New Spotify Radio lets you skip unlimited tracks

Now Spotify has announced a new version of its radio feature that is available with the preview version of the Mac, Windows and Blackberry apps. The company says it has a an “all-new intelligent recommendation and multi-million track library.” But the thing that sets it apart from the likes of Pandora and last.fm is the ability to skip an unlimited number of tracks. By comparison the other services only allow a limited number of skipped tracks.

This difference stems from the different types of licenses the services operate under. Pandora and last.fm operate under the same license terms as internet radio station, which restrict the ability of listeners to select specific artists and songs, in addition to restricting the number of tracks by an artist or from a single artist that may be played in a row. Spotify, on the other hand, has worked out individual agreements with all the labels that provide music to the service that allow the service to permit listeners to select the artists, albums and songs they want to listen to. However, these agreements cost Spotify much more in licensing costs than what Pandora or last.fm pay.

While this would seem to give the competitive advantage to Spotify, it results in gaps in the service’s catalog where labels or artists will not license their music at all. Pandora, on the other hand, takes advantage of a statutory license which does not require individual deals with labels. For the Pandora listener this means she can hear bands like the Beatles and Metallica which are absent from the Spotify roster.

Another difference is that Pandora and last.fm have many more station building options, allowing you to specify additional artists and songs to add to an existing station, or use your own music library as a seed. As far as I can tell Spotify offers none of these options. You can simply select an artist to use as a radio seed source and that’s it.

In my limited listening to the new Spotify Radio I find that the range of artists is still not as broad or varied as Pandora. Spotify seems to stick pretty closely to genre and style. While there are times that I may want to listen to some music closely related to an artist, it’s doubtful I’m going to listen for more than an hour or so without getting bored. Pandora does a better job of holding my attention with variation and tunes I’m less familiar with.

It’s vitally important to recognize that every time a new audio distribution technology comes along, the word “radio” comes along for the ride. When the first live audio streams went online in the mid-90s, did everyone call this “streaming internet audio?” No, they called it “internet radio.”

In the early 2000s when Sirius and XM first lit up their satellites hovering above the earth did they call it “satellite audio?” That’s right, they called it “satellite radio.”

Sure, “podcasting” doesn’t have the word radio in it. But the one-time neologism was built upon the conflation of “iPod” and “broadcast.” The latter word is certainly very related to radio, which was the first form of electronic broadcasting.

What this all means is that we see radio as a thriving, evolving and growing set of media united by the common application of distributing–or, broadcasting–audio programming to masses of people. Radio is the transmission of audio entertainment, information and art across a variety of media and formats.

Reading this one might wonder, “well, then, doesn’t that make records, CDs, audiobooks and album downloads some kind of radio, too?” My answer is that they’re close to radio, but don’t qualify as radio.

While services like Spotify and Rdio have blurred that line between listening to an album and listening to radio, radio is still a different experience. Music radio, in particular, is about delivering a curated experience that is more spontaneous, less processed, and more ephemeral than an album, which is comparatively crafted and composed. Sure, progressive rock radio often featured album sides, but the more frequent programming were carefully chosen DJ sets. Music radio is about the mix. And even though Pandora and last.fm deliver a mix programmed by an algorithm, the listening experience is more like that progressive rock station than a CD.

It’s not for nothing that Spotify calls its automated music streams “artist radio,” and Rdio is a semi-contraction of “radio” that needs to buy a vowel.

A point that’s hard to avoid is that these forms of radio all hearken back to the modes of presentation first pioneered in broadcast. The DJ, talk show and music set all originated with broadcast. Internet and satellite radio unambiguously crib these forms with the only big difference from broadcast being their method of transmission.

Podcasting is a particularly curious case, because in my opinion its invention reignited interest in radio forms by making it so much easier to distribute programs. Podcasting also gave listeners a kind of radio TiVo by relieving them of having to tune in to a station or stream at a particular time. The clever innovation of the automated download freed radio from the tethers of the cable and the electromagnetic wave, be it FM, AM, wi-fi or cell.

In fact, the rise of podcasting breathed life into forms of radio programming that had barely been heard from since the 70s, like radio drama and long-form comedy. Turns out that the international reach of podcasting means a particularly esoteric show can find hundreds or thousands of listeners, even if there may barely be a dozen potential fans in the broadcast radius of a single station.

This is just my long-winded way of saying that here at Radio Survivor we take all forms of broadcasted and transmitted audio programming. We think that makes our website unique. There are plenty of sites that do a good job of covering the broadcast industry, a particular radio personality or music and radio. But we haven’t found any that consistently look at the whole wide world of internet, satellite and broadcast radio. To us, it’s all RADIO.

This also means we intend to keep expanding our coverage, writing more about new online services, ways to improve the listening experience, new radio technologies, along with our continuing coverage of broadcast. In particular I hope to see us write more about podcasts and podcasting, since we’re seeing more artists, personalities and producers make the decision to completely bypass the broadcast and satellite gatekeepers, self-producing and distributing podcasts directly to audiences.

