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.

Logo for Libyan resistance online station.

Right now it is very difficult to get confirmed news out of Libya due to the internet and phones being restricted and foreign journalists being kept out. Twitter is alive with reports from Libya, but with all the re-tweeting it’s difficult to following things back to a source and then determine if it’s credible.

Earlier today the group called Libyan Youth Movement posting under the twitter name @ShababLibya tweeted that “BREAKING: Libya open first real radio called soot libya al hura (voice of free libya) frequencies and live feed to follow #Libya #Feb17″. This message was repeated all over Twitter and on blogs and websites covering the popular revolt in Libya, but with no additional information or citations.

The Media Network blog from Radio Netherlands Worldwide today posted a roundup of reports about radio inside Libya. Blogger Andy Sennitt relays reception reports from Denmark of a high-powered mediumwave station (called AM in the US) in El Beida that apparently is taken over by protestors, while other Libyan mediumwave stations continue to air pro-Qaddafi material. The same Danish DXer reports receiving this station, identified as Radio Free Libya, broadasting at 1125 KHz.

El Baida is about 125 miles east of Benghazi, which is the reported location of the internet station I reported on yesterday. This could be the same broadcast, or they might be separate — it’s hard to know.

It’s also unclear if the mediumwave Radio Free Libya is the same station as the Voice of Free Libya that the Libyan Youth Movement tweeted about today. While mediumwave can travel great distances–from Libya to Denmark–these stations won’t be receivable in North America. I find no indications or reception reports of any Libyan shortwave broadcasts operated by protestors. Like in Egypt, it’s unlikely there are many ham radio operators, especially under Qaddafi’s even more repressive regime. However, I think it’s safe to say that broadcast radio is playing a more significant role in the Libyan uprising than it did in Egypt’s.

In terms of tuning in English-language news of the situation in Libya, while BBC’s Five Live was airing constant Libya coverage at this time last night, today the station seems to be back to its normal program schedule. That’s too bad because I found the station’s coverage last night to be quite riveting, with many live calls directly from Libya. At the same time the host, Stephan Nolan, kept a very cool head, making pains to consider internet and twitter rumors with due caution, while also paying appropriate respect to the real violence and suffering being experienced by Libyans on the streets of Benghazi and Tripoli.

For the most updated English-language news from Libya I’ve found Al Jazeera’s English service to be the most reliable right now. However, this evening CNN has the first Western TV journalist inside Libya. He confirms earlier reports that the resistance has control of eastern Libya.

I hope for the best for the Libyan’s protesting and acting for an end to decades of totalitarian repression. Communicating their circumstances and showing the government’s brutality both to other Libyans and to the outside world I believe will aid their cause. Radio is one tool that may help.

The BBC’s Five Live radio service seems to be providing some of the best up-to-the-minute English-language coverage of the situation in Libya. Just moments ago I heard a live phone call with the Libyan ambassador to India who told host Stephen Nolan that he had resigned in response to government forces firing on a funeral processing in Benghazi on Sunday. This is an interesting case where it seems like the immediate nature of radio broadcasting is ahead of major news websites in reporting what’s happening in Libya right now.

Five Live is a digital radio service in the UK but also streams live online.

Last week AT&T announced that new smartphone customers will no longer be eligible for the unlimited data plans that current customers enjoy. Instead, two somewhat less expensive plans will be available. For $15 new customers may download 200 MB of data per month, with a charge of $15 for every additional 200 GB over the limit. 2 GB per month will cost $25, plus another $10 for each 1 GB after that. Current data plan customers pay $30 for unlimited data. For its part AT&T says that either of these new plans provides enough data to satisfy 98% of their customers.

While it may be true that the vast majority of AT&T customers use less than 2 GB of data in a month, I would argue that’s because data-hungry mobile streaming media is just starting to take off. But the these new caps threaten to stunt that growth just as mobile internet radio is gaining steam.

The 200 MB of data offered by the least expensive plan covers only about 200 minutes of streaming stereo music at the common bitrate of 128kbps. And that’s without any other data usage for email, web browsing or anything else. Even listening to a lower-quality mono talk station at 32 kbps will only stretch listening to 800 minutes, or 13 hours.

The 2 GB plan will cover about 34 hours of stereo music and as much as 136 hours of low-bitrate mono talk. At first blush that seems like a fair amount of listening time, but how does it measure up against real-world radio listening? Someone whose commute lasts about an hour each way will easily listen to over 40 hours of radio in a month. If that commuter wants to use her iPhone or Blackberry to listen to Pandora, last.fm or another streaming music station she’ll be over her limit by the last week of the month.

