About that preroll

A couple people wrote in complaining on how we added a "preroll" support SomaFM message to our streams.

That was a mistake; The preroll was only supposed to show up when people were listening via third-party sites which embed our streams on their sites (next to our ads). Unfortunately, I made a mistake in a config file and left off one line... and that caused everyone listening with Windows Media to get the message...

Here's an example of what we were trying to affect. That's one of many sites that embed our streams in their pages, as if they were the source of our content, and then sell ads around our stream!

I tried to make it so that when they connected to our stream, they got the donation pre-roll first. After all we are paying for all the bandwidth and royalties and they're selling ads on our content!!! But rather than just block it, we thought we could make more people aware that we're supported by our listeners.

But I made a type in a config file. Left in an extra "#". And so all Windows Media listeners were getting the preroll. Not just the leachers.

So its fixed now.

If we ever do something like that in the future; it will be done where you only hear the leader/preroll ONCE a day at most, not repeated every time you change channels. But even that would be reserved for something special, we wouldn't do that on a regular basis.

Ibiquity's new plan to save HD Radio...

Ibiquity briefly discussed their new plan to save HD Radio: government requirements to HD radio technology in all radios sold in the US. Guys, that isn't going to fly. You're not going to get the US Gov to legislate you a monopoly. "But they did it with FM, they forced radio makers to include FM on all their radios, and UHF on all their TVs!" Yes, but HD radio is not a frequency band. HD radio is a proprietary modulation scheme and iBiquity Digital is the sole developer and licenser of HD Radio technology in the U.S.

Of course Ibiquity wants the FCC to make their system mandatory, they'd then get a license fee on every radio sold in the US.

They must be big believers in that old saying, "If you can't innovate, legislate!"

EVDO, Wireless Performance, Radio Remote broadcasts and violating your terms of service

As I sit here in my Las Vegas Motel Room (the Best Western Mardi Gras, selected only on the basis of price and proximity to the Las Vegas Convention Center, where NAB is taking place) I'm thinking about how bad wireless performance is in general.

Right now, I'm typing over EVDO, because the hotel internet - powered by Lodgenet's StayOnline - is completely dysfunctional ("timeout connecting to network"). This is the same StayOnline that gave us so much trouble at the Marriott in Austin when we were trying to cover SXSW. I guess I should learn never to depend on the in-room wireless internet at most hotels/motels, because if the hotel is busy at all - the network will be unusable.

But, we have an EVDO card! We bring our own bandwidth with us rather than rely on the hotel internet, because that way we can always have internet access over "Sprint's EVDO Rev. A networks with data speeds up to 3.1 Mbps!" Only it doesn't work that way. In fact, these days, we're lucky if we get 500kb down. Here's what I get from the Speakeasy Speed Test:

Not too impressive.

You see the problem happens when there are too many EVDO users. And for Sprint (like Verizon), that means all the people that have their multimedia phones. And there are more and more of those out there all the time, fighting for the finite amount of bandwidth at each cell site.

We really saw this last weekend, when we webcast from Yuri's Night. At first, the webcast worked great. We had plenty of speed. But as all the geeks started arriving for the big party that evening, the network started getting slower and slower. By 8pm, that stream (from Stage 2) rebuffered so much it was pretty much unusable.

We were doing the main stage broadcasts from WayneCo's Bus which is equipped with a Motosat satellite internet uplink, which usually only gets about 256kb max for uplinks, unless you pay a hefty additional fee (which uses multiple transponders). So we didn't have enough bandwidth to stream both from the bus, and had to resort to EVDO for the other stage.

WiFi was also out of the question. With 5 SSIDs visible, the only reliable one was the backhaul network for the ticket booths, and not connected to the internet. The public internet was so overloaded that it often disappeared for minutes at a time. And only once were we able to maintain a connection, and that was before the event started. So we couldn't WiFi between our encoding gear at Stage 2 and the bus.

Everyone is always making promises of the happy wonderful infinite bandwidth wireless future. But it's still a way off. In a crowded situation, WiFi is about as useful as a CB radio, OK for really short distances, but for useful distances (200 feet or more) it falls apart. In this case, we could barely get 40 feet out of the WiFi base station in the bus to a remote machine. Sprint's EVDO works great sometime (4am in the morning in places where there aren't many users, for example) but lately in many different places we've used it, the service is over subscribed and slow, slow, slow.

Verizon's EVDO works just as badly as Sprint.

Wayne de Geere, who graciously provided his bus as our base of operations, has a Verizon EVDO, which worked about as poorly as the Sprint one. We chose the Sprint service because of Verizon's Terms of Service actually prohibit streaming audio and/or video and updating webcams and pretty much anything actually useful you'd do with their service. Sprint's restrictions are pretty much limited to things that violate the law.

Bottom line: we should have brought lots of wire. And run 600 ohm balanced audio from the stages back to where we were. Or installed wired ethernet connections to each stage. Or used something like a Marti SRPT 30 analog remote pickup unit, the technology that terrestrial radio broadcasters have been using for 30+ years.

Low tech, old fashioned, but tried and true.

Last question on the HD radio panel

I was on a panel about HD radio today, and the last question they asked was: "End it or Mend It?"

I'll spare you the details, but I was the only one that bordered on "End it", I said some days, I think we should end it, other days I think we can mend it.

But afterwards, a couple people came up to me and said, you should have just said, "kill it now!" There is a lot of frustration in the radio industry over this. HD radio isn't taking off. It's being marketed completely wrong. It doesn't solve a problem. It's taking too much of the limited resources that terrestrial stations have.