Back in August we made a call for writers and contributors, and we’re still looking. If you’ve considered writing about podcasting, satellite radio, internet radio or other radio forms–not just broadcast–then drop us a line.

eMmusic is an online music store that pretty much pioneered the sale of unprotected MP3 music tracks in the early 2000s. The site has gone through ownership and business model changes over the years, shifting from its original monthly all-you-can-download plan to a number-of-tracks a month, and finally to the current X dollars a month subscription now offered. Because the big labels were initially scared of freely-trade-able MP3s, most of eMusic’s offerings were indie until a few years ago when some of the majors started to sign up. Not coincidentally, that’s also when eMusic’s prices went up, too.

Perhaps to add some additional value to subscribers’ monthly fee that buys less music than it used to, eMusic debuted its own radio service back in August. The service has always had some editorial content to accompany its download selection, with features on particular genres, subgenres or artists, as well as articles that highlight labels or particular scenes. eMusic Radio attempts to dip into that same editorial well, offering niche stations that lean towards curatorial eclecticism.

Unlike Pandora or Spotify, eMusic’s Radio “programs” (they don’t call them stations) are not user-customized or generated. Ostensibly each program is more like a DJ set, picked by knowledgeable music experts, rather than a auto-generated stream of music based upon a seed band or song. Thus eMusic offers programs like 80s One Hit Wonders, Brooklyn’s Finest and Explore Blue Note Records.

I’ve been an eMusic subscriber on and off for the last decade since I received my first free download voucher with the purchase of a CD burner. Yet the current pricing model has led me to cancel my subscription at the end of this term. Over the last six weeks or so I’ve checked out eMusic Radio to see how it stacks up against a service like Pandora or Spotify, or as an alternative to other internet radio.

On the whole I have to say that I’ve found eMusic Radio to be quite underwhelming. While the idea of having multiple curated programs at my disposal, the reality is that I’ve found most of them come up short.

Yacht Rock

The first station I tried out was disappointing pretty much right from the start. I tuned in the Yacht Rock station in order to get a fix of some smooth late 70s sounds. As both a fan of the music of bands like Hall and Oates and Steely Dan, as well as the parody web series that inspired the genre name, I was hoping to groove out to smooth music.

The set started out promising enough with the Doobie Brothers lamenting about “What a Fool Believes,” but just three songs later the same song came up again. Now, it’s a good track, but that kind of rotation makes even Top 40 radio seem diverse by comparison. Perhaps I’m not as big a fan of Yacht Rock as I thought, but I had to hit the skip button more than I would like, often because the same artist, like Christopher Cross, came up way too often. Within only about 30 minutes of listening I’d run out of allotted skips (which are limited in a say similar to Pandora or last.fm, as required by the DMCA).

The next station I tested out was 80s One (or Two) Hit Wonders. This station had a more extensive selection of tracks and I experienced no artist or song repetition over the course of an hour enjoying the likes of T’Pau, Night Ranger and Nina.

When I listened to this program in another session a couple weeks later several of the same songs came up again, but in a different sequence. Wall of Voodo’s “Mexican Radio” and Slade’s “Run Runaway,” turned up early in both sessions. The leads me to believe that these programs aren’t carefully crafted and sequenced playlists so much as a collection of tracks that are served up at random. That approach isn’t necessarily bad, but for me I’m finding that the overall number of tracks isn’t sufficiently high to maintain my interest in any given program for more than an hour total.

While listening the player app stays at the bottom of your browser window, allowing you to continue to navigate around the eMusic site. This lets you check out the artists, songs and albums you’re hearing, downloading something if the mood strikes you. However, if you leave the eMusic site, the music stops. But since you can leave the player running in a tab while browsing another tab or window this hardly seems like much of a limitation.

One thing I found annoying is that songs slowly fade in and fade out, which often means you miss a song’s intro and ending. This isn’t part of a crossfade, which would be understandable. So I can’t figure out why eMusic has decided to implement these fades, except that maybe they’re trying to avoid abrupt segues brought on by songs that end all-of-a-sudden or fade into another song on their album.

Another annoying aspect is that eMusic often forces me to re-login every time I switch stations, which really slows down the listening experience and serves as a disincentive for using the service.

eMusic only promises their radio service to work as in-browser on desktop computers. However, I was able to play it with no problem on my Android smartphone which supports Flash. The Flash-deprived iPhone was unable to play.

On the whole I find eMusic Radio to be a promising idea that has yet to live up to that promise. If I think of each “program” as something worth listening to for a single one-hour session, then it’s worthwhile. But unlike a well-used Pandora station, there’s too much repetition and not enough variety to entice me to listen to an eMusic program more than once.

Now, eMusic is periodically adding new stations to the mix, but the rate seems to be sporadic. A few new programs were added this past week after relative silence the previous ten days or so.

Another drawback is that it doesn’t seem like any additional variety is added to programs that were released weeks or months ago. To me, this combines the worst of commercial radio with the limitations of services like Pandora. I can think of many specialty internet radio shows that focus on a genre or style that manage to put out very unique and unrepetitive shows 52 weeks a year. I think it would be great to listen to the Hipster Heavy Metal Parking Lot program and get some new stuff every week, but that’s not how eMusic’s version of radio works.

eMusic does explicitly mark its radio sevice as “beta,” which may indicate that they intend to continue refining the service… or kill it off altogether. Perhaps that’s a way to lower listeners’ expectations?