Without access to hard statistics on how many hours the average mobile Pandora or last.fm user listens it’s hard to say for sure how many new AT&T customers are likely to be affected. However, I do think it’s fair to say that these limits will make many smartphone users cautious about how much time they’ll spend listening to internet radio on the go, especially in order to avoid overage fees.

Of course, AT&T is not the only wireless data carrier in the US. As long as you don’t have your heart set on an iPhone there are lots of other carriers to choose from who still offer unlimited data plans. But for how much longer? Computerworld quotes several analysts who predict that Verizon, the nation’s second largest carrier, will set caps in as soon as six months. While there may be some pricing competition on these plans, I’m guessing they’ll offer pretty similar amounts of data for prices that only vary by a few dollars a month.

With a cost between 75 cents and $4.50 and hour, listening to mobile internet radio on an AT&T smartphone starts to look pretty uncompetitive compared to traditional broadcast, which is free, or satellite radio which offers unlimited listening for $10 – $20 a month. While it may be inevitable that the days of unlimited data plans will come to an end, I hope that the metered pricing quickly becomes more reasonable, permitting a reasonable amount of streaming radio listening. If not, this vibrant new way of listening to radio might be stunted before it has a chance to blossom.

I–along with many other online radio fans–was surprised to learn this morning that online indie rock station WOXY abruptly shut down its live stream this morning. The only explanation was a short blurb on their website blaming “current economic realities and the lack of ongoing funding” for the closure. The situation was all the more surprising given the station’s intensive participation in SXSW just last week.

WOXY website's farewell message

Pop Candy received some information directly from WOXY music director Matt Shiv who said the staff knew there were financial troubles, but maintained operations last week at SXSW because “a deal was ‘in motion’ to continue funding.” The staff only received notice of the closure from owner Future Sounds on Monday and were given no opportunity to say goodbye to listeners.

WOXY has certainly had a bumpy ride going from being a commercial FM station in Oxford, OH, going online-only in 2004, being bought by lala.com in 2006, and then being being sold to Future Sounds and moving operations to Austin last year. As I wrote last month, WOXY was one of my favorite commercial broadcast stations and I continued to be an online listener.

Unfortunately the closure of WOXY only reminds me that online streaming radio is not necessarily an inexpensive enterprise. By comparison traditional broadcast has higher fixed costs. A station must have a real brick-and-mortar studio and a transmitter with tower, and must maintain these technical operations in accordance with federal laws and regulations. Without even accounting for staffing, and depending on location, these base costs easily start at the low six figures annually.

Streaming stations don’t require much in the way of a physical studio–though certainly some of the best ones, like WOXY, have them. They also don’t require transmitters and the power to run them, nor compliance with FCC rules. But while free of these liabilities, streaming stations do have other significant costs to bare.

First, streaming music stations must pay royalties for the right to play music online, which scale up in cost as listenership increases. Second, and most significantly, streaming stations have to buy bandwidth to deliver their streams. And here’s where popularity can become a double-edged sword. Unlike broadcast, each additional listener requires additional bandwidth, which in turn costs more money. If your listenership grows, so does your bandwidth bill.

On the one hand streaming online has been such a boon for small niche stations because it can be relatively inexpensive to reach a small number of simultaneous listeners. For instance, the streaming radio host Live365 charges $112 a month for a plan that accommodates up to 25 simultaneous listeners using a stereo 128 kbps stream (not including any royalty charges). While 25 listeners doesn’t sound like a lot, remember that listeners tune in and out of online radio, and so a station with only that many listeners at any given time may still have an entire listenership of hundreds or thousands.

But when you scale up to broadcast-level audiences the costs also scale up. Back in WOXY’s old home broadcast market of Cincinnati even the lowest rated stations have an average simultaneous audience of about 7000 people. Using Live365′s published rates as a guide, it would cost $26,000 a month to reach this many simultaneous internet listeners. Now, I’m certain that a station with that many listeners can negotiate a better deal, but even extrapolating from a smaller, lower-cost company’s published rates would set the cost at $13,300. That’s a big difference from $26k, however it demonstrates that reaching the same number of listeners online as a small, low-rated broadcast station in large radio market will run at least $10,000 a month.

At that point a streaming station looks like less of a bargain, even if it is less expensive and complex than operating a broadcast station. But then my argument isn’t that a streaming station is more expensive or more of a hassle than a broadcast station. Rather, I’m pointing out that operating a live streaming music station can still be expensive, with costs getting higher as listenership goes up. One advantage of a broadcast station is that additional listeners don’t cost a thing — the costs of running the station are much more fixed as long as the price of rent, power and such remain relatively constant. Reaching 70,000 listeners costs the same as 7,000, provided that many people live in your listening area. Obviously, in broadcast it’s not economically advantageous to have 25 simultaneous listeners like it is online.

