Of course it was Sun Ra who declared that “Space is the Place,” though I don’t think his music is heard on the online Third Rock Radio. Instead this self-declared “space station” says that it

features updates on NASA’s newest missions and discoveries, as well as a healthy dose of great New Rock music of all kinds, along with some that you already know and love.

It certainly seems that NASA is happy with the only month-old station. The agency recently added a player for Third Rock Radio to its own iPhone and iPad apps. Though shouldn’t space radio be on satellite? At only 22,000 miles above the Earth geostationary orbit might not be outer space, but it’s closer than the internet, I reckon.

Anyway, I listened for about an hour Tuesday night and didn’t hear anything in the way of NASA or space-themed content. I just heard a steady stream of alternative and modern rock that was fine, but not terrifically different from any other modern rock station, on satellite, on broadcast or online. All indications are that Third Rock is automated with no live DJs, which makes it all the more mysterious to me why there wouldn’t be some NASA content mixed in all the time. Maybe I just need to listen earlier than 8:30 PM Central time.

It’s an interesting concept. But a new listener like me isn’t going to be enticed to tune in again if we don’t get the space stuff during our first time tuning in.

On page three of the IPO, Facebook mentions its radio interface with Pandora as a key way that the application creates value for developers:

Personalized and Social Experiences. We enable Platform developers to create better products that are personalized and social and that offer new ways for our users to engage with friends and share experiences across the web and on mobile devices. For example, a Facebook user can visit the Pandora website and immediately begin listening to a personalized radio station that is customized based on the bands the user Likes on Facebook.

On page 78 Facebook predicts that companies that traditionally advertise with radio will gravitate to the social networking app:

Television, print, and radio accounted for $363 billion, or 62% of the total advertising market in 2010 according to an industry source. Historically, advertisers interested in generating awareness of and demand for their brands have heavily relied on these offline media to reach their audiences at scale. We believe that these brand advertisers will increasingly dedicate a portion of their advertising dollars to Facebook because the broad audiences they are trying to reach are active on Facebook on a daily basis, because we can reach their desired audiences with precision, and because they can spark word of mouth marketing through Facebook. In December 2011, an advertiser could reach an estimated audience of more than 65 million U.S. users in a typical day on Facebook. By comparison, the 2011 season finale of American Idol was viewed by an estimated U.S. audience of 29 million people.

It’s evident that Facebook sees itself as a provider of every possible kind of media, and an attractor of every possible kind of media advertiser. Radio is part of the equation. With 845 million active users, how could it be otherwise?

I made some rough calculations based upon the typical bandwidth consumed by streaming internet stations that use MP3 to estimate that the 2 GB monthly cap would be good for 34 hours of stereo music, and the 200 GB limit would only let 200 minutes squeeze through. While 34 hours seems like quite a bit of listening on a mobile device, I could see how the hours could add up for someone using an iPhone to stream internet radio in a car during a long commute. Of course that wouldn’t account for any other data usage for activities like email, browsing and facebook.

Therefore I was surprised to read a recent interview with Pandora CFO Steve Cakebread in which he declared, “The impact of data caps for Pandora listeners is almost non-existent.” Speaking with the investment site Seeking Alpha, Cakebread explained the typical bitrate Pandora uses is 32 kilobits per second, which is one-quarter the 128kbps rate I used for my estimate.

Bitrate and fidelity are tied together, with higher bitrates typically meaning better quality sound. MP3 is a nearly 20 year-old codec, and 128kbps is generally considered the bare minimum bitrate for obtaining acceptable stereo sound for music. However, Cakebread explains that Pandora utilizes the much more modern AAC+ codec which is more efficient and delivers better fidelity at lower bitrates than MP3. He tells Seeking Alpha that the average Pandora user listens to 10 hours a month, which adds up to 140 MB. This means that even if an average user did all her listening on a mobile device using the cell network, she would come in way under her 2 GB cap.