Unlimited listening to eMusic Radio is free for current subscribers. Non-subscribers can sign up for a 10-hour free trial. Given there are 62 programs right now, there’s definitely more than 10 hours of listening to be had.

As a perk for eMusic subscribers their radio service is nice, but not essential. It’s certainly not something that would motivate me to become or stay a subscriber all on its own. There’s plenty of better free internet radio to be had.

Spotify is an online streaming music service that has been available in parts of Europe since 2008. It differentiates itself from popular US music services like Pandora and last.fm by permitting users to actually select the specific artists and songs to hear, rather than only relying upon an algorithm to choose music similar to a particular artist, song or style. In that way Spotify is more like a big online jukebox or iTunes, also permitting users to create playlists which can be shared with other users.

American music lovers who’d heard about the service waited anxiously to experience the kind of instant music availability enjoyed by listeners in Sweden, France and the UK. It took nearly three years, but after long negotiations with the major record labels Spotify became available in the US on July 14.

At first blush it certainly looks like Spotify poses a significant threat to streaming music services like Pandora, last.fm or Slacker, as well as subscription services like Rhapsody which also let listeners choose specific artists, albums and songs. I managed to swing an invitation to try out the free version of Slacker right after in launched stateside. After taking it for a test drive I can say that Spotify indeed does give these other services a run for the money, but I’m not certain that Spotify is ready to top them all.

As a free service it’s too limited to become someone’s go to music source the way that many people rely on Pandora, last.fm or internet radio. And I’m not yet convinced that Spotify’s paid service is complete enough for a lot of listeners like myself. Furthermore, it’s not really a radio service, so much as a very big jukebox in the cloud. Certainly there’s a lot to recommend that idea, but it’s also difficult to live up to.

Continue on to read my full detailed review of Spotify and find out what’s great, and what’s not.

Will it scale?

Most importantly, Spotify isn’t ready to become #1 because the service isn’t ready to take on enough free users to match the scale of Pandora or last.fm. Right now a free account is only available by invitation, whereas a free account with Pandora or last.fm is open to anyone. I presume this is because Spotify wants to scale carefully, rather than deal with a deluge of millions of new users crashing their systems. In fact, while free Spotify accounts were available to anyone for a while in the UK, the service is presently still only available by invitation there as well.

Prior to its US launch Spotify had 10 million users worldwide, with about 9 million of them free, ad supported accounts. By comparison Pandora has 80 million users and last.fm has 40 million. By user count alone Spotify has a way to go to beat the big two.

The Spotify difference

If you’re lucky enough to score a free Spotify account the experience indeed is different than Pandora or last.fm in several significant ways. First, Spotify requires its own application to run on your computer, with versions available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. For many users hoping to listen to music at work or school, places where one might not have the permission to install an application, this will be a barrier to using Spotify right away.

Pandora and last.fm both work inside your web browser. Now, this doesn’t mean that these services are available everywhere. Some schools and employers restrict access to streaming audio and video services. But if you’re currently a Pandora or last.fm listener at work or school it’s possible you won’t be able to install the Spotify app to enjoy that service.

MacOS Spotify app

At the same time there are advantages to having an app for Spotify. The app itself is pretty intuitive to use, borrowing quite a bit from the iTunes experience. Anyone who has used that nearly-ubiquitous Apple app or other music management software should have no problems getting started with Spotify’s quickly. Also, by not working in a browser Spotify minimizes the changes of dragging down your system or crashing your browser. The app also integrates with your iTunes library, giving you access to these tracks and playlists, too.

It’s very easy to search for artists, songs and albums. Just type in your search terms and hit enter. You’ll receive your results nearly instantaneously. Double-click on a track and you can be listening just as quickly. Compared to the web interfaces of Pandora and last.fm, Spotify is downright speedy. I’ve certainly been frustrated with Pandora and, especially, last.fm taking a long time to load a station, or failing to load altogether, sometimes requiring multiple page reloads.

Building a playlist is as easy with Spotify as in iTunes. Just click “new playlist” then select and drag songs to that playlist. It really seems like having a nearly limitless iTunes library at your fingertips. However, while Spotify has some 15 million tracks, it is not truly limitless.

A deep, but not bottomless, catalog

Just like other services there are some artists who are notably absent. Search for the Beatles, AC/DC, Frank Zappa or even King Crimson and you’ll only come up with covers by other artists. Bands like The Who or Pink Floyd have only a couple albums or a smattering of tracks available from their deep catalogs. These gaps aren’t limited to major artists either. In searching across many different genres I found that many artists only have some of their albums represented, or in some cases just a few songs from certain albums. I tried to see if missing albums were all on the same record label, but found that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Complaining about the catalog gaps in Spotify feels a bit like looking gift horse in the mouth, at least when you’ve got a free account and not paying a dime for the access and convenience. I must admit it’s nice to easily check out artists, albums and songs I’ve been interested in hearing rather than making do with thirty second clips.