I honestly do not know what WOXY’s revenue model was. I know the station ran ads on its website but I don’t recall hearing ads on its live stream. I think the station had show sponsorships that sounded more like underwriting on public radio. WOXY was also being broadcast on the HD2 channel of Cincinnati public station WXVU, which would have prohibited regular ads being run. (As a side note, one has to guess that the HD channel is now silent, too.)

Given that the station had a studio and staff of six, in addition to bandwidth costs, my conservative guess is that WOXY operations ran at least $300,000 annually, and likely closer to $500,000. That’s a fraction of a top station in a major market, but it’s still not chicken feed, either.

WOXY was often mentioned in the same breath as other indie rock online stations like Seattle’s KEXP, Jersey City’s WFMU or Minneapolis’ The Current. But the difference is that that those other stations are also non-commerical broadcast stations that rely on a listener-supported revenue model to fund operations. So, I will be surprised if we see the resurrection of WOXY, at least in a form that sounds anything like it was. The brand may rise again, but it’s unclear if the funding and revenue is there to bring the spirit back to life.

Here’s the breakdown for all radio types:

Full-power stations

• AM stations – 4790
• FM commercial stations – 6479
• FM educational stations – 3151
  TOTAL 14,420

  FM translator and booster stations – 6155

  Low-power FM stations – 864

  Grand total: 21,439

Note that FM translators and boosters are low-power stations that may not originate their own programming. They may only retransmit the signal of a full-power station. I’m pretty sure that a very large percentage of translators are non-commercial, thought I don’t have the exact number at hand. This is because the rules for non-comm translators are much looser than for commercial ones. A non-comm translator may be located any distance away from the station it retransmits, whereas a commercial translator must be located within its mother station’s expected broadcast range.

Educational stations encompass all non-commercial stations that have NCE licenses, including college, school, religious, community and public stations. The FCC does not distinguish between them.

Even though many observers have tuned out of radio, it’s going to be a long time before 21,439 broadcast stations are going to be abandoned and forgotten.

Is the iPad good for mobile internet radio?

Already some of us have been listening to live streaming internet radio on our mobile devices, like iPhones and Blackberries. But, as I argued last month, the experience still doesn’t quite add up to true mobile internet radio, especially because when you’re using cell data like 3G it saps the heck out of your battery. My experience streaming live radio on my iPhone gives me a little more than an hour before I’m nearly out of juice. The new Apple iPad looks to be a great mashup of an iPhone and netbook, which are both decent devices for listening to internet radio on the go, but also have their drawbacks.

The fact that some iPad models offer 3G wireless data connectivity out-of-the box, for a very reasonable $30 a month without any contracts make it a great candidate for mobile internet radio listening. It won’t necessarily be any better for the car than an iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone. But in other mobile circumstances it shows distinct promise.

So the question is, will the iPad bring us one step closer to truly mobile internet radio? Based on early specs, and having never touched it myself, the answer is a distinct maybe.

The first important factor is battery life. If the battery poops out after only an hour, then it’s only good for short trips. But if you have a longer train or bus commute, or are outside away from a wi-fi connection you probably want at least two good hours. While Apple specifies that you get 10 hours of active wi-fi use on a charge, no 3G batterly life specs are published. With a much bigger battery than an iPhone one would expect that constant 3G use would go longer, but we’ll have to wait until the first longer-term reviews come out.

The next big issue is sound quality. I currently use my iPhone, netbook or MacBook Pro to stream audio in a variety of circumstances, including home and when away in hotels. They’re all fine for using with headphones or external speakers, though the iPhone is the clear winner for fidelity. But I don’t always want to use headphones or lug around speakers. In a pinch the iPhone’s speaker is better than nothing at all (sounding like a pocket radio), and the netbook is barely any better. My MacBook’s speakers are the best in this category, but at the same time it seems wasteful overkill to use this powerful laptop computer just to listen to radio. My hope is that it will sound at least as good as a MacBook Pro, which itself is on par with a portable radio the size of a paperback book. We’ll have to see how the iPad’s speakers measure up against these competitors.

The final big factor is multitasking, and on this measure we already know the answer: there is no multi-tasking on the iPad. This is important because all of the streaming radio apps are not made by Apple, and you can only run one non-Apple app at a time. So you want to listen to a live feed of a Cubs game while Tweeting? No can do. Catch a live feed of the State of the Union while reading the New York Times online? Also a big no. So, unless Apple decides to add the ability to listen to live streams to the iPad’s iPod app–which is allowed to multitask with other apps–this is probably the biggest count against the radio capabilities of the iPad.