It’s good to have this kind of data directly from a major internet broadcaster like Pandora because it does help us understand the actual constraints faced by mobile streaming. At 32 kpbs a mobile listener with a 2 GB data plan should be good for some 142 hours of Pandora a month, which would be like listening for 17 whole work days. I can definitely imagine there are folks who listen to that much terrestrial radio, and I don’t doubt there are some power subscribers who tune in to Pandora for that much. So it does also illustrate the gap between mobile internet radio and its wired broadband and terrestrial broadcast counterparts. While mobile listening may not be seriously curtailed by data caps, it is still limited in ways that wired broadband or wireless broadcast are not.

iHeartRadio Joins Forces with College Stations

Corporate commercial radio behemoth Clear Channel and fiercely independent college radio might not seem like the most logical of partners, but they are joining forces on iHeartRadio. Last fall I’d heard that Clear Channel was planning to incorporate college radio stations into its iHeartRadio tool and today they confirmed that rumor by announcing that they will be adding 14 college radio stations to iHeartRadio later this month. This is part of their overall strategy to broaden the scope of their digital radio service beyond just Clear Channel-owned stations. It also comes on the heels of their announcement on Friday that the two college-owned public radio stations, KCRW (Santa Monica College) and KUSC (the classical radio network owned by University of Southern California), would also be added to iHeartRadio.

iHeartRadio’s expansion heated up last fall when they added custom stations. By October they had announced plans to add Christian radio conglomerate K-LOVE as well as Spanish language programming from Univision. According to John Hogan, President and CEO of Clear Channel,

“Bringing college radio stations to iHeartRadio is a great source of local and independent programming that offers our users a more diverse listening experience and also provides listeners new opportunities for music, news and sports exposure and discovery…Many of our top on-air personalities started their radio careers at college radio stations and we are glad to give back by providing these great college stations with an industry-leading national distribution platform — iHeartRadio.”

Clear Channel plans to add additional college radio stations to iHeartRadio, but is launching the college radio category with the following 14 stations:

1.  Appalachian State’s WASU

2.  Connecticut College’s WCNI

3.  Dartmouth College’s WFRD

4.  Denison University’s WDUB

5.  DePaul University’s Radio DePaul

6.  Emerson College’s WERS

7.  Flagler College’s WFCF

8.  Green River College’s KGRG

9.  Ithaca College’s WICB

10.  Rice University’s Rice Radio (KTRU)

11.  Seton Hall University’s WSOU

12.  Stanford University’s KZSU

13.  Temple University’s WHIP

14.  College of Wooster’s WCWS

It’s an interesting range of stations, from the metal-oriented WSOU to the eclectic KZSU to the slicker adult alternative station WERS. Even KTRU (aka Rice Radio) is getting a chance at a broader audience after losing its FM frequency last year. I will be curious to hear feedback from the college radio community about these deals, as it’s unclear to me if stations will be viewed as selling out or if they will be heralded for savvy marketing. Who knows, as iHeartRadio expands into more content areas, it may just be viewed as an innocuous listening tool ala iTunes. iHeartRadio can be heard online, via mobile applications, and in some automobiles.

This is certainly an indicator of strong growth for internet radio and streaming services. Music royalties agency SoundExchange announced Tuesday that it ended the year collecting $292 million in royalty payments, up 17% from 2010. These royalties are paid by internet, satellite and cable TV music-only services for the right to play sound recordings, and are distributed to the owners of the sound recording rights. The payments are based upon listener hours, which means a service pays more royalties when more listeners are tuned in. Terrestrial radio is excepted from these royalties by statute, though all broadcasters are obligated to pay songwriting royalties via agencies like ASCAP and BMI.

SoundExchange also reports that 15,300 new artists, labels and rights holders were registered last year, and therefore became eligible to receive royalty payments.

I am definitely of two minds with regard to these payments, often known as “mechanical” royalties. On the one hand, I think it is only fair for musicians to be paid when services base their income on playing recorded music. But on the other hand, there are many non-commercial services that do not turn a profit, and for whom these payments can be burden. Furthermore, it is reasonable to question how much money individual artists see from these collections, since the major record companies arguably own the majority of mechanicals rights.

Even the for-profit services like SiriusXM satellite radio and Pandora have been protesting. They say that the SoundExchange fees are too high and that the terrestrial radio exemption is unfair. Last fall SiriusXM made waves by reaching out to the major labels to negotiate individual contracts that would bypass SoundExchange, in the hope of reducing its rates. Such a move is legal because SoundExchange is the default statutory collection agency for those who don’t have other agreements with rights holders. The catch with bypassing SoundExchange is that you end up with a lot of individual contracts to hammer out. The risk for artists with such arrangements is that those who own the rights to their recordings might have difficulty collecting their due royalties.