The ad experience

Of course, just like its competitors (including commercial radio), Spotify isn’t really free. That free account is paid for by advertising that displays in the Spotify app and plays during the music stream. I was jarred by the first few ads I heard because they were for artists and albums that had no relationship to the music I was listening to. I just heard a whole different song start playing, making me think I’d accidenally clicked something. The first one I heard had no voiceover either, just a song snippet accompanied by display ad in the Spotify app. But because I had Spotify in the background I didn’t realize it at first.

I’ve gotten more used to the Spotify ads, but still find them to be more jarring than the last.fm and Pandora ads. On balance, the ads on the latter two services sound more like ones you hear on radio or television than the ones on Spotify.

Spotify has its (listening) limits

Like Pandora, Spotify’s free account sets a limit to how many hours you can listen to in a month. However, Spotify only offers 10 hours while Pandora offers four times as much. Especially if you listen while you work on other things, those 10 hours can run out before you know it. Last.fm does not limit listening time at all, giving it an advantage over the other two services.

Spotify offers unlimited listening on a computer in its Unlimited plan for $4.99 a month. At $9.99 a month the Unlimited plan offers “enhanced” sound quality and mobile access (more about that below). Pandora’s limitless listening is less expensive at $36 a year. This plan also includes higher quality audio, no ads and a desktop application rather than a browser-based player. Alternatively, for just 99 cents a user can keep listening past the 40 hour limit for the rest of the month, but without any of the other subscription benefits. There is no paid last.fm service — it’s completely free.

You can go mobile, for a price

Mobile devices are an area where the free Spotify service doesn’t compete at all. The mobile app is only available as a paid service with the Premium account at $9.99 a month. With that subscription you also get unlimited listening, higher quality sound files and an offline mode that lets you cache playlists on your computer or mobile device so you can listen without internet access.

Both Pandora and last.fm have free mobile apps. Pandora’s free mobile listening limits vary depending on your device and mobile service. Its $36 annual subscription removes any limit. Again, last.fm doesn’t have any limits in mobile, either.

It’s good to share

Despite the paranoia of the recording industry, sharing has been an important aspect of experiencing recorded music for decades. While Pandora and last.fm allow you to share a station that you’ve assembled, it’s not like sharing a mix CD or mix tape, since you can’t pick all the songs and artists. Spotify, on the other, let’s you share a full playlist with other Spotify users.

I think this is Spotify’s killer feature, because it most closely emulates the experience of a mix tape, as easy to assemble as making an iTunes playlist. Certainly there are other ways to share a playlist of tunes online, but most require you to either just share the list of songs which the other person would have to assemble herself. Otherwise you have to upload the song files yourself, which is something that exists in a legal grey area, at least in the US.

Share a Spotify playlist

Every Spotify playlist has a big “share” button underneath the playlist name. Click it and you can send a link to facebook, twitter or Microsoft Messenger with one more click, or just copy and paste a URL that you can send in email or post to a blog. For an example, click here for a playlist of Weird Al Yankovic polka medleys I created.

I really saw the appeal of this feature when a few of my friends first started posting playlists to facebook. It really was like distributing a mixtape to all your friends simultaneously. Well, all of your friends who have Spotify accounts, at least.

And therein lies the limitation of Spotify’s sharing. Since not everyone who wants a Spotify account can have one yet, you really can’t send that playlist to everyone you know. Also, there will probably be songs you wish to include–such as anything by the Beatles–but aren’t available in Spotify’s catalog.

The Spotify experience: a little too limited, not quite radio

I have been a Pandora and last.fm listener for about two years. I don’t use either service every day, or even every week, but there are times when I want background music with a minimum of effort and a minimum of interruption. This is when they fit the bill. I’m not a Pandora subscriber, and have only run into its monthly limit a few times. In these few cases I’ve just switched over to last.fm, even if my stations are different due to each service’s unique algorithms and music libraries.

So far Spotify has become part of my mix of services. However, I use it differently, since I can create playlists of artists and tracks that I specifically want to hear, rather than the more randomized selection I can expect with Pandora or last.fm. In that way I’m likely to use Spotify more like I use my own iTunes library. Of course, I can choose to listen to Spotify’s artist radio and get a similar experience. But as a free user I’d rather not use up my 10 hours getting an experience similar to Pandora or last.fm which have a higher and no limit, respectively.

The big question, of course, is, would I buy a Spotify subscription? I can see the attraction of the service. Having that enormous library of music available on demand, online and off, is appealing. Yet, for someone like me, that library isn’t quite enormous enough. The missing artists, albums and songs are quite tolerable for a free service, but less so when I’m coughing up a monthly fee.

Frankly, if I’d wanted a paid music service I’d already be Rhapsody subscriber. That service costs the same as Spotify Premium, offers similar desktop and mobile features, and has been available in the US for much longer. However Rhapsody also has gaps in its catalog, missing artists like the Beatles and AC/DC which aren’t found on Spotify, either.

Is it radio?

Pandora and last.fm are most appealing to me because they are radio-like and free. If I want to control the playlist, I’ll build one from my library. I listen to Pandora and last.fm when I want to relinquish some of that control and maybe be surprised. But I’m not particularly ready to pay for the experience.