I guess I should have been meaner and just said, "End it now" after all.

Update: Video of the HD Radio panel here, courtesy of TV Worldwide.

Clear Channel and HD radio leverage iTunes for brand awareness

Clear Channel adds HD radio tagging for iTunes: "Clear Channel Radio, the largest radio broadcaster in the United States, is now tagging tracks played on its digital radio stations to help listeners buy music through iTunes. The company is leveraging HD radio technology to provide the new service."

What does that mean? In reality, it means if you have a compatible HD Radio with an iPod dock (which there is apparently only one model at the moment), if you are listening to HD radio (not analog FM, but only HD radio), and you hear a track you like, you press a button. Then the next time you dock your iPod, that list of "tagged" songs is transferred to your iPod in a special playlist. Then when you sync to your computer, you'll have a new playlist in iTunes that doesn't have the actual songs, but the names of songs you tagged. At that point, you can buy the songs on iTunes, and then add them to a new playlist, and then load them onto your iPod.

To use internet radio people, this sounds silly. After all, we have a list that shows everything we've played recently, and that list links to where you can buy the tracks or CDs.

What is the real reason for this "breakthrough technology"? Twofold: 1. It brings up the awareness of HD radio to people who are googling for "ipod". 2. It is an attempt to show the music industry that radio does indeed promote records and that's why terrestrial radio should continue to get an exemption from sound recording royalties.

Note to radio manufactures: a feature in a radio that would be really useful? TiVo-like features. The ability to record the end of a show after you've turned off your car; or a timed recording of a show so you always get the full program you want to listen to. Or a button that you press that saves the last 5 minutes of what you've just heard.

Or how about this lower tech solution: press a button and it stores the name of the song you're playing. You could then recall a list of the songs you liked, right there on the display of the radio. No need to dock, sync, undock, sync again, etc.

But by the time you've gone through all the steps it takes to use the "iTunes Tagging" from HD radio, it would probably be faster to just to write down the song name!

Top (terrestrial) Radio Execs start sounding desperate

Emmis Broadcasting CEO Jeff Smulyan, quoted in Radio Ink, confirms that he just doesn't get it:

'We're not hiding from new technology, we're driving it. One of the hottest-selling features for the iPod is an FM tuner.'

Or maybe it isn't? Here's the top 10 selling iPod accessories from the Apple Store as of 3-April-08, and I don't see the FM tuner anywhere on it. But the more important thing he's missing is that the FM radio is an iPod remote as well. In fact, it's the only remote control for the iPod that Apple sells now (aside from the one that requires a dock).

'...But one of the biggest reasons for MP3 sales over iPods is that tuners are built in.' The iPod is nearly the only digital audio player available that doesn't come with an FM tuner, but Smulyan said said he believes Apple will soon commit to radio tuners in its market-dominating device.

And I believe Google will give me billions of dollars. That doesn't mean it's going to happen, but it's a nice fantasy world to live in.

Terrestrial radio has to keep repeating this, hoping someone will believe that people do listen to commercial terrestrial radio to discover new music. I think they're just saying that to try and stop the tide of the approaching music royalties being pushed by MusicFirst and the RIAA.

Terrestrial radio across the country adds in total less than 30 tracks a week. That's across all commercial formats, all across America. A typical FM station might add a few tracks each week. Look in the music trades- most stations list less than 5 adds a week. I can discover more music than that just by browsing the recommendations on the iTunes store.

'Our goal, in the next five years, is to have a radio tuner in every portable phone, in every PDA sold in the United States,' Smulyan said. 'We want to reach 400 million more devices in the next five years.' "

I guess I should be thankful that he's not saying put a HD radio receiver in every iPod. (Among other things, that would be a huge battery killer as well).

Tell my why would Apple want to add an AM/FM tuner in to all their iPhones and iPods? It's a $49 accessory with a cost of goods of well under $5, so why would they want to give up that margin, especially if Smulyan is correct and it is actually one of the biggest selling accessories for the iPod? They probably make more margin on it than they do on the Shuffle itself.

People are caring less and less about AM/FM radio all the time. Look at the demographics: they're not getting any new customers. And they're losing a lot of their old customers.

Oh, and Radio Execs: it's not all about the technology. It's about providing the content that people want. And terrestrial hasn't been doing that for a long, long time.

The biggest stumbling block to the death of terrestrial radio altogether is current copyright law. The fact that we have to jump through hoops to distribute Podcasts, the facts that there are so many limitations to the Section 114 music licensing, the fact that we have to pay such high royalties: these are what is keeping digital radio from completely obliterating terrestrial radio.

I'll leave you with one last comparison: Shortwave Radio. This used to be huge 40-60 years ago. There were stations all around the world broadcasting over Shortwave to reach global audiences. People would buy special radios just to pickup the BBC in the US. But now no one listens to shortwave, and many shortwave stations are shutting down their shortwave transmitters, going online instead, because no one listens to shortwave over the air anymore.

AM/FM: You're next. What you should focus on is creating incredible programming that you can stream and podcast, and stop worrying about your expensive transmitters.

HD Radio isn't going to save you. Cookie-cutter HD2 channels aren't going to help you. Forcing manufacturers to include AM/FM radios in mobile devices isn't going to help you. You've lost the battle. Move on.

NAB- National Association of Broadcasters Show in Vegas

I'll be at NAB all day Monday through Wednesday, April 14th-16th. Monday the 14th is the RAIN Internet Radio Summit (and I'm supposed to be on a panel there), the rest of the time I'll be at NAB proper... mostly in the "multimedia hall" but spending a small amount of time in the Radio hall at the LVCC.