This time, it took a little help from Lala.com founder Bill Nguyen, who offered to acquire WOXY and get the webcast back up and running just days after being introduced to the service by an employee.

In a conversation with RAIN, WOXY GM Bryan Jay Miller said that WOXY will receive between $5-10 million over the next year from Lala.com, a start-up CD trading service that allows users to create a type of community marketplace for legally sharing physical copies of music via mail. Official terms of the acquision were not disclosed.

The WOXY product will return just as listeners remember it, Miller said. Three of the station's DJs are signed on, and the format of the broadcast will be almost identical to the webcast that went off the air just four weeks ago.

Possibly the biggest development from the acquistion will be the integration of the two companies through new and revamped services to be offered by both WOXY and LaLa.

WOXY listeners will have the ability to add songs they hear on the streams to their Lala "want lists" which will be matched against Lala databases to find copies of that music available for trade on the network. Listeners will also be able to purchase music outright through Lala even if what they are looking for does not show up in the trading database, according to Lala.com's John Kuch.

Within the coming weeks, Lala.com will also be opening their own set of Web radio streams dubbed "Lala Radio" to the public, a series of user-generated playlists which are then converted into streams that can be listened to from the Lala Radio homepage or embedded in other websites like user blogs or MySpace pages. Kuch says the system has been tested by almost 1,000 users in the past few weeks, and is built from a combination of Lala's CD databases as well as WOXY's library.

The personalized streams give you information about the stream's creator and are stocked with community-based  functions like a built-in comment board and public statistics about the stream's popularity.

While the service doesn't officially bear WOXY's name, WOXY is being given what Kuch called "an elevated place" on the page, which as of this point is the top listing in the directory of "user generated" streams.

On the subject of Lala Radio, Miller noted that "anybody who's been involved with radio for a while kind of knows how tough it is to get up an operation. It still cost thousands of dollars to do any sort of broadcasting. [Lala Radio] takes that cost of broadcasting to zero."

WOXY will also be opening studios in a number of cities to bolster its "Lounge Acts " series of in-studio performances with a focus  on local acts from around the country.

Miller pointed out that this deal with Lala also solves WOXY's advertising woes, a major stumbling block for the webcast in its previous incarnation. He said that, "for [WOXY's] short term, the goal is to grow, to get people listening and really participating in it." He said he "wouldn't rule out" increasingly visible advertising, like 30 and 60 second audio ads, in the future.

WOXY is back on the air now.

From Mediaweek: "As the network radio upfront gets underway, Internet radio and satellite radio this year are officially players after bum-rushing the marketplace last year to steal share. Now, advertisers such as Pfizer, Geico and Procter & Gamble have included both satellite and Internet radio in their radio budgets...

"The two are even causing a change of titles at agencies. 'We look at [satellite radio and online radio] as part of radio and as an enhancement for what we’re doing,' said Chris Fontana, whose title at MediaVest changed to vp, group director of national/local audio investment and activation, from vp, group director of network radio...

"Some buyers estimate that as many as one third of national radio advertisers are spending as  much as 10 % of their radio budget on Internet and satellite radio, up from 5 % last year.

"In many cases, Internet and satellite radio are taking dollars from traditional radio networks, which expect the market to be flat. If it wasn’t for network Web sites providing an interactive dimension to traditional buys, the market could be down. 'Satellite and online have put a halo on radio that wouldn’t exist without them,' said Natalie Swed Stone, director of national radio for OMD, who added networks are putting together some very creative new media options...

"The appeal of these alternatives is not in the raw numbers, but in the ability to offer things to marketers traditional network radio can’t, such as visual and interactive elements that create a more engaged audience."

Read the entire article at Mediaweek.

From SiliconValley.com: "Kazaa, Napster Inc. and other creators of file-sharing applications have been good for the music industry, Niklas Zennstrom, founder of the now-defunct Kazaa and CEO of Skype, said Monday.

"'Kazaa came five years too early, but without that and Napster we would never have seen the transformation we're seeing in the music industry,' said Zennstrom at a gathering of technology experts at the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition held this week in Barcelona. 'Record companies are seeing that the Internet is good for their business, and we made that possible.'"

Read the entire article at SiliconValley.com.