I will admit that Spotify’s free service is nice to use, but 10 hours is a pretty low limit. Based on that alone I think it will have a tough fight to unseat Pandora or last.fm from a lot of music lovers’ daily listening routine.

Spotify shows promise, but is not ready to be a mainstream service accessible to most internet users. It also doesn’t quite scratch that radio itch. A jukebox is not the same thing as a radio station. For me the radio music experience is marked by a combination of predictability and surprise. I know the genre of the stations or the specific show, but I don’t know what song will come next; often it will be something I’ve never heard before. Both Pandora and last.fm provide something much closer to that radio experience, combined with a level of control that lets you filter out sounds you don’t want to hear.

While Spotify has a radio option that resembles Pandora and last.fm, there isn’t much reason to use it compared to its unique playlist building feature. There are times when you want a jukebox, and for many of us our iTunes library is actually pretty satisfying, given that it contains only music I’ve selected and acquired. Spotify comes close, but not close enough for me.

There may be many music lovers ready to just rent their music through a paid Spotify account, provided their tastes don’t stray too far from Spotify’s catalog too often. However, I truly do not know how many. I do know I won’t be one.

New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue recently covered a new web site called DAR.fm that allows any user to record any radio station that’s available on the internet. The site has a schedule database for many, but not all stations, which permits you to look up and schedule a recording of most major syndicated programs, in addition to many local programs. Once recorded you can listen to the shows online, download them or listen to them on a mobile device using an app.

I have only begun to test out the service, but I think it’s a great idea. While I can certainly go ahead and install a stream recorder application on my computer, it’s up to me to figure out when the show I want to record will be on and what station broadcasts it. Then I have to leave my computer running in order to catch the recording. None of this is too onerous, but it’s also not terrifically convenient. Using DAR.fm is like using a TiVo to record and watch television, while using a stream recorder on your PC is like using a VCR. On top of that DAR lets you listen to that recording anywhere.

Like Pogue I wonder about the legality of this service. It’s one thing to give someone the ability to schedule and record shows on her own computer for personal use; this is covered by the Supreme Court’s Betamax decision. However, doing the same thing on a centralized server, while giving users the ability to identify and download particular songs from a stream, is a whole other situation. I haven’t had a chance to research this thoroughly, but I’m guessing that it’s not long before either the RIAA or a broadcaster finds a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in this service.

However, the man behind DAR.fm is Michael Robertson who previously battled the record industry at the turn of the century with MP3.com. With DAR.fm Robertson claims that the 2008 lawsuit Cartoon Network v. Cablevision clears the way. In this case the judge ruled that a cable company can store recordings of programs requested by customers on its own servers instead of on a device in customers’ homes. Of course, just because there appears to be a useful legal precedent that doesn’t mean a deep-pocketed opponent (like the RIAA) still won’t try to test it in court.

Grace Digital's DAR.fm radio

According to a recent post on Robertson’s blog, Grace Digital has a new internet radio coming out that works with DAR.fm, putting the recording scheduling function on the radio itself. This brings the whole idea one step closer to the TiVo appliance model.

I do think this service is good for radio in general, but I’m not sure it is likely to have the same widespread effect of the TiVo and PVR. Had it debuted ten years ago I think the impact would have been greater. But now, as consolidated commercial radio has already alienated a generation of listeners, I think the best it can hope for is to become a niche service, not much more popular than satellite radio.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

I am a monthly donor to my local public radio station so that I don’t even have call in during its pledge drives — they’ve already got my donation. So despite their attempts to make the morning drive pledge pitches compelling, by the second or third day I turn the station off in the morning because I’m sick of pledge drive. I know it’s a necessary evil, and I’ve been just as responsible working in community and college radio. So I do empathize with the listeners who pledged early to the stations I’ve worked at, too. Nevertheless, when I’m just the listener who has already donated, I just want to go back to regular programming.

San Francisco’s KQED has come up with a remedy for its early donors — a pledge-drive free webstream. This feed is only for folks who have ponied up $45 or more, and it is only online. While the station had been toying with the idea for a while, it is only with the growing popularity of mobile devices that can stream online radio that it seemed feasible.

I think KQED is smart to publicize this option well in advance of the actual drive, which begins May 5. This way they’re giving a lot of incentive for would-be donors to get their pledges in early. They’re also garnering a fair degree of publicity for their drive, which otherwise wouldn’t be newsworthy at all. Getting in a significant number of pledges in advance of the start date may also help the station reach its goal faster, cutting the drive short.

However, like all good marketing techniques, it will be interesting to see if this one has legs, and if other stations also take up the mantle. Putting up a pledge-free stream does require producing a whole other stream of programming, which may be too expensive and complex for smaller stations. And as the idea loses its novelty the incentive may wear off for many listeners who will go back to needing to be reminded dozens of times on air before they finally make their pledge.

The station also potentially risks losing multiple donations from a single donor who is moved a second or third time by a new pitch or special premium gift. I don’t imagine that these donors who give multiple times make up more than a small percentage of overall donors. But having worked and coordinated many pledge drives in the last fourteen years, I do know that these donors do exist and their overall contributions really do add up.

