Jeff Schmidt, a “creative director,” whatever that is, at KFOG, says:
Streaming our regular broadcast online seems a bit like the early days of TV where the radio shows were performed in front of a camera.
But then, the very nature of the visual content changed to take advantage of the unique opportunities the Television medium offered.
Just as TV people saw that television was much much more than “radio with pictures“ – WE need to see that the internet is NOT just another kind of AM/FM transmitter.
So, let me re-phrase -
How CAN putting a radio broadcast online make the CONTENT better?
It seems to me that there are four dimensions for growth of audio media out of old-school radio and into the internet:
h3. Changes in distribution
Streaming is good, but podcasting is better. Podcasting allows users to time-shift and place-shift content, which are becoming things they not only enjoy, but expect. I don’t know why, but podcasting seems to be overlooked as a way to distribute existing content (i.e., tv and radio), perhaps because people have trouble monetizing it.
However, I think users are willing to pay a reasonable price for quality programming. I was willing to pay for access to the xml feed for the ill-fated Marc Maron Show (and that wasn’t even such a reasonable price) because while I think that free content and guy-in-basement content production are a huge part of what makes the internet interesting and democratic, very few podcasters with day jobs can afford to make hilarious content on a *daily* basis. For consistent daily delivery of interesting audio content, a paid professional is required, and I think people will realize this if content providers make it relatively easy for them to come on board. This would mean having an affordable cost and a positive user experience offering free trials so people feel safe coming on board, and handing out long-term free subscriptions to influential bloggers, podcasters, etc. in hopes that they would not so much give the content a positive review as actually become listeners and reference it regularly to their readers/listeners — i.e., if influential early adopters become passionate users, they will bring others onboard.
h3. Changes in Content
Digital media means that audio content can be added upon in interesting ways. Apple’s enhanced AAC format is a great example of this — instead of just flat audio content, enhanced AACs incorporate images and links. Radio stations streaming audio have done a fair job of allowing users to easily link to purchase songs or CDs, but less often link to useful information — for example, to resources like allmusic.com or musicbrainz.org or Wikipedia, or to upcoming appearances. One of the most frustrating things about radio is waiting until the end of a set to hear what that one song you have stuck in your head is called and (possibly) that the band is coming to town. Streaming radio typically does a tolerable job of supplementing with realtime artist information, but it could do a stellar job with relatively little additional effort or expenditure.
Unfortunately, a lot of the interesting things that could be done with content are probably impossible under the licensing structure radio has to deal with — thank you, recording industry.
h3. “Social” components
One of the problems with any website that provides content but isn’t already dominant (i.e., iTunes, amazon.com) is that there has to be something more to the site than just the ability to show up, grab your content, and go.
The internet is fundamentally designed to connect people, and this “social software” aspect is critical to going beyond just handing out junk. In terms of infrastructure, this means giving users the ability to *contribute* by tagging, reviewing, discussing, etc. A site that has done some really great work on features (but which falls flat pretty often in actually delivering content) is last.fm, where users not only influence each others’ listening, they also have the ability to contribute a lot of metadata, have their own listening blogs, etc. Obviously Wikipedia, however, is the best example of this — an entire encyclopedia which has arisen entirely out of its passionate user base. If users are impassioned and powerful and if they feel they have ownership of their content, they will to some extent take care of little things like marketing, site maintenance, etc.
Even better would be to incorporate alongside this some of the features of sites like Odeo and Youtube, which make it easy for users to contribute content of their own. There’s no reason why a site can’t distribute profesionally produced radio content alongside interesting amateur content, and encouraging users to interact around both. There could be a number of ways a radio station in particular could bring in users to contribute great content, including playing user-favorite amateur content on the air, sponsoring existing podcasts, and providing a way for users to get (slightly) paid through one of a few different possible business models. (i.e., including access to amateur content as part of a site/station subscription, setting up a solid donation system, awarding prizes, etc.)
Another obvious example is myspace, but I frankly prefer to think of myspace as a fluke — it’s ugly, it’s stupid, and it has an emotional age of 14, not to mention being full of pervs. I don’t want to think that that’s the paradigm of all internet culture. All myspace really has going for it is a preposterously large userbase, and I don’t anyone else is going to take that away by imitating them.
Instead, consider the fact that many, many myspace users are soon going to outgrow that site and consider what they’re going to be looking for as a replacement. This is likely the thinking behind the new vox.com service from the Six Apart/LiveJournal crowd…
h3. Local/Global
One of the defining characteristics of a local radio station is its local-ness, whereas one of the defining characteristics of the internet is its global-ness. There are two different ways to deal with this: either heavily emphasize the local in combination with efforts to bring users to the site through social features — including bringing in content from community events, etc., that wouldn’t otherwise be available online — or de-emphasize the local in an attempt to appeal to the global internet audience.
It seems to me that Air American is trying to do something along the lines of the latter with its for-pay online content, although I don’t think they *quite* get it. The only sane variation I can think of for the global approach would be to create a network of local stations which share a common site infrastructure and share some content (especially by highlighting user-submitted content from other areas and content that would otherwise be hard to find outside a locality), while still appealing primarily to their local communities. This would perhaps look something like metblogs.com or — more on the global side — 43places.com. (Although these are organized top-down, I believe.)