Your favorite song comes on your Internet radio station, and you’re dancing. Out of nowhere, an ad you can’t skip pops up. If you’re impatient like I am, you immediately leave the free station and go to another one, or YouTube. But when you get there, another ad greets you.
If you use Internet radio at all, you’ve noticed the recent intrusive ad increases, and the “upgradable” ad-free versions of every site. The most common fees are from $5 to $10 per month. So, do the math, and you’re paying $60 - $120 a year for something you used to get for free.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled; maybe everyone has. But as a broke college kid, I really can’t see spending a fee – no matter how cheap — to listen to radio. Like everyone else, I want what I want and I want it now, for free.
The government is to thank for all the ads. More than 10 years ago, when Internet radio wasn’t really popular, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Internet radio is forced to pay both performance and publishing royalties. Meanwhile, land radio stations only need to pay publishing royalties.
Most sites never make a profit. Advertising is understandable, but still.
I’m not saying that online radio isn’t an amazing thing. Most stations personalize to your tastes, and you can access the music anywhere if you have a smartphone. But the thing about this radio that everyone liked was its free access and lack of commercials. Take that away, and you might as well be listening to a frustrating land station like Clear Channel. Every two songs or so, there’s a commercial.
Who wants to listen to that? Not me.
So if you’ve had enough of ads from the big sites like Live385, Pandora and Slacker, check out these free, non-commercial stations: SomaFM, Radio Paradise and Deeper into Music. You won’t regret it.
-Heather Butterworth
Friday, November 4, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
WXJM Gets Modern
Last week, James Madison's own student run college radio station, WXJM, released their first mobile application for Apple products. WXJM's new free application allows listeners to stream the station live on their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
The application itself is quite simple and easy to use. After it is activated, there is a “Play” button you click to begin streaming the station, and a “Pause” button that terminates the streaming. Under the buttons, gives a little background information on the station’s twenty year history, what types of genres and programs are aired, and where the station is located.
Now, applications and online streaming of music is not a new concept, and the application itself is not too fancy, but this is a big deal within the college radio station market.
College radio stations across the country cater to college students, hipsters and general listeners by laying nothing but underrepresented music, or music that is not signed to a major label, or not signed to a label at all. Because these stations do not play popular music that is heard all over Top 40 stations, their presence on campuses is not widely recognized.
As college stations begin to dwindle, WXJM appears to be alive and well, by marketing themselves in new, diverse ways. This application is allowing a wider audience to connect and listen from anywhere with WiFi, 3G or 4G services. Parker Girard, WXJM’s current General Manager believed that this application will move the station ahead in the digital age, and create a more connected and informed community.
The folks at WXJM appear to be keeping up with the times and finding new, creative ways to broadcast their music, and to promote the wonderful aspects that college stations have to offer the general public.
-MM
The application itself is quite simple and easy to use. After it is activated, there is a “Play” button you click to begin streaming the station, and a “Pause” button that terminates the streaming. Under the buttons, gives a little background information on the station’s twenty year history, what types of genres and programs are aired, and where the station is located.
Courtesy of wxjm.org
Now, applications and online streaming of music is not a new concept, and the application itself is not too fancy, but this is a big deal within the college radio station market.
College radio stations across the country cater to college students, hipsters and general listeners by laying nothing but underrepresented music, or music that is not signed to a major label, or not signed to a label at all. Because these stations do not play popular music that is heard all over Top 40 stations, their presence on campuses is not widely recognized.
As college stations begin to dwindle, WXJM appears to be alive and well, by marketing themselves in new, diverse ways. This application is allowing a wider audience to connect and listen from anywhere with WiFi, 3G or 4G services. Parker Girard, WXJM’s current General Manager believed that this application will move the station ahead in the digital age, and create a more connected and informed community.
The folks at WXJM appear to be keeping up with the times and finding new, creative ways to broadcast their music, and to promote the wonderful aspects that college stations have to offer the general public.