I predict that KQED’s pledge-free stream experiment will be successful in helping the station hit or break its goal ahead of schedule. The novelty and publicity will help see to that. Then I expect that other public stations in larger markets with the resources to pull of a second live stream of programming will jump in and see some gains, too. But I’m not entirely sure that we’ll see the idea still going four years from now. Or, we may see the idea get diluted, with the pledge-free stream turning into the fewer-pledge-breaks stream.

I am very interested to see how this plays out.

Pirate Cat Radio Cafe. February 2011 (Photo by J. Waits)

Last year there was a lot of buzz about San Francisco’s formerly pirate radio station Pirate Cat Radio going somewhat legit, with its founder and owner, Daniel “Monkey Man” Roberts, taking over the management and re-launch of nearby FCC licensed community radio station KPDO in the coastal community of Pescadero. In the months following that news, there were also hints that Roberts had his sights set on other FM frequencies and that perhaps he had dreams of a radio empire.

Two weeks ago I started to hear rumors that changes were afoot at Pirate Cat Radio. Initially I heard the salacious account (which turns out to be mostly untrue) that Daniel had stolen money, skipped town to Switzerland, and had been ousted by staff after taking Pirate Cat’s stream down. Although he denied my request for an interview, stating that it is a “legal matter,” he said, “Pirate Cat Radio is still mine, it’s just closed for now.” Daniel’s Facebook page says that he’s currently in Estonia; although it’s more likely that he’s in Bristol, England, having recently worked on the December 1, 2010 launch of community radio station Bristol Static. In an article in the SF Weekly, Daniel Roberts’ lawyer indicates that as of February 16, he believed Daniel to be in the U.K.

In the meantime, back in San Francisco, the DJs and staff at Pirate Cat Radio and Cafe have organized themselves into the PCR Collective and tell me that they are excited about the station’s future. It’s been a hectic two weeks for them, starting with a short, but contentious call on February 13, in which they confronted Daniel with questions about the ownership and finances of the station. During that call, in which they were asking for more transparency about station operations, Daniel refused to address their concerns. After hanging up, he proceeded to take the Pirate Cat Radio website and web stream offline. Despite those moves, staff of PCR Collective are trying to operate the station and cafe as they did previously. They’ve re-established a web stream and have set up a new website for the PCR Collective.

Pirate Cat Radio. February 2011 (Photo: J. Waits)

I caught up with several staff members on Sunday at the station. Although there is clearly animosity between the DJs and Daniel, I was told that many of the rumors floating around about the station shut-down aren’t true. Pirate Cat’s DJ Canary told me, “Monkey did not steal anything.”  However, many DJs did express that there had been ongoing concerns about the management of the station over the past few months.

In November 2010, DJs were told by Daniel that he had sold 80% of Pirate Cat Radio Cafe to an outside investor. They were also asked to pay their monthly DJ dues to the new investor starting in December. At their next staff meeting, DJs were told to no longer pay the investor, but to instead deposit money into the Pescadero Public Radio Service (the license holder for KPDO) account. This turn of events created some concerns, which eventually led Pirate Cat’s Minister of Technology, DJ Pirata Margarita, to ask for more transparency from Daniel. When she asked to see a budget, he fired her.

A December 1, 2010 filing with the City of San Francisco indicated that “Pirate Cat Cafe and Studio” was owned by Pirate Cat Radio Inc. starting on November 19, 2010. A January 4, 2011 filing with the City of San Francisco said that “Pirate Cat Radio Station” was also owned by Pirate Cat Radio Inc. beginning November 19, 2010. These filings supersede an earlier fictitious business name filing for Pirate Cat Cafe and Studio (from March 2008 to December 1, 2010) in which Daniel Roberts is listed as the owner. Based on information gleaned from the California Secretary of State website this week, Daniel Roberts is the “agent of service of process” for Pirate Cat Radio Inc. Understandably, members of the PCR Collective told me that it’s still unclear who owns what. They also mentioned that they were surprised when Daniel recently told them that Pirate Cat Radio had actually been sold back in August 2010 to Pescadero Public Radio Service (whose President is currently Daniel), which operates community radio station KPDO.

Although there are still legal and ownership issues to sort out (particularly in terms of who owns the radio station and who owns the cafe), the members of PCR Collective say that they are focused on moving forward by creating a very different organizational structure from the Pirate Cat Radio of the past. This time around, it will be a “consensus-based media organization,” in contrast to the “almost fascist” management style that one DJ attributed to Daniel. One DJ who sees great potential in a San Francisco “network of autonomous collectives,” is Diamond Dave, who has a long history in the San Francisco underground, with connections stretching from the beatnik era to anarchist organizations to modern-day collectives.

According to a statement by the PCR Collective,

“The volunteer staff of Pirate Cat Radio are not a party to the sale of the Pirate Cat Radio. Our efforts from the beginning have been to extract ourselves from the ownership situation and focus on our core mission: making quality radio and building a supportive community. That is what we are focusing on now.”