In any event, this rise in royalty payments are a strong sign that more listeners are turning to online radio and music streaming services, in addition to the more established satellite and cable providers.

The content industry in the United States is trying to pull a fast one too. They’re claiming that a draconian law favored by the Recording Industry Association of America called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the only way to combat copyright infringement in America. The bill, as it has been proposed, would undermine the carefully constructed notice and take down system that has served rights holders and social networking sites for over a decade.

Instead, websites would be exposed to provisions warning that venues “dedicated to theft of U.S. property” can be denied access to credit card and payment services if they are taking “deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation” of U.S. copyright laws.

I don’t know what “dedicated to theft” legally means. I don’t know what would constitute a “high probability” under the statute. I do fear that if this bill passes, suddenly a new generation of music content sharing/social networking sites will find themselves threatened by harsh, business crushing legal actions—all at a time when Internet radio is beginning to find its creative edge.

That’s why I support all the actions taking place today against SOPA and its companion legislation in the Senate, the Protect IP Act. Wikipedia is mostly blacked out, but its statement against the proposed law is still up. Please read it, and learn how you can keep the Internet open and uncensored.

East Village Radio has come up with five interesting selections in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. They are:

1. David Bowie, Leon Takes Us Outside. “Wednesday, Martin Luther King Day, afternoon, in view of nothing, 20, 0, 1, Late winter, Martin Luther King Day.”

2. Rage Against the Machine, Renegades of Funk. “Like Chief Sitting Bull, Tom Payne, Doctor Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. They were renegades of their time and age.”

3. REM, The Outsiders. “I want to float a quote from Martin Luther King. I am not afraid…”

4. Method Man (ft Ol’ Dirty Bastard), Dirty Mef. “Heh, ya’meen, I’m taking one for the team. Like Martin Luther King, taking one for a dream.”

5. Run D.M.C., Proud to Be Black. “DJ Run, and I run these things. You can hear it loud and clear like when the schoolbell rings. Like Martin Luther King, I will do my thing. I’ll say it in a rap cause I do not sing.”

“Thank you President Reagan for giving most (or some) of us a day off from work,” the post notes. “In honor of the greatest civil rights leader to grace our eyes, ears and liberties with his tones of truth and equality for all, here are 5 songs which give mad props to the activist, whose honor we celebrate today.”

And thank you, EVR, for these interesting picks.

Ignore

Last night I was on the Classical of Any Kind room, and somebody starting complaining that my choice of Leontyne Price singing Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 was too long. ‘God damn, m8te . . . it just goes on a bit,’ he insisted.

In the words of Bugs Bunny, what a maroon, I thought. The piece is 16 minutes of pure joy. Alas, I didn’t realize that turntable.fm now has an “ignore” option. Just go to “settings,” key in the name of the annoying user, and the problem is solved.

Twitter

For at least a month or so, users have been able to connect to turntable via Twitter. I’m still mostly using Facebook. But you can automatically connect yourself to both Facebook and Twitter via the settings/Manage Accounts options in the Lobby. You can disconnect from them there, too.

Guest lists

There is a new guest list feature in the lower left hand corner of the chat field. “This list tells you who all is in the room and lets you bring up their profile,” tt.fm notes. “If you’re a room moderator you can boot, pull down a DJ, or make someone a moderator from the Guest List too. The days of frustrated clicking are over!”

Ding mention

The “ding” option has always been one of Turntable’s more iffy features. A little “ding” noise goes off any time that somebody posts a chat comment. The problem—who wants to listen to that sound all the time. On the other hand, you want to know when you’ve been mentioned, especially if you are away from your keyboard. So just click the “ding mention” option, and you’ll only get the ding sound when your name comes up.

All good stuff, some of which obviates the need for the various unofficial extensions that have been written for Google Chrome. But those extensions still give you a lot of playlist power that tt.fm has yet to offer.

Radio Sound Only Sign at KZSC (Photo: J. Waits)

Happy 2012.

Over the past few weeks, Matthew, Paul and I have written up our obligatory “year-end” pieces, summarizing some of the big radio trends from 2011.

