The End of Radio (as we know it)

This month's Wired magazine's cover is titled "The End of Radio (as we know it)", and has articles about satellite radio, podcasting, "indie radio" and Howard Stern. Amazingly, there is scarcely a mention of internet radio or webcasting. (I'd link to it but it's not up on their site yet...supposed to be up later this week).

Now I'm a subscriber and a fan of Wired and applaud their covering the 'radio is changing story'. But I have to admit, I was flabbergasted as to how they could have glossed over such an important part of the story -- to wit, internet radio is a medium that has tens of millions of listeners each week/month according to Arbitron; has thousands if not tens of thousands of channels/stations that people can tune into provided by large corporate players to indie mom&pops out of their basement; and has offered the ability for consumers to create their own broadcast for years.

One of the articles was about the rise of mult-channel, microniche broadcasting. This is something that internet radio supports much more readily than Podcasting, satellite or HD-Radio (and let's face it, all of these are simply a technological means of distributing content from producers to consumers). Why? Because including copyrighted music in Podcasts is ILLEGAL. Sure, the RIAA have bigger fish to fry and probably won't go after most of the small players out there doing so. But if anyone starts making real money from it, you can bet they or Harry Fox will come a-knocking. Most Podcasts are talk/spoken word, though, and so don't have this problem. However, internet radio webcasters can use copyrighted music in addition to talk. The downside? It's not as easy to make it portable though there are some companies that are working on this.

The other lesson? Marketing counts. In the case of Podcasting, I'll point you to a previous post of mine on how the right combination of technology, marketing & ease-of-use (I'd also add timing to this) can lead to escape velocity. OTOH satellite radio used the brute force method, which is to say their awareness and marketing stems from the billions they raised from Wall St. that they went on to spend on goodies like satellites, studios & Stern. Of course they had a worthy product to sell that is also easy-to-use.

[cross-posted from my blog]