Longtime Pirate Cat DJ Patrick Simms said although he recognizes that Daniel “put himself out there to build Pirate Cat Radio,” he finds fault with his leadership style. DJ Pirata Margarita agreed, saying that Daniel did a lot of great things and that perhaps a driven personality like his was required to accomplish all that he did. Patrick said that Daniel (aka Monkey) helped to put a structure in place for the station and that the only difference between the old and the new Pirate Cat Radio is that “Monkey is no longer here.” Pirata Margarita explained that in the restructuring of the station, the plan is for things to work “more democratically.”

As part of their plan to move forward, DJ Pirata Margarita worked to re-establish a webstream for the station. She told me that fellow community radio station Radio Valencia was very supportive and that one of their tech folks helped her to get the Pirate Cat stream going again. She also told me that Radio Valencia also challenged the Pirate Cat Radio volunteers to a bowling match, as a sign of friendly competition. She added that “inadvertently…Monkey has set the stage…for this community of radio stations” in San Francisco, since by this point there are so many former Pirate Cat Radio DJs doing radio at other stations.

Daniel "Monkey Man" Roberts at the KPDO Launch Party in May 2010. (Photo: J. Waits)

In addition to the turmoil and confusion over at Pirate Cat, there is also some concern at the other station run by Daniel Roberts, FM community radio station KPDO in Pescadero. In November, after Daniel left, he told KPDO volunteer Shannon Bowman-Sarkisian that he would be out of town for awhile due to a family emergency and asked if she would manage the station in his absence. It was her understanding that Daniel was in England, where his wife was from.

By January, Shannon said that she started to become concerned because Daniel wasn’t saying when he’d be coming back. She told me that she felt “blind-sided” by the turn of events at Pirate Cat Radio and was especially surprised to read in the SF Weekly article that Pirate Cat had supposedly been sold to Pescadero Public Radio Service, since she had no knowledge of that. Shannon said, “I’ve never met anybody from Pirate Cat. How can we own them? How can we be expected to know what’s good for Pirate Cat? It’s a really weird situation and it’s not really what I expected to happen with KPDO.”

When asked about this rumor, KPDO founder Maggie Celeste Worden told me today, “That’s actually kind of a legal impossibility” for Pescadero Public Radio Service to own Pirate Cat Radio.

Shannon also told me that since Daniel’s disappearance she’s also learned about KPDO’s relationship with Common Frequency. She said that she heard that “Common Frequency helped us get a new license that is supposed to increase our broadcast range. We were told after the fact…Even if it is a really good move for the station; I don’t think you can just make decisions.”

According to Common Frequency’s Program and Technical Director Todd Urick, “Common Frequency is providing KPDO pro bono assistance in options for strengthening its broadcast signal.” Additionally, he told me that “Monkey has been providing assistance [to Common Frequency] in preliminary planning for some speculative Bay Area radio projects” and that his “role at any future station hasn’t been defined yet.  His current role is a project facilitator, but since he has been in the UK we have been in less communication with him.”

Shannon added, “I feel really upset. I feel like we’ve been betrayed to a certain extent.” Like her cohorts at Pirate Cat, she also said that she respected Daniel’s work, saying, “It’s not that I think he’s a bad guy…He’s put all this time, money, and energy [into the station]…On the one hand, I recognize that and appreciate it…KPDO wouldn’t be what it is without him….at the same time, I don’t agree with the decisions he’s made, they’ve been made unilaterally.”

To that end, KPDO staff members met yesterday to discuss the station’s future. Shannon said that she feels really positive about the future and is particularly excited about the station’s upcoming 1-year anniversary party on May 7th, saying that as a staff they feel competent to run the station in Daniel’s absence.

Today, station founder Maggie Celeste Worden concurred, telling me that “the station is doing fine,” that it has an “amazing staff of volunteers”  and that “KPDO is solid and standing on its own two feet.” She told me that in the past year she swapped duties with Daniel and that he is now President of the Board, while she is the Secretary. She also said that Daniel’s expected date back at the station is in April. Maggie, who has lived out of the area in recent years, said that she’s been considering moving back to the Pescadero area and is thrilled to see that the station that she dreamed about 17 years ago is up and running and providing an outlet for different voices in the community. She added, “The excitement is amazing…if one person can turn on a station, then we can keep democracy alive.” In terms of the perceived turmoil, Maggie surmised, “I think there’s much ado about nothing.”

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To get more background on the history of Pirate Cat Radio and KPDO, read my field trip reports on Spinning Indie:

Radio Station Field Trip 21 – KPDO in Pescadero (May 2010 visit for station launch)

Radio Station Field Trip 23 – San Francisco’s Pirate Cat Radio (June 2010 visit)

Much of the news today from Libya is sad, with reports that as many as 200 protesters have been killed by government forces who are using live ammunition–some large caliber–on civilians trying to exercise their human rights to free speech and peaceful protest. However there are also signs that protestors are finding ways to break the information blockade the Qaddafi government has attempted to put in place. According to Foreign Policy’s Passport blog, on Friday protestors in Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, site of the worst violence, took control of a radio station and have been broadcasting. The broadcast is available online, but it’s unclear if the station is also broadcasting terrestrially. Press reports being published as I write this indicate that protestors have taken over much or all of Benghazi.