I covered college radio in my article, 2011: The Year that College Radio Fought Back, Paul wrote about some of the technological changes in music in his piece, 2011: The Year Radio Entered the Cloud, and Matthew covered Internet radio and social networking in 2011: The Year that Internet Radio Went Social.

All three of these topics were covered throughout the year on Radio Survivor, but there were some additional stories that proved to be compelling for readers. The biggest radio story of the year in terms of traffic was about Family Radio and its founder Harold Camping. In fact, the majority of our top ten stories were about Harold Camping’s role in predicting Judgment Day and the end of the world (May 21 and October 21, respectively). Additionally, one of the top search terms bringing people to Radio Survivor was “Harold Camping.” Recent changes at KGO also drew in a lot of readers and even though these changes took place within the past few weeks of 2011, “KGO” jumped to 2nd place in terms of search terms bringing people to Radio Survivor. Others came to the site looking for information on the following topics: Pandora Alternative, Zune, KUSF, Spotify, Opie and Anthony salary, Lynn Samuels, and Randy Michaels.

Here are the Most Read Stories of 2011 on Radio Survivor:

1. Family Radio Counts Down to Judgment Day on May 21

2. Harold Camping to Issue Statement Today on Non-Rapture

3. Harold Camping Explains that Judgment Day was Spiritual

4. KGO Cuts Talk Shows, Angers Many San Francisco Listeners

5. Microsoft Cancels Zune HD, Leaving One Last Portable HD Radio on the Market

6. Family Radio’s Harold Camping Speaks, End of World “Probably” on October 21

7. Harold Camping Issues Vague Apology, Says World Will End Without Warning

8. My Kindle Fire is an Internet Radio

9. Behind the Scenes at Family Radio as May 21st Judgment Day Approaches

10. Talk Radio Lovers Facebook and Tweet Pain over KGO Host Bloodbath

Spotify has released its top 100 lists for 2011. They include staff favorites, too. Here are the first ten user picks from the Spotify United States top 100 roster, which leads with Foster the People‘s rather disturbing (but very listenable) song, “Pumped Up Kicks.”

1. Pumped Up Kicks, Foster the People
2. Stereo Hearts – feat. Adam Levine, Gym Class Heroes
3. Rolling In the Deep, Adele
4. We Found Love, Rihanna, Calvin Harris
5. Helena Beat, Foster the People
6. Moves like Jagger, Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera
7. Super Bass, Nicki Minaj
8. Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, Skrillex
9. Give Me Everything, Pitbull feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer
10. Party Rock Anthem, LMFAO, Lauren Bennett, GoonRock

Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” is definitely an underground tune with its scary, creepy lyrics:

Robert’s got a quick hand.
He’ll look around the room, he won’t tell you his plan.
He’s got a rolled cigarette, hanging out his mouth he’s a cowboy kid.
Yeah, he found a six shooter gun.
In his dad’s closet hidden with a box of fun things, and I don’t even know what.
But he’s coming for you, yeah he’s coming for you.

Foster the People singer Mark Foster explained the meaning of the song to Spinner UK.

“‘Pumped Up Kicks’ is about a kid that basically is losing his mind and is plotting revenge. He’s an outcast. I feel like the youth in our culture are becoming more and more isolated. It’s kind of an epidemic. Instead of writing about victims and some tragedy, I wanted to get into the killer’s mind, like Truman Capote did in ‘In Cold Blood.’ I love to write about characters. That’s my style. I really like to get inside the heads of other people and try to walk in their shoes.”

Interestingly, the clip isn’t anywhere near the top of Billboard’s 2011 Year End Most Popular Radio Songs list (it is number 29). This scotches my theory that music social network users still follow the lead of commercial radio when constructing their playlists.

On the other hand, if Billboard is to be believed, “Pumped” isn’t a top 75 downloaded song either. So I guess there are now at least three categories to follow: radio, downloaded, and played-on-the-cloud. Actually, there are five if you include ringtones and videos, but that’s too much complexity for me to handle on the cusp of New Year’s weekend.

I’m not sure how much sociological fatalism to attach the popularity of “Pumped.” The echoey, distant sound of the vocals make the lyrics difficult to understand, so what emerges is the cheery, almost marching-band mood of the piece.