-MM
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Music Online
As technology advances, music is becoming more accessible to everyone. The Internet is at the forefront of music technology breakthroughs. New websites and programs have brought music to millions of people with as little as one click.
The three most popular music services are based on three different business and technology models. Each has a different set of price and availability options, but all have over ten million visitors and users each year.
With eighty million users, Pandora Internet Radio is the most popular out of the top three. Pandora is run by an automated selection program called “The Music Genome Project” that works based on user-input. Users create new stations based on specific songs, artists, and genres. Pandora uses two thousand different traits to help pick out each song to play on the user created station. Pandora has two pricing options available: free and 99 cents per month.
Listening for free with Pandora has limitations: song skips are limited and you cannot rewind or fast forward through songs. There are also advertisements distributed randomly between songs. Premium, or paying, listeners may bypass the skip limit and all advertisements. This service is only available in the United States and enforces this by banning all international I.P. addresses.
Last.fm is a web-based music listening service that boasts a user-base of thirty million. Users seek out the program for new music rather than familiar tunes. “I use Last.fm because it always finds what I’m looking for, even when I don’t know what I’m looking for,” said Muzammil Khan.
Current Last.fm users have problems with the loading speed of songs. Songs are sometimes stuck loading for several minutes, while some songs never load at all.
Last.fm used to pick songs for the user is named “Audioscrobbler.” It extracts data from user’s Internet history, personal computer library, and any connectable mobile devices to personalize the listening experience.
The program then uses the information it uncovers to select songs it believes match your interests. The program is a hybrid of both the Spotify user-selection system and the Internet radio approach provided by Pandora.
The free version of Last.fm is only available in United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. Users in other countries are offered a 50 track free trial. Once the trial expires, they are prompted to subscribe to Last.fm’s premium service for about five dollars a month.
Spotify is the newest music provider to the United States, with its most current stable release debuting on October 14. Spotify is a streaming music experience that is monitored by digital rights management to protect its content. The songs cannot be downloaded onto a computer without infringing the terms of use. The listening experience is controlled completely by the user. This client boasts a large library of music that any user can browse and buffer songs to hear. Songs can be “starred” and sorted into playlists.
Spotify has a free service, but it is riddled with advertisements between songs and on the interface. With Spotify premium, users are awarded with additional listening hours, a no advertisement experience, and the fastest buffering rate out of all the music services currently available for five dollars a month. This service is available in several different countries, including: the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden.
Social media has started to integrate within Spotify. There are now options to show songs to friends through websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Spotify also integrates a feature called “scrobbling” from another music website called Last.fm.
“Scrobbling” is a logging technology that marks how many and which songs are listened to by the user on social media websites, first used by Last.fm. All three of these services are wildly popular and command the music scene on the Internet. Many users have complaints about each service, citing annoying advertisements and high premium costs. The cheapest premium service of the three, Pandora, has song selection problems with both premium and free versions.
“I’ve had pop songs play on techno stations. It makes no sense,” said Asa Nienstadt, a Pandora user. “I still love Pandora more than any other service. It’s a great way to find new music on accident.”
Pandora has received complaints about intrusive advertisements, which have caused some users to switch over to other programs. “The advertisements were too frequent and too loud. I switched to Spotify because it’s trendy,” said Masha Soldatenkova.
Spotify attracts it’s users with the fully customizable playlists and integrated social media options. “It’s like iTunes but free,” said Cody Becker.
Spotify’s selection is sparse, featuring mostly mainstream pop and new releases. Many users are not happy with the smaller amount of music genres available.
“I stopped using Spotify because it didn’t have the music I wanted, I had to install a program, and it had advertisements,” said Josh Hampton. The advertisements on Spotify, while less frequent than Pandora’s, are more intrusive and sometimes take over the entire screen.
There is one major issue with all three of these music providers. “I think the downfall of all [three] of those services is that you have to have [an] Internet connection,” said Vincent Sarikey, “I’d rather just download.”