At least as far as mobile internet radio is concerned, the iPad looks like a tiny step forward. If the 3G battery life and sound quality are up to snuff, then it’s a bigger step. But without multitasking where you can listen to a live stream while using other apps, the iPad is not the next big thing in mobile internet radio.

Ginny Gordon and the Broadcast Mystery image from Feliks Banel

It’s hard for me to resist the lure of vintage books and I was pleased to see that our friend Feliks Banel posted a online exhibit called Radio with Pictures: Iconic Cover Art from Books about Radio on his I STILL Love Radio blog.

Feliks is a radio historian, so he’s managed to curate a lovely collection of images, ranging from radio history books from the 1920s, to collections of vintage radio scripts, to tomes about the use of radio during wartime, to first-person accounts from radio announcers, to some campy pulp novels with radio themes.

On a somewhat-related note, I recently ran across the highly addictive Vintage Ad Browser search engine. If you’re into retro radio imagery, try out the radio search and you’ll find some real gems. On their companion site, Cover Browser, there’s also a collection of 600+ book, magazine, and comic cover images related to radio.

Like PE says: Don't believe the hype!

I guess Ford announcing stronger support for HD and the new iTunes tagging features count for something. But where the rubber meets the road is whether car buyers are willing to pony up the extra cash for the higher-end stereos. While Ford is doing better than Chrysler and GM, the last time I checked, the auto industry isn’t exactly thriving. And let’s not forget that just few years ago the big hype was how the auto manufacturers were embracing satellite, yet that seems to have mostly resulted in lots of XM Sirius-equipped rental cars.

I keep searching for information about all these new non-automotive HD receivers and I keep coming up with the same iBiquity press release regurgitated all over the place. The release lists off a pile of model numbers, but no other info that might help me evaluate how great these new receivers might be.

According to iBiquity there is no CES 2010 news!

Only This Week in Consumer Electronics has any useful information, including the most valuable data of all: price. Amongst the models listed by TWICE, at $69 the lowest cost receiver is Radio Shack’s FM-only Gigaware-branded add-on for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The price isn’t outrageous, and marks only a $10 – $20 premium over a typical FM-only radio for the iPhone. Past that, all of the new HD receivers come in over a hundred bucks. That includes even the entry from discount electronics brand Coby, whose HDR700 has a street price of around $99.

I really believe that price is the key here. With the collapse in the quality of commercial radio programming, HD Radio really has not been able to sell itself on programming, despite the largest broadcasters like CBS Radio blanketing their stations with ads touting HD’s virtues. The quality issue is also debatable. So, at best, I think HD Radio is still a curiosity for most people who might be attracted by having a few more channels at their disposal, or having AM news, traffic and weather on the FM HD channels. But what are people willing to pay for this curiosity?

Putting aside geeks, radio-heads and gadget freaks, my bet is that the average shopper is willing to pay a $10 to $20 price premium to get HD Radio. That’s why I think the pricing on the Radio Shack iPhone add-on is about right. But that one device isn’t going to greatly expand HD radio listenership. First, because it’s limited to iPhone and iPod Touch owners, and second because I’m doubtful that too many people want to hang an extra little device off their player. I sure don’t.

Once you move into the world of what we might call “premium” or higher-fidelity radios–a market pioneered by the Tivoli Model One–or A/V receivers, then it looks like that $10-20 price premium is starting to become a reality. But again, I’m really not sure how big the market for these items are. I’ll agree that A/V receivers are popular, but how many people really listen to radio on them?

The way HD Radio is going to make it into more households is when there’s an HD-capable $50 radio on the shelf of every local store that sells electronics. That radio doesn’t need to be fancy, but it’s got to have a speaker and a handle, run on batteries or AC, and look like a radio. It shouldn’t be a headphone-only radio, but it should have a headphone jack. It has to be the kind of radio you can take into the garage or the backyard, keep in the kitchen or on the bedside table.

Simply, for HD Radio to take off, the average person walking into the store looking for a new radio (not looking for an HD Radio) has to see an HD-capable radio and decide that the extra $10 or $20 is worth it. As long as HD Radio is depending on folks to go out of their way to seek out and buy HD Radios it will always be a niche market, struggling on the sidelines.

Beyond that, once HD Radio is a $10 – $20 premium on boomboxes, iPod docks and compact stereos then it has a shot at real popularity and use. In the car make it part of every stereo, including the base-model. These are the devices most people use to listen to radio, and right now the HD Radio options for them are skimpy, to say the least.

If the public were dying for HD Radio it would be a hit already. Give them the option to hear it without spending a lot of dough, and HD Radio has a fighting chance. But 24 new models, with only one under $100? Forget about it for 2010.