Tuning in the broadcasts do sound amateur and rushed, with music and some reports being very distorted and overdriven–this does not sound like a commercial or state radio broadcast. As a dreadfully monolingual American I don’t speak Arabic, so unfortunately I can’t comment more on the content of the broadcast.

At this moment, 5:15 CST / 11:15 UTC, the station is rebroadcasting state television which is airing a live address by Muammar Qaddafi’s sun. The BBC’s Radio Five is broadcasting a live translation of the address.

Like lots of folks, I’ve got the jitters about Canada’s impending metered Internet billing system (Usage-Based Billing they call it there), especially when it comes to online radio and music services.

Ars Technica has a pretty decent piece about the UBB development, if I say so myself. The Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission approved the pay-by-the-gigabyte policy for Bell Canada late last year, and that means that smaller ISPs that connect to Bell for access have to buy broadband a la UBB, and pass the metered costs onto their customers.

So Ontario’s indie ISP TekSavvy (which hates the CRTC decision) has announced that the new monthly usage cap for their premium DSL broadband subscribers will soon be dropped from 200GB a month to 25GB! You can buy “insurance” now to make sure you don’t go over your allotted limit, and you better keep a top eye on your usage, the ISP warns its subscribers.

What will send you over the limit? Here’s the table that TekSavvy provides.

So basically if you start using the Net the way most people are starting to use it—for all entertainment and information sharing activities—UBB is eventually going to snag you in the wallet.

Obviously this is a crucial issue for Canadians, but everyone else should be concerned too, since the policy could be extended anywhere (and is being implemented in various ways here in the States). My biggest concern is whether this could hurt Internet radio.

TekSavvy also offers a usage chart to give subscribers a sense of what 1GB is good for (I’ve bolded the music streaming figure).

My worry is that as the consequences of UBB set in, consumers will become more reluctant to stream on-line radio services in the background like they do FM. They’ll start to prioritize which kinds of entertainment they use the ‘Net for, privileging video and games, while avoiding online radio for fear that it might send them over their monthly usage allotment.

This is why I’m so disappointed that the big streamers here in the United States and Canada haven’t been more active around these regulatory issues. Maybe they’ll wake up now.

Every day I watched the news reports and press releases from the just-ended 2011 Consumer Electronics Show hoping for some interesting radio news. Instead, what we got was mostly more of the same. You might call it CES 2010 2.0. Aside from the Android-powered car radio that Matthew covered the other day, there was nothing new or innovative offered up in the radio world.

CES 2011 is over, but iBiquity is still pushing CES 2010

Even though the company never updated its website from the 2010 CES, iBuiquity did announce that HD Radio would be standard in 36 car models from 17 brands, which does indicate some stability for the technology. But as far as satellite radio is concerned XM/Sirius only had one announcement on hand, touting a deal with Nissan offering a a three-month intro subscription on dealer-certified pre-owned Nissan and Infiniti cars.

Internet radio primarily built on the smartphone integration model introduced by Pioneer at last year’s CES. Toyota jumped into that fray with its Entune system offering control of not just Pandora, but also Clear Channel’s iheartradio, XM satellite radio and HD Radio. However, this system is just an option on “select vehicles,” which means that in reality only a minority of Toyota buyers will end up with it. Sony and other after-market mobile stereo manufacturers also announced smartphone-connected head units that will control Pandora and other apps.

What we haven’t seen yet is a car stereo with native internet radio capability built-in. While smartphone sales are growing I still doubt that the majority of owners are willing to deal with the hassle of connecting their phones most of the time in order to take advantage of internet radio access. Furthermore, this functionality is mostly offered on optional equipment or after-market items, further limiting the number of car owners likely to use it.

I don’t see mobile internet radio reaching any kind of critical mass–even on par with Sirius/XM–until the experience is completely integrated. That will likely require manufacturers to pair up with mobile broadband carriers similar to how Sirius/XM struck deals with them. But I don’t think such an idea is farfetched, noting how Amazon bundles AT&T 3G service with its Kindle e-readers. Still, it hasn’t happened.

Although the car has always been an important place for radio listening, more than ever it is now the battleground for radio technologies. Major electronics manufacturers seem to be largely ceding the home HD, satellite and internet radio market to niche players.

New radio platforms will succeed or fail in the car based upon their ability to offer a seamless, integrated experience with desirable programming. Sirius/XM has the leg up here with 20 millions subscribers and established relationships with most major auto manufacturers. HD Radio’s principal advantage is that it’s free, but it’s also hampered by far less diverse programming, even taking into account HD2 and HD3 channels. HD also has all sorts of reception problems outside of the strongest signal areas.

Internet radio poses the greatest threat to HD and satellite, but not as long as people have to plug in their smartphones to tune it in.

In the end, I think the dirty little secret is that when it comes to radio in the car, traditional analog broadcast still wins. It’s standard equipment on pretty much every vehicle sold and it’s a feature in pretty much every aftermarket stereo, alongside CD, MP3, satellite, HD or smartphone connectivity. Broadcast is also free, and while we can find many faults with mainstream commercial programming, there is still plenty that attracts millions of listeners every day.

This is not the sort of conclusion that makes news at the Consumer Electronics Show. But that doesn’t make it any less true.