Here is today's Song of the Day, a test for our first blog post!
Me Gusta...
News article by MR
The three most popular music services are based on three different business and technology models. Each has a different set of price and availability options, but all have over ten million visitors and users each year.
With eighty million users, Pandora Internet Radio is the most popular out of the top three. Pandora is run by an automated selection program called “The Music Genome Project” that works based on user-input. Users create new stations based on specific songs, artists, and genres. Pandora uses two thousand different traits to help pick out each song to play on the user created station. Pandora has two pricing options available: free and 99 cents per month.
Listening for free with Pandora has limitations: song skips are limited and you cannot rewind or fast forward through songs. There are also advertisements distributed randomly between songs. Premium, or paying, listeners may bypass the skip limit and all advertisements. This service is only available in the United States and enforces this by banning all international I.P. addresses.
Last.fm is a web-based music listening service that boasts a user-base of thirty million. Users seek out the program for new music rather than familiar tunes. “I use Last.fm because it always finds what I’m looking for, even when I don’t know what I’m looking for,” said Muzammil Khan.
Current Last.fm users have problems with the loading speed of songs. Songs are sometimes stuck loading for several minutes, while some songs never load at all.
Last.fm used to pick songs for the user is named “Audioscrobbler.” It extracts data from user’s Internet history, personal computer library, and any connectable mobile devices to personalize the listening experience.
The program then uses the information it uncovers to select songs it believes match your interests. The program is a hybrid of both the Spotify user-selection system and the Internet radio approach provided by Pandora.
The free version of Last.fm is only available in United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. Users in other countries are offered a 50 track free trial. Once the trial expires, they are prompted to subscribe to Last.fm’s premium service for about five dollars a month.
Spotify is the newest music provider to the United States, with its most current stable release debuting on October 14. Spotify is a streaming music experience that is monitored by digital rights management to protect its content. The songs cannot be downloaded onto a computer without infringing the terms of use. The listening experience is controlled completely by the user. This client boasts a large library of music that any user can browse and buffer songs to hear. Songs can be “starred” and sorted into playlists.
Spotify has a free service, but it is riddled with advertisements between songs and on the interface. With Spotify premium, users are awarded with additional listening hours, a no advertisement experience, and the fastest buffering rate out of all the music services currently available for five dollars a month. This service is available in several different countries, including: the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden.
Social media has started to integrate within Spotify. There are now options to show songs to friends through websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Spotify also integrates a feature called “scrobbling” from another music website called Last.fm.
“Scrobbling” is a logging technology that marks how many and which songs are listened to by the user on social media websites, first used by Last.fm. All three of these services are wildly popular and command the music scene on the Internet. Many users have complaints about each service, citing annoying advertisements and high premium costs. The cheapest premium service of the three, Pandora, has song selection problems with both premium and free versions.
“I’ve had pop songs play on techno stations. It makes no sense,” said Asa Nienstadt, a Pandora user. “I still love Pandora more than any other service. It’s a great way to find new music on accident.”
Pandora has received complaints about intrusive advertisements, which have caused some users to switch over to other programs. “The advertisements were too frequent and too loud. I switched to Spotify because it’s trendy,” said Masha Soldatenkova.
Spotify attracts it’s users with the fully customizable playlists and integrated social media options. “It’s like iTunes but free,” said Cody Becker.
Spotify’s selection is sparse, featuring mostly mainstream pop and new releases. Many users are not happy with the smaller amount of music genres available.
“I stopped using Spotify because it didn’t have the music I wanted, I had to install a program, and it had advertisements,” said Josh Hampton. The advertisements on Spotify, while less frequent than Pandora’s, are more intrusive and sometimes take over the entire screen.
There is one major issue with all three of these music providers. “I think the downfall of all [three] of those services is that you have to have [an] Internet connection,” said Vincent Sarikey, “I’d rather just download.”
Here is today's Song of the Day, a test for our first blog post!
Me Gusta...
News article